Bertie Ahern (Dublin Central, Fianna Fail)

Sinn Féin is totally prepared to engage in discussions. There is no difficulty with it in terms of any of these discussions, in which it is more than ready to play its full part. It is regrettable the Democratic Unionist Party does not take the same view. If it did, it would make my life easier, as Deputy Ó Caoláin well knows. However, we must continue to find a resolution to that. I know that we will some day, particularly since Sinn Féin and the Democratic Unionist Party seem to work well together in many local authority areas. However, these things take time. There is no difficulty with the other parties working together and as time goes on I hope we will reach a similar position with the Democratic Unionist Party.

I have no difficulty with what Deputy Ó Caoláin said on the Good Friday Agreement. We are totally committed to the full implementation of the Agreement, as voted on by the people. That includes the clause that there would be a review of the Agreement. I have had this argument with many people. One cannot say that one wants full implementation of the Good Friday Agreement except for one section, namely, the review. It is a fair position that if we included the provision for a review in April 1998, we did not do so for the sake of it. It was included so that we would review the Agreement some day. That is all we are doing. I do not believe there is anything that fundamentally changes, alters or affects the Good Friday Agreement.

As Deputy Ó Caoláin is aware, issues around that arose at the Leeds Castle meeting. It would have been entertaining for me if it were not so serious to see that Sinn Féin, the SDLP and the UUP all said there should be no change in the Agreement and I was almost put in a position where I had to defend the rights of the DUP, mainly because it was not in the meetings with the others. Deputy Ó Caoláin will understand why I took on the defence of the rights of the DUP for those three days. If the provision for a review is included in the Good Friday Agreement, one cannot say that a review that does not do much other than improve it is changing the fundamentals. I argued that for three days at Leeds Castle and I continue to argue it because it is an unfair position on the DUP. It is a funny situation to have me defending the rights of that party but fairness in this is important. It has a valid position on this, namely, to have a review for six months and make no changes, because all the time we said there would be legislative changes. Other than that I have no argument with the other points the Deputy made and I agree with them. We are trying to get the full implementation of the Good Friday Agreement and that is what we will continue to try to implement one way or the other.

On demilitarisation, it is the case, as Deputy Ó Caoláin and every other Member of the House is aware, that in the same week when everybody was getting excited about a sizeable number of British troops — 780 — moving into Iraq, there was, as described by Deputy Ó Caoláin, for some reason an activation of about 4,500 British troops and nobody said anything. I assure Deputy Ó Caoláin that I raised the matter with the British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, and the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland. We raise every incident. I am not too sure why the troop activation took place. I thought they might have been getting ready to go back to the acceptable levels which we want to achieve.

Deputy Ó Caoláin knows what we have agreed, namely, to return to an acceptable level of 6,500 troops or whatever number is in the Joint Declaration. That has already been negotiated and agreed. If we can get everything else ready, then we will move to that position. We have moved from larger numbers and it is in all our interests to try to complete matters and move to the much lower figure that has already been negotiated.

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