Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)

I add my voice and that of People Before Profit and the United Left Alliance in offering our condolences to the family of Ronan Kerr following this terrible tragedy. We join other speakers and parties in condemning absolutely this despicable act. There is simply no justification whatsoever for this kind of atrocity. As Deputy Martin said, these are not dissidents fulfilling some sort of authentic republican strategy. It is an utterly brutal, barbaric action that leads nowhere except back down a road which has failed in the past and which we do not want to go down again. However, it is important to look at the deeper politics, as Deputy Adams said, to allow us to address this problem and the danger of things moving back in that direction. We all must acknowledge that there has been a worrying growth, albeit among a minority in the North, in the organisations associated with this kind of activity. We have to ask ourselves why that is happening and what we can do about it. The peace dividend was much talked about at the time of the Good Friday Agreement. Many people placed their hopes in the Agreement that there would be a dividend in terms of prosperity, improved quality of life, better living conditions - all that people hoped would come with it, not just peace but a social and economic dividend. Does the Taoiseach agree this has not been delivered and that, in such a situation, there is always a danger of alienated young people moving towards twisted, warped or misguided ideas which they think can somehow address it? We must look seriously at that. In that context, the economic austerity being imposed in the North as well as here and across the world, in the interests of protecting bankers and bondholders across Europe, is part of the problem and will fuel it. We have to resist an austerity which leads to that sort of alienation and which fails to deliver on the social and economic aspirations of ordinary people. We must also ask whether, despite best intentions, the political structures that were set up as a result of the Good Friday Agreement, which sought to bring about a political dispensation that could end conflict, may perhaps at some level have institutionalised communal identity in the political structure of Northern Ireland. The Agreement has corralled people into community identities instead of developing a politics that breaks us out of communal identity and where we begin to talk about the social and economic issues that unite people rather than the communal identities which divide them. That is something we must address in a serious way.

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