Michael McNamara (Clare, Labour) | Oireachtas source

It is right that Dáil Éireann should mark the 15th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement. There are certain momentous events one lives through in one's life. I will never forget where I was on 31 August 1994 when the news of the IRA ceasefire came through - on a campsite in Munich with a good friend from Castlederg. Now, as then, I commend the IRA on having the courage to abandon violence.

The Good Friday Agreement was the culmination of that ceasefire. The Government has already marked the anniversary. The Tánaiste and Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade, Deputy Gilmore, the Labour Party leader, recently visited Belfast to mark the occasion. He met local party leaders and the British Secretary of State. The Labour Party has a proud history going back to the creation of the Agreement. We were in government during the signing of the Anglo-Irish Agreement in 1985 and, as Tánaiste and Minister for Foreign Affairs, Dick Spring had a crucial role in the development of the peace process and the ceasefire of 1994. We never played politics with that process, nor do we intend to. In opposition we wholeheartedly supported the referendum on the Agreement in 1998 and we supported successive Irish Governments in their efforts to establish the institutions and create a peaceful Northern Ireland. Now, in Government, the Labour Party continues to support the full implementation of the Agreement as the basis of our approach on Northern Ireland. I attended the inaugural meeting of the North-South Interparliamentary Association, which was held in the Seanad Chamber.

The motion before us tonight comes from Sinn Féin. It asks us to consider the outstanding elements of the Agreement that are yet to be implemented. As co-guarantors of the Agreement, the two Governments have a responsibility here. That is why the Tánaiste is spending a significant amount of his time meeting his British counterpart and it is the reason our Ministers play an active and engaged role in the North-South Ministerial Council, along with members of the Northern Ireland Executive.

It is true that we need a bill of rights for Northern Ireland. The quasi-incorporation of the European Convention on Human Rights into law here, which mirrored a similar process within the entirety of the United Kingdom, was a positive step towards developing a bill of rights that was universal across these islands. However, a full bill of rights remains outstanding and must be implemented. In considering this motion, however, I ask its authors to outline and examine what they have done to advance this. It is very clear that all of us on this and the other island have a duty to work on the Good Friday Agreement.

The Assembly and Executive in Northern Ireland were suspended from 2002 to 2007. Since then, Sinn Féin has been in government in Northern Ireland, with five Ministers in the Executive. In that time there has been a failure to expand the remit of North-South bodies and even to establish the Executive's review of North-South institutions. Unfortunately, there has also been a failure to convince Unionists in any meaningful way that North-South bodies should be expanded and that many of them should be allowed to remain on the care and maintenance footing on which they were established during the suspension. Instead of seeking to develop such bodies, people have jumped towards talking about a plebiscite.

This has been a highly divisive and destructive subject which has little support from Unionists in Northern Ireland. All of us have a duty to work with the Good Friday Agreement and it is a duty that I, as one of 166 Deputies, take seriously. Sinn Féin Members share this duty and I look forward to hearing their reflections on it.

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