Jennifer Carroll MacNeill (Dún Laoghaire, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I am a member of the Joint Committee on the Implementation of the Good Friday Agreement. Last week, John Finucane, MP, came in to seek our support for his family's quest for an inquiry into the horrific murder of his father.

In the course of that meeting and of the debate on the Seanad motion which preceded it, the Houses of the Oireachtas recognised and recounted the terrible details of the violence visited upon the Finucane family. The Chairman of joint committee, Deputy O'Dowd, offered his full support and noted that Mr. Finucane's family was not the only one to suffer and that all the victims of violence need to be respected. The party of our Chairman has stated repeatedly that there is not a hierarchy of victims. We have to acknowledge that his tweet was about a very violent incident within recent memory, involving the death of very young men and in a very strategic and deliberate way. We heard at another committee last week about the human impact of violence. There is a human impact to this violence also that is very significant and has been well recounted. The Chairman's tweet hurts the survivors who are alive today and whose family members - teenage boys and young men, some of them fathers - are still missing this Christmas.

What I want to know is what was behind the sentiment the Chairman expressed and what it says about what we are trying to do in terms of reconciliation for the future and about mutual respect. The tweet seems to have no regard for the personal impact on the people who are left behind, in the way his party quite rightly called for in recognition of the Finucane family last week. It is what is behind that sentiment that concerns me. I am also interested in what prompted the Chairman to remove it and what was his thought process in that regard? It is hard to see because a person must have that sentiment within himself or herself in the first place in order to express it. Did somebody call the Chairman and tell him to delete it? Did he receive an instruction?

I do not think that anything Sinn Féin does is by accident. It is a highly strategic operation that has been well controlled, well managed and well planned in all its steps, before 1998 and since. This is the first time Sinn Féin has held such a senior position in this Parliament. Deputy Stanley is Chair of this committee, which, historically, is the most important of all the parliamentary committees and which is always chaired by an established parliamentarian of significance and of significant experience. It is because of the significance of his office, that the reaction we have seen has been forthcoming. My view is that he needs to go further than making an apology to this committee. What he has said represents an attempt to alleviate the discord within the committee, but the real offence is to the Irish people and to their representatives in Dáil Éireann. I think the Chairman should go to the Dáil and apologise or make a personal statement there. His party needs to make a statement of a similar nature that genuinely separates this repeating of violence and the glory of violence every couple of weeks. The sequence is that it happens every couple of weeks and then there is an apology and we move on. Meanwhile, it becomes more normalised just as we move towards a period of commemorations.

As parliamentarians, we must ensure that we take steps to protect the moderate nature of our politics. Every party here has done things in stepping towards the centre in defence of the State that might have been politically uncomfortable for it. I do not want to lose that centre ground to a polarised sort of politics like we have on other parts of this island. I urge the Chairman and his party to take those steps towards moderation and to talk about separation from violence and to reject that. I think he can play a hugely significant role in that regard. His office is of such significance that it is hard to let the matter pass without noting it in this way. I really urge him to give the matter further reflection before we get on with our business.