Pat Rabbitte (Dublin South West, Labour)

I welcome the Fine Gael motion. The Labour Party will support it. I welcome the fact that the Government was able to come around to supporting it. I pay tribute to the Taoiseach, the Minister for Finance, Deputy Cowen, the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform, Deputy McDowell, and former Minster of State, Deputy O'Donnell, for their unstinting work on this very important issue.

It is important and timely that Fine Gael has given the democratic parties in this House the opportunity to set out their views because Sinn Féin appears to have persuaded itself that it alone is the protector of the peace process and that everyone else, including the two Governments, the democratic parties of the North and South and sections of the media, are all undermining it. In this version of history, propagated daily by Sinn Féin and its apologists, only Sinn Féin has made concessions to take us this far and only Sinn Féin has made sacrifices to keep the process going.

It is arguable that the Governments, particularly the Irish Government, have aided this process of propaganda. This is especially evident in the way in which other parties in Northern Ireland have effectively been excluded from the process. I find it unconscionable that parties such as the UUP, and the SDLP in particular, should be expected to sign up to a comprehensive solution sight unseen. There would be no peace process and no evidence of workable institutions in Northern Ireland without the work of people such as Mark Durkan and David Trimble. The exclusion from the real negotiations of parties and individuals who have an enormous contribution to make will come to be seen as one of the reasons the process has hit so many obstacles in recent times. It is not sufficient to say that because the SDLP has no guns, there is no need to involve it.

The main obstacle to progress appears, increasingly, to arise from the fact that Sinn Féin has used the peace process for its own political ends. Far from "making sacrifices" for peace, as the phrase used to have it, Sinn Féin appears to believe that everyone else should make sacrifices for it. Thanks in no small measure to its belief that it is a contributor to a genuine and lasting peace process, the Sinn Féin organisation has grown from what the Taoiseach has called "a 2% party" and has become a force in Irish politics at the expense of the democratic parties. In spite of this, Sinn Féin believes it is hard put upon because the democratic parties now insist that it must comply with the same democratic principles and democratic practices required of the rest of us.

The democratic parties, particularly those parties involved in the early stages of the peace process, have ceded support, to varying degrees, to Sinn Féin. These political parties knew this was likely to happen if the peace process was to work. Consciously and deliberately, they embarked on a course in which, if successful, they knew they would risk losing electoral support to a newly "respectabilised" Sinn Féin. They did it because peace was the bigger prize. In particular, the SDLP in Northern Ireland and Fianna Fáil and the Labour Party in the Republic have lost some traditional support to Sinn Féin. The SDLP knew what it was doing when John Hume made the first tentative steps towards Sinn Féin. Dick Spring knew what he was doing when he dedicated his time and energy to progressing the project. The Fianna Fáil leadership also knew that some of the party's traditional support would peel off to the new democratic peace-makers in Sinn Féin. They each did what they did in order to remove, once and for all, the spectre of violence from Irish politics. Sinn Féin seems to be under the misapprehension that its support has grown solely because of the genius of its leadership. It seems to believe that it made all the sacrifices while the other parties risked nothing. In fact, the democratic parties have knowingly facilitated the emergence of Sinn Féin as a representative force because this seemed the best way to copper-fasten the peace process.

It is this moral authority that now enables us to demand that Sinn Féin contest the political space according to the same rules that apply to the rest of us. We have demonstrated restraint, tolerance and patience and, almost seven years after the Irish people North and South voted for the Good Friday Agreement, we are all running out of understanding. If the leadership of the republican movement reflects for a while, it will surely understand why the democratic parties cannot acquiesce indefinitely in Sinn Féin's failing to conclude the peace process while maintaining a stranglehold over disadvantaged communities through undemocratic means.

The manner of conduct of the peace process has put Sinn Féin centre-stage. Its organic links to an undemocratic and violent force inevitably invite the kind of attention that does not accompany a democratic party. Perversely, this quality has, in the eyes of some, conferred almost celebrity status on its leaders. For those who have been alienated and excluded from the uneven economic progress of recent years, that is a good enough reason to support Sinn Féin. However, many others have opted to give their democratic franchise to Sinn Féin to encourage the party into democratic politics and to remove violence from the political equation in Ireland.

When called to account, it is behind this "mandate" that Sinn Féin spokespersons take shelter. It would be foolhardy for Sinn Féin to interpret its mandate as a licence to threaten the duly elected Irish Government if it is not left to pursue its agenda through undemocratic and violent means. Sinn Féin cannot claim credibly that the strength of its electoral support mandates it to persist with its twin-track strategy. If it does persist in retaining the capacity to control communities through punishment beatings and to illegally fund a network of offices, personnel and infrastructure with which even the well-resourced Fianna Fáil cannot compete, many of those who lent them an encouraging vote will — and should — rethink that support.

From recent statements it is clear that Sinn Féin thinks otherwise. It believes that it is possible to fool most of the people most of the time. The Members of this House are expected to deny the evidence of their own eyes and acquiesce in Sinn Féin's manipulation of the peace process. Is the purpose of the peace process to restore devolved institutions to Northern Ireland and enhance political co-operation between both parts of the island or is it to grow the Sinn Féin Party? We need an unambiguous answer to that question.

The proposition that the democratic parties should provide a footbridge to power for a twin-track Sinn Féin is untenable. I am happy to have the Irish people pass judgment on the respective merits of our policies and public representatives. I am not happy however, to continue to compete indefinitely on an uneven playing pitch.

The Labour Party cannot provide an unofficial policing service and, in any event, would not. It cannot afford to provide a network of constituency offices, or employ the personnel that goes with them in the case of Sinn Féin. Sections of the desk-bound media captivated by ecstasy politics are overcome by "the work on the ground" of Sinn Féin public representatives and their new army of "community workers".

The Labour Party has a far better record in servicing disadvantaged communities, and if we could fund it, we would love to have more full-time "workers on the ground". Perhaps the commentators who are so overawed by the supposed work rate on the ground of Sinn Féin "community workers" might take a little time out to locate where, how and by whom the same "community workers" are paid on Thursday evenings.

The parties in this House have up to now been prepared to turn a blind eye for the greater good. If the growth of Sinn Féin is the actual and only goal and the objective of the greater good has been relegated to whatever Sinn Féin wants it to be, we have a new situation.

Tolerance of undemocratic methods has changed since we embarked upon this process. Since the terrorist attack on the Twin Towers in New York on 11 September 2001 we live in a new environment. The Sinn Féin leadership must recognise this fact. Jesuitical arguments about refusing to interpret IRA statements are yesterday's business. We have reached make-your-mind-up time.

There is no percentage in blaming the DUP, British "securocrats" or the Irish or British Governments. Whoever robbed the bank in Belfast it was not Ian Paisley or Tony Blair or even Deputy McDowell. Sinn Féin needs to tell us what it means when it says the two Governments have abused Sinn Féin's messenger role for the IRA. More particularly, it needs to interpret for us what the IRA meant when it claimed that the two Governments appear "intent on changing the basis of the peace process."

Specifically, it identifies this changed basis in the Governments' statement that "the obstacle now to a lasting and durable settlement is the continuing paramilitary and criminal activity of the IRA". Does it mean that the insistence on ending criminality is a change in the basis of the peace process? For the people who voted for the Good Friday Agreement and who thought it would lead to the end of paramilitarism in all its manifestations, it is an astonishing charge.

Is the leadership of the republican movement saying that if it stopped killing British soldiers and policemen a blind eye would be turned to other forms of paramilitary activity? The Government needs to rebut this charge. Statements like that of the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Deputy Dermot Ahern, some weeks before 8 December, that he could foresee Sinn Féin in Government earlier than others might think, sent out conflicting signals. When the Taoiseach lists the various robberies carried out before that of Northern Bank, it begs the question why they seem to have been accepted as business as usual.

The Taoiseach and the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform are on record — the latter on several occasions — as saying that IRA criminality had fallen off. These too are conflicting signals. In the interests of accuracy, the Taoiseach moved to explain this phenomenon when he told the Dáil that the republican movement can switch it on and off as the negotiations require. However, people are again being treated to a new, tougher line on criminality and simultaneously to entreaties from the Taoiseach to the Independent Monitoring Commission, and others, that there should be no sanctions against Sinn Féin. Meanwhile, the Minister for Foreign Affairs is in Washington trying — vainly it would appear — to negotiate passes for Sinn Féin to the White House for St. Patrick's Day celebrations. The Taoiseach unnecessarily invited the television cameras into his office to picture him posing with Mr. Adams and Mr. McGuinness in front of the Padraig Pearse portrait over his desk. This sends out conflicting signals. These actions confuse people.

It is possible that the Government in its dealings with Sinn Féin has allowed the impression to be created that the occasional bit of criminality would not be contested, and that it was the size of the haul, as Deputy Kenny said, in the Northern Bank robbery, rather than the fact of the robbery itself, that has so strained relations between the Government and Sinn Féin. If it is true, as it is implied, that the Government has allowed Sinn Féin to bask in the knowledge that criminality at a certain level would be tolerated, that would be a shameful indictment.

I prefer to believe that it is not true, that no democratic Government would allow such an understanding to develop. Although I would be grateful for a definitive statement from the Taoiseach on the matter, I prefer to rely on the repeated affirmations by both Governments of the same basic underlying principle, that of democracy and exclusively democratic means.

We remember the Downing Street Declaration of December 1993 which stated that "the achievement of peace must involve a permanent end to the use of, or support for, paramilitary violence". In those circumstances,"democratically mandated parties which establish a commitment to exclusively peaceful methods and which have shown that they abide by the democratic process" would be free to participate fully in democratic politics.

We remember every subsequent statement and declaration that re-emphasised the same essential prerequisite: "agreement must be pursued and established by exclusively democratic, peaceful means, without resort to violence or coercion"; issues should be examined in the most comprehensive attainable negotiations with "democratically mandated political parties in Northern Ireland which abide exclusively by peaceful means and wish to join in dialogue on the way ahead"; and negotiations should include all relevant parties "which established a commitment to exclusively peaceful methods and had shown that they abided by the democratic process".

We remember the Mitchell report on decommissioning in January 1996, which set out the "Mitchell Principles", the criteria for entry into talks. Parties to the negotiations were asked to affirm their total and absolute commitment to democratic and exclusively peaceful means of resolving political issues and to the total disarmament, verifiable to the satisfaction of an independent commission, of all paramilitary organisations. They were to renounce for themselves, and oppose any effort by others, to use or threaten to use force to influence political negotiations and they were to urge that punishment killings and beatings stop and to take effective steps to prevent such actions.

We remember, finally, that under the Good Friday Agreement the parties:

reaffirm our total and absolute commitment to exclusively democratic and peaceful means of resolving differences on political issues, and our opposition to any use or threat of force by others for any political purpose, whether in regard to this agreement or otherwise.

What we have seen and heard from the republican movement at every step in response to this consistent and united front has been downright denial.

Both wings deny that decommissioning has anything to do with them: the IRA because it never signed up to it, never endorsed the Mitchell principles, was not party to the talks or the Agreement, had engaged with General de Chastelain's decommissioning commission in a voluntary, spontaneous and unreciprocated act of generosity and refused to recognise the role or functions of the independent monitoring commission; and Sinn Féin members because all that sort of thing was a matter for the IRA. They were politicians like everyone else. They did not speak for the IRA but merely had a shared analysis of the situation and shared republican objectives.

The British Prime Minister made it clear in October 2002 that the Governments had grown tired of this routine. He referred to four and a half years of hassle, frustration and messy compromise, stating: "Each negotiation in each office or stately home, [it would help if we had less of the stately homes] accompanied by each ritual press conference, has often been groundhog day, for you, for me, for all of us." He called for:

. . . a fundamental choice of direction, a turning point. Another inch by inch negotiation won't work. Symbolic gestures, important in their time, no longer build trust. It is time for acts of completion.

That is about as clear-cut and as unambiguous a statement as you could get. Yet now, two years later, as Deputy Crawford stated, all other parties who repeat that message, including those who have done their utmost to facilitate a transition by Sinn Féin to democratic status, are condemned by it as petty politicians motivated by selfish interests who have acted in bad faith, broken their commitments and made false and malicious accusations.

What the two Governments and the rest of us have done has been to point out to the republican movement that its shape-shifting representations of itself, sometimes as monolith and sometimes as a duality, are so transparent that it has become an obvious weakness and not a strength, and it does not wash any longer. According to one of Sinn Féin's senior Ard Comhairle members, Jim Gibney, we should, however, continue to put our faith in creative ambiguity. He stated:

If there is one big lesson coming out of the peace process over the last ten years, it is words like "certainty" and '"clarity" are not part of the creative lexicon that conflict resolution requires if it is to be successful. Can anyone point to a period over the last ten years when such words were used and they helped the peace process here? Give me the language of ambiguity. It has served the people of this country well over the last ten years. It has oiled the engine of the peace process. Long may it continue to do so.

It is true that at an early stage the whole peace process involved the two Governments and the SDLP in sustained efforts to create the space for Sinn Féin to engage in the political process, on the basis that a commitment to politics would ultimately involve the abandonment of other ways and means. There would be initial and inevitable awkwardness during a transition phase but a transition there would have to be — it was all a matter of timing.

I acknowledge the contribution made during those years by Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness. However, ambiguity has long since had its day. All parties to the Agreement must buy into its essential validity, legitimacy and authority: that what it establishes is the only legitimate system of governance and that there are no other quasi-political, quasi-military entities claiming pre-eminence, from which parties can either request or accept instructions, or to which they owe prior allegiance, or which in any other way compromise or qualify the performance by those parties of their commitments under the Agreement.

The bogeyman has now reasserted itself. We are warned of a dangerous instability within militant unionism and that the British-loyalist apparatus for collusion remains intact. The IRA will not remain quiescent within this unacceptable and unstable situation: "It has tried our patience to the limit." Therefore, it has taken all talk of arms decommissioning off the table and now intends to protect to the best of its ability the rights of republicans and their support base. Then, on Thursday, because the Governments did not seem to fully grasp the point, came the warning: "Do not underestimate the seriousness of the situation". According to Danny Morrison:

The IRA defies conventional analysis. If it decided there was a case to be made for a return to armed struggle, it would go down that road without regard to the post 9/11 perception of the world.

As Mark Durkan put it: "The IRA is coming close to saying: 'Don't dare criticise us or question us — or the peace process gets it'." The House cannot bow the democratic knee to such a threat.

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