Sinn Féin for Justice, Equality and Law Reform Michael McDowell publicly accused three of the Sinn Féin leadership, Gerry Adams, Martin McGuinness and Martin Ferris (TD for Kerry North) of being on the seven-man IRA Army Council; they later denied this. On 27 February 2005, a demonstration against the murder of Robert McCartney on 30 January 2005 was held in east Belfast. Alex Maskey, a former Sinn Féin Lord Mayor of Belfast, was told by relatives of McCartney to "hand over the 12" IRA members involved. The McCartney family, although formerly Sinn Féin voters themselves, urged witnesses to the crime to contact
History of Sinn Féin majority. Ó Brádaigh and about twenty other delegates walked out, and re-convened in a Dublin hotel to form a new party, Republican Sinn Féin. Tom Maguire, the last surviving member of the Second Dáil, whose support had been of importance in the formation of the Provisional IRA, rejected the new policy and supported Republican Sinn Féin. What would become known as the Northern Ireland peace process began in 1986 when Father Alec Reid, of the Clonard monastery in West Belfast, wrote to SDLP leader John Hume and to the Irish opposition leader Charles Haughey, to try to initiate direct talks