When I went to the all-Ireland final - Kerry against Dublin - I couldn't get away for an hour and a half with people coming up and wishing me all the best. Not one of them said, 'Martin, when did you leave the IRA?' But every one of them knew I was in the IRA at one stage.

As a lad growing up in the Fifties and Sixties, I played both Gaelic football and soccer and loved them both.

Sinn Fein is the fastest growing party on the island of Ireland.

Remembering the loss of those Irishmen from all parts of the island who were sent to their deaths in the imperialist slaughter of the First World War is crucial to understanding our history. It is also important to recognise the special significance in which the Battle of the Somme and the First World War is held.

The Iraq War was the first conflict in western history in which an imperialist war was massively protested against before it had even been launched.

The Republican party is not inflamed, as some would fain have the country believe, against the South. Its borders are wide enough for all truly loyal men to find within them peace and repose from the din and discord of angry faction.

I came here as a practical man, to talk, not simply on the question of peace and war, but to treat another question which is of hardly less importance - the enormous and burdensome standing armaments which it is the practice of modern Governments to sustain in time of peace.

Two decades after communism and the alleged end of the Cold War, Russia is still a cash economy. The preferred currency is dollars, though euros are also acceptable.