Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Peace is probably the most important part of that. It is a fact that we do not have or at least we have very little political violence in Northern Ireland, and that both the British-Irish Council, BIC, and the British-Irish Intergovernmental Conference are operating. Sadly, as Deputy Tóibín pointed out, the Assembly, the Executive and the North-South Ministerial Council are not. That is deeply regrettable. It is because of the DUP veto. The other four major parties - Sinn Féin, the SDLP, the Alliance Party and the Ulster Unionist Party - are willing to participate in a government.

We now have the Windsor Framework. I hope that the DUP, after careful consideration, will be able to accept the framework and then the parties can get down to talking about restoring devolved government in Northern Ireland, in which we will not seek to interfere but we will help in any way that we can. We are keen to help any new government that gets up and running in the North in any way that we can because we want it to be a success, and we want the problems that have been mentioned to be solved.

The Windsor Framework is an agreement between the EU, including Ireland, and the UK Government. My understanding is that we will ratify the framework as Europe and probably at the European Council at the end of March. Although the European Parliament may need to make some changes to the framework it will ultimately be a judgment call for the British Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, as to when he decides to proceed with it and whether he decides to proceed with it absent of the support of all five parties. That is a judgment he has to make and I do not want to put any pressure on him in that regard. He has shown enormous leadership and steel to bring us this far so I do not want to say anything that makes his job harder. It is great to have a UK Government who has brought us this far, in my view.

On the legacy Bill, we oppose the Bill as we think it is wrong. All five parties in Northern Ireland are opposed to it and think it is wrong. I am sure that I will discuss the matter in the US next week because the US Congress has taken an interest in this matter. The Bill is one of the things I want to speak to President Biden about. I look forward to meeting Prime Minister Sunak and I will talk to him about the Bill. At the moment what we want to do is try to persuade the British Government, the House of Lords and the House of Commons not to go down this road. We do not rule out a court challenge but taking your nearest neighbour to court is not a small thing to do and it could sour relations between our Government and the Government in Westminster. We do not want to go down that road at the moment but we are not ruling it out. What we want to work on now is persuasion and trying to persuade the UK Government that this really is not the right course of action. We want to ask it to listen to the victims' groups, in particular, on this and, in particular, the five parties in Northern Ireland that are not unanimous on many things but actually are on this. We have a process in the Stormont House Agreement, which I think is the one to follow.