On 11 December 1984, Ferris and two other members of the Marita Ann crew, including Browne and a United States citizen, John Crawley, were sentenced to ten years imprisonment at Portlaoise Prison. Gavin Mortimer and John McCarthy both received suspended sentences. He was released on 11 September 1994. In February 2005, the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform, Michael McDowell, using parliamentary privilege, named Ferris—as well as Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness—as a member of the IRA Army Council, an allegation that has been denied by Ferris and the Sinn Féin leadership. In July of that year, the Irish Independent reported that Ferris, along with Adams and McGuinness, had stepped down from the Army Council in the lead-up to an IRA statement on its future. Ferris has courted controversy by his refusal to condemn the murder of Detective Garda Jerry McCabe during a botched Post Office raid by the Provisional IRA in 1996. Ferris had also greeted Pearse McAuley and Kevin Walsh, the men charged with the manslaughter of Garda McCabe, upon their release from prison as part of the Good Friday Agreement. Political career Kerry County Council Following his release from prison he began focusing on community activism, particularly against drug dealing in Kerry. He was appointed to the Sinn Féin Árd Chomhairle in 1995. He ran for election to the Dáil at the 1997 general election in the Kerry North constituency, polling 5,691 first-preference votes, but was not elected. At the 1999 local elections he was elected to Kerry County Council and Tralee town council. He was an unsuccessful candidate in Munster in election held on the same day to the European Parliament. Dáil Éireann Ferris was first elected to Dáil Éireann in Kerry North at the 2002 general election, topping the poll and unseating former Labour leader and Tánaiste Dick Spring. During the election campaign Ferris was arrested but later released. He later claimed that he had been verbally and physically assaulted while in Garda custody. His biographer J.J. Barrett described the Garda surveillance of Ferris as "unhealthy", writing that "it was to backfire seriously". He was re-elected in Kerry North at the 2007 general election, for the redrawn constituency of Kerry North–West Limerick at the 2011 general election, and for the new constituency of Kerry at the 2016. In the 31st Dáil he was the Sinn Féin spokesperson on Agriculture and Rural Development, and also