The Sinn Féin President has tonight offered to meet the families of victims of the IRA - which would include the wife of the gunned down Garda, Jerry McCabe.

Gerry Adams told the Sinn Féin Ard Fheis that there needed to be a truth process.

"I am prepared to meet with victimsÂ’ families in this state if they believe this will be helpful and I intend to do this in the near future" he told delegates in Castlebar and watching TV.

"Irish republicans will not shirk from our obligations to those who died as a consequence of the conflict" he added.

The offer would include Mrs Ann McCabe, whom Mr Adams recently apologised to in a Dáil speech when talking about the murder of Detective Garda Adrian Donohoe.

Her husband Jerry was slain by the provisional IRA in a botched post office robbery in Adare in Co. Limerick almost 17 years ago.

However it is unlikely that Mrs McCabe would be likely to take up such a meeting.

In the wake of the apology from Adams, she told the Irish Independent "I was absolutely shocked and amazed. I was on the train to Dundalk [on her way to Det Garda Donohoe's funeral], in actual fact, when I heard it. I said, above all days, that guard was lying in his coffin at that stage, and to bring this up in the Dail – about me. It should have had nothing to do with me. Whatever he had to say should have been about Adrian Donohoe and his family who were grieving. And I can only imagine the grief they were going through".

In his Ard Fhies speech tonight Mr Adams also pledged to fight the local property tax "tooth and nail".

And he also pleaded with Labour to quit the coalition.

"If Fine Gael is set on implementing Fianna Fáil policy then let them do that with the support of Fianna Fáil. Whatever the case for entry into coalition after the last election, there is now only one principled position for Labour....Stand by working people as Connolly and Larkin did. Leave this government and leave it now!" he said