Niall Ó Donnghaile (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

It was a bit of both, to be fair. There is shared responsibility on that. Mr. Durkan is welcome back. I know he was a long-standing and engaged member of this committee and he is familiar with its work. I thank him for his presentation. I apologise for missing his contribution as I was in the Seanad Chamber, but I read his submission.

There are a couple of issues I wish to raise and I will be as brief as I can. I agree with most of what Mr. Durkan said about the failure to implement a number of aspects of the agreement. This failure lies primarily but not exclusively with the British Government. Given where we are in the context of the work of this committee, it is important that we name failures on the part of the Irish Government. I will go through my thinking behind that and seek Mr. Durkan's analysis given where he is coming from.

On the provision in the Good Friday Agreement on the right to identify and be accepted as Irish, British, or both, some people think in the context of the agreement that Articles 2 and 3 were done away with as opposed to replaced. While Mr. Durkan has referred to Article 3 a number of times, and it is an important article, I want to talk a wee bit about Article 2, the right of everyone born on the island to be part of the Irish nation.

In the context of the provision in the Good Friday Agreement on the right to identify and be accepted as Irish and Article 2 of the Constitution on the right to be part of the Irish nation, there have been systematic issues and failures and, in a way, erosions over the past 25 years on the part of this State. There has been a failure to give speaking rights to MPs in the Dáil, which was spoken about for a long time. There was the recent failure by the Opposition to allow MPs and MLAs sit on special Oireachtas committees, such as this, that would look at specific issues such as autism, which are dealt with under the agreement and other agreements as all-Ireland healthcare issues. I refer to the whole campaign around voting rights and all of that. Is there a need for the Irish Government to engage in some self-reflection on giving effect to Article 2 as well Article 3 and how it should best go about doing that in the context of the Good Friday Agreement?

A former Secretary of State in the North spoke online last week about how the UK Government's strategy on the union needed a radical shift. Does that chime with rigorous impartiality? What does Mr. Durkan think about the British Government's undertakings? While I appreciate this was someone reflecting and providing their own opinion, does it chime with the responsibility to be rigorously impartial on this issue, or does that responsibility only come into effect if and when a referendum is announced?