Sinn Féin Vice-President, Mary Lou McDonald, has told Newstalk Breakfast that she was aware of the background to the allegations raised by Maíria Cahill in Northern Ireland but was not a witness to it herself.

The party's deputy leader has said she believed the abuse happened but does not support the claims that her party covered it up.

Speaking to Newstalk Breakfast, she also stated that she has taken Sinn Féin President Gerry Adams's word that he was not a member of the IRA and that she was not demonizing Maíria Cahill or calling her a liar.

"What it looks like is a society in crisis and communities that had nowhere else to turn. It's not right, and Gerry (Adams) makes this clear in his blog, to say that the IRA were controlling with fear in their communities."

"Very often what happened would be that there was anti-social behaviour and people naturally enough wanted a response to it, they wanted it to stop."

"In the absence of a police service, inevitably I suppose there were other responses."

"I'm not pretending for a moment that this was a good situation, it clearly wasn't."

Here is the interview in full: