Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein)

Let us get to some specifics. Does the Taoiseach acknowledge that when the effort to get a comprehensive agreement failed, Sinn Féin and the British Government proceeded to explore how the Governments could deliver on the contributions they had made and that this continued up to Christmas? Will he acknowledge that the Government was less than enthusiastic about that? Will he acknowledge that those efforts must continue if we are to get out of this impasse and this exchange of bile? Did the British Government present the Irish Government with a paper on the exchanges from 8 December up to Christmas?

The Taoiseach should make no mistake that my colleagues and I stand here on our mandate received from the Irish electorate and we will continue to represent that electorate. They are not second class citizens and nor are we. We will continue to present a republican challenge to a continued failure on the part of the Taoiseach and his party in ceding responsibility for all public utterances on the most important issue to be addressed in this country today to a Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform who would label Bobby Sands MP a criminal and, by the same criteria, would label as criminals the man whose portrait hangs in the Taoiseach's office and all those who were executed in 1916. That is what the Taoiseach has done and the grassroots of his organisation are saying repeatedly that it is a shame and scandal that he has handed responsibility for the peace process to a man and party who have made zero contribution to it from its inception.

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