Gerry Adams (Louth, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Gabhaim buíochas leis an gCathaoirleach agus táim an-sásta go bhfuilimid ag déanamh díospóireachta faoin obair thábhachtach seo. Fáiltím go mór roimh Emma, Colin agus Una. I just want to very quickly speak about theempiricalexperience. First of all, let us start from the premise that this is entirely malicious. I was one of the people who negotiated The Good Friday Agreement. I was always uncomfortable that we were negotiating rights issues. I always thought the best option was just to adopt best international practice. I always thought it would come down to governments which are notoriously reluctant to give legislative effect to people's rights, and also given the nature of the North. However we are where we are, and we got the Good Friday Agreement and it was a keystone agreement. There were huge difficulties trying to get the British Government to give proper legislative effect to the agreement. For example, we do not have a bill of rights, and it is not that the British Government do not know that, or that it has not been raised week in and week out for the last 21 years. Neither do we have a charter of rights, because the Irish Government was supposed to bring in a charter of rights, and there was to be an all-Ireland charter of rights.

In this institution, the Good Friday Agreement falls victim to partisan politics, all the time. It is only when one gets this sort of in-depth discussion of some of the issues involved that one can almost see people here starting to come to an understanding of what this is about. Bunreacht na hÉireann was changed, but the other side of that was that the Irish Government as of right, as opposed to having an aspirational symbolic - and in my opinion meaningless - constitutional claim to the North, was to have an involvement in all of these matters. The onus therefore, I believe, is on the Irish Government, if one starts from my premise that this is entirely malicious. Why do I say that? It is because the British Government will always act in what it perceives to be its own interests. If there is some immigration issue, or some other issue that the Home Office has responsibility for, that will take precedence and priority, and the people on the island of Ireland, or the northern part of the island, will fall victim to that. They will be a secondary consideration. The onus is very clearly on the Irish Government to act in this issue. No matter how strong a statement there is from an Irish Government in these issues - and of course strong statements are very welcome - they are not read in Downing Street. They are not paid any attention to in the British Home Office. They are not listened to even though it is important that the Government sets out its position in robust and strong terms.

The Government has to reach above itself. Notwithstanding all the difficulties, we saw how the diplomatic weight of the Government, with the support of the parties in this institution, could be used to secure the least worst Brexit so far. That approach also needs to be taken on this issue.

Time out of number, the Taoiseach has fudged a very important point. Paragraph 52 of the political declaration, which declared that people in the North with Irish citizenship would have European citizens' rights, is not in the withdrawal agreement. This provision was heralded as being bulletproof. I cannot remember the various terms used to describe it but it was supposedly armour-plated. It is not in the withdrawal agreement and, as such, we fell at the first hurdle when it came to the rights of people in the North. The Government needs to accept that and work honestly on that issue.

After that meander, I would like to return to Ms DeSouza's case. Every day, I and others see that ordinary people have to become activists and experts and have to put themselves out to secure rights in a large number of areas. In that regard, Emma and Jake are to be commended on what they are doing. Who is funding their case? Working people have to go and raise funds by running raffles and ballots and holding fundraising events in local pubs. That should not be the case. I do not know if protocol allows it but back in the day an Irish Government took a case to the European Court of Human Rights on behalf of internees who had been tortured. There should be some exploration of the possibility of the Government using diplomatic and other avenues. It must also take responsibility. If the people of the North are not to be left behind again by an Irish Government, this is a déan é ná habair é moment. The Government should something about this by adopting this case. That in itself would put pressure on the British Government by showing that an Irish Government is prepared to support a legal case of this kind. The question, which is not directed at the witnesses but at the committee, is whether there can be some space to show very practical support to Ms DeSouza because if she loses, we all lose.

Obviously, Brexit brought this case to a head but as we meander our way through Brexit, unionists will lose because they will lose their right to claim British citizenship. Incidentally - I am going off on another tangent - there is no concept of British citizenship. We are British subjects, not citizens so there is no definition of that.

To come back to my main point, however, everybody loses if Emma and Jake lose. For this reason, I commend to the committee that it at least explore the possibility, among whatever other remedies it may have, of seeking practical support from the Government by having it adopt this case.