Bertie Ahern (Dublin Central, Fianna Fail)

The overall objective is full implementation of the Good Friday Agreement. Unless we get clear understandings and a definitive position on what is classified as paragraph 13, which spells out in detail what we are talking about, we cannot make progress. Secretary of State, Mr. Paul Murphy, has a meeting today with Sinn Féin and a British-Irish intergovernmental conference has been set up. Talks and contacts will go on but the position is that until we get answers to the questions Prime Minister Blair and I put on the three areas of decommissioning, paramilitarism and criminality, we are not going to get anywhere. Everybody knows that. We have to get an answer on those issues. It is not a question of it all happening in negotiations, as Deputy Kenny knows, in December. While it was not all going to happen overnight, at least there was a clear plan of how it was going to happen. We are talking about whether that is possible.

I accept what Deputy Kenny said about what was going on while we were in the negotiations. There is no doubt that the planning and operation of these issues were taking place. I heard yesterday for the first time face to face from Hugh Orde, the head of the PSNI, and from the Garda Commissioner that the Dunmurry, macro and cigarette issues arose last year. There was no going around the houses in the conversations given their security briefings. Obviously, we were in negotiations then. Having said that, many of the issues over the years were taken on trust. All prisoners were allowed out at different times and we did all sorts of things on that basis. Many times one was ambiguous to try to make progress, as we both said yesterday and on previous occasions.

That was then and this is now. Things move on. We are trying to establish in Northern Ireland the Assembly for which people voted and the Executive to get the operation of the administration there working on a cross-party basis. We cannot do that unless we end these issues. Quite frankly, if we had succeeded in concluding these matters on 8 December, we would have been going through the period of preparation when events would have blown the roof off our houses. There is no doubt that we were not going to get anywhere as happened a few years ago when other issues arose. There is no point in trying to bring this to a conclusion unless we come to what the final issues are. For once, the final issues are clear to everybody. If that happens, all of the other issues we have signed up to in the joint declaration to bring peace, stability and confidence to improve the quality of life for everyone in Northern Ireland can kick in. We cannot do it the other way around.

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