Bertie Ahern (Dublin Central, Fianna Fail)

In reply to Deputy Rabbitte I reiterate what I said to the parties yesterday. I am not in favour of the politics of exclusion because that would create vacuums that would not help. We have a commitment to implement the Good Friday Agreement and we are determined to continue going down that road. Obviously, if we are to get trust and confidence we then have to get clear answers and commitments on both criminality and decommissioning, otherwise we will not be able to build it up.

On the issue of what way to move now, as the House is aware I have already engaged with the parties. I spoke with the SDLP, UUP as well as Sinn Féin yesterday. Today I had a lengthy telephone conversation with Dr. Paisley. I will meet the Alliance tomorrow, the IMC on Monday and Prime Minister Blair on Tuesday. The difficulty, which I know Deputy Rabbitte understands, is that when the SDLP and the UUP were part of the inner group other parties felt excluded. When the election results changed and the DUP and Sinn Féin were in that position, other parties felt excluded. We try all the time to keep all the parties engaged and we have several meetings. It is always difficult to do that. We never seek to exclude the parties but to keep them involved. We spent a huge amount of time and effort on the decommissioning issue and there was no point in talking to the parties which had nothing to decommission. That happened on other criminal justice issues as well.

Between now and the election we have to engage with all the parties. I do not rule out the forum. If the forum is considered useful I would be happy to have it reconvened as I said yesterday in reply to the SDLP. There is also a slight difficulty with the forum because other parties are out but we can make up for that in other ways and continue to engage in that.

On the question of the security van, I am aware from security intelligence I have been given of the broad movement of the van. It did move through our jurisdiction but it was not taken on this island in the first instance. I am aware of its movements. It was quite sophisticated, well-planned and well executed. It was a van of a very special and rare type and its movements and whereabouts are known to the security forces.

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