Bertie Ahern (Dublin Central, Fianna Fail)

Deputy Ó Caoláin and all other Members can be certain that all of us will continue to do all the positive actions he has mentioned. We will do our very best because the people voted for the Good Friday Agreement. It is the policy of everybody in this House to continue to do that.

I understand why Deputy Ó Caoláin is looking around for an angle, which in this case is that the reasons are to do with party politics. If I had wished to fight his political party in a party political way, I certainly would not have done what I have been doing in recent years, such as doing everything possible to bring his party into the centre by ignoring all kinds of things and by trying to convince the DUP recently and the UUP for years of the benefits of working with Sinn Féin. I have tried to convince them of the security of doing so. I have tried to convince Presidents Bush and Clinton and President Prodi and others to put money into Northern Ireland to help peace and reconciliation. If I had only been interested in a political fight, I would not have taken those actions. Before we began taking those actions, the Deputy's party was a party with 2% support, but now it has a strong political mandate because people on all sides of this House, from the Labour Party to Fine Gael to Fianna Fáil to the Progressive Democrats to the Green Party, all worked to try to bring Sinn Féin in.

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