Clare Daly (Dublin North, United Left) | Oireachtas source

I propose to share my time with Deputies Mick Wallace and Paul Murphy.

The discussion thus far shows that electoral considerations down here are more important to some Deputies than the actual reality on the ground in Northern Ireland. I am happy to talk about the situation there. I am privileged to be part of a cross-party group of Deputies and Senators who have taken it on themselves in the past while to engage in multiple visits to prisons of Northern Ireland, especially Maghaberry Prison, to deal with issues of injustice. I highlight the failure of prison management to address the issues flowing from its failure to implement the stocktake of Maghaberry Prison agreement which is seriously destabilising in the North. I am beginning to wonder whether it wants a heavy price to be paid for it. We meet loyalist and Nationalist prisoners and, in some ways, their concerns are similar. Both groups believe they have nobody to represent them. Loyalist prisoners believe republican prisoners have everything their own way, that because of the peace process some voices in the nationalist community are now in the mainstream and that their issues are being addressed. One then meets republican prisoners who think heir views have been sold out on.

It is against that backdrop that we need to look at the scandal which has convulsed Northern society in recent weeks, with the revelations in the NAMA scandal. To my mind, what we have in Northern Ireland is an unusual arrangement, a dysfunctional society which operates in a sort of sectarian balancing act, with both groups claiming to represent the viewpoint of their community, but actually ordinary people in both communities are being left behind. When revelations come into the public domain about the upper echelons of the Northern political system being linked with big business and massive profiteering at the expense of the taxpayer, that is going to have political ramifications. It is a small part of the island and I honestly wonder how such behaviour could have gone unnoticed. The only answer I can give is that it did not go unnoticed but that perhaps people on both sides of the sectarian divide, diplomatically in Britain or the South, felt it was better to have certain people in place rather than have the process undermined. If that is the case, it is a very dangerous and unhelpful attitude. It is quite clear that Northern politicians have been very involved in the NAMA scandal from the beginning, despite the protestations of Coulter today.

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