Gerry Adams (Louth, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

The First and Deputy First Ministers are following this through diligently with the British Government. I dissent totally from the Taoiseach's suggestion that every time a crisis occurred in the North, the parties there went to Downing Street looking for a cheque. This is not the case. I am an Irish republican and I do not want any British Government involvement in our affairs. We have one of the most successful peace processes in our lifetime. I remember walking through the Turf Lodge estate with Fr. Alex Reid and he asked me how we would know whether the peace process was working. I answered it would be when the people there knew it was working. There is extreme disadvantage in mostly Nationalist, but not exclusively Nationalist, working class areas, with generational discrimination and disadvantage. The same goes for working class loyalist and Unionist communities.

What the British Government signed up to at St. Andrews was an attempt to regenerate the economy with an investment of £18 billion, but it has reneged on this and the Deputy First Minister and the First Minister have raised this issue with the British Government and the Taoiseach. The British Government also cut the block grant through which the North receives its subvention from London. There is much controversy about how much tax is lifted from the North by the British Government and how much it removes from the Six Counties. We have had a £4 billion cut on top of an £18 billion hit and now we have a very clear intent of austerity through removing £1 billion from these communities.

I welcome what the Taoiseach stated about speaking to the First and Deputy First Ministers about these matters, but they will tell him nothing different from what I have just told him. It is the Taoiseach's agreement.

It is an international agreement between the two governments, so the Irish Government cannot resile from this. People in the North - Unionists and the rest of us - look to the Government here as a co-guarantor of this agreement to ensure the British government is accountable daily in this business. Therefore, I am asking the Taoiseach again to intervene urgently. I am not one for scaring the horses or raising false concerns, but there is genuine apprehension about where this will end up if the Tory Government continues on this path.

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