REPUBLICANS should help track down a former senior IRA man who skipped bail in Dublin while facing charges of sexually abusing a child, Labour leader Brendan Howlin has said.
Mr Howlin questioned how the man has been able to go on the run for two years.
The 68-year-old man, originally from west Belfast, was living in Dublin when the alleged abuse of the young girl happened in the early 1990s.
The man had been extradited from Spain in 2016 to face four charges. He was subsequently granted bail but disappeared two days before the trial was due to begin in Dublin in 2017.
News that he had skipped bail only emerged after it was revealed by RTÉ on Thursday night.
Gardaí believe the man may have been a senior figure in the IRA Southern Command, which oversaw units in Leinster and Munster.
He was once close to hunger striker Bobby Sands and is thought to have been a senior IRA man in Dublin at the time Martin 'The General' Cahill was shot dead in 1994 in a gun attack. That attack was blamed on the IRA.
The man left the leadership of the IRA in 1996 shortly after the IRA murder of Detective Garda Jerry McCabe in Adare in Co Limerick.
He lived in Spain for several decades.
In February 2016, he was arrested in Spain and later extradited to the Republic to face four counts of sexual abuse of a child. He appeared at Dublin District Court on April 30 2016.
Despite garda objections, he was granted bail after coming up with thousands of pounds in sureties.
He attended a Dublin garda station every day for a year, as part of his bail conditions.
But he disappeared two days before the start of the trial in June 2017.
It is understood that Interpol are attempting to track the man down.
Mr Howlin said anyone with information should pass it to gardaí.
"How does a man charged with sexual abuse of a child disappear for two years?" he tweeted.
"Anyone - whether in the republican movement or elsewhere with information on his whereabouts, or who might have aided him should help the gardaí track him down."
Gardaí are investigating allegations of sexual abuse involving several IRA members.
Máiría Cahill, who has said she was sexually abused by a senior member of the IRA when she was a teenager in Belfast, said news that the man had skipped bail is "devastating".
Ms Cahill, a former Labour senator, said it was "highly unusual that a person who skips bail cannot be found by gardaí, and that no trace of them exists".
