Michael McDowell (Dublin South East, Progressive Democrats)

I wish to share time with Deputies Kirk and Glennon and the Minister of State, Deputy Treacy.

I speak as a constitutional republican who, to use the words of Article 3 of the Constitution, shares the firm will of the Irish nation in harmony and in friendship to unite all the people who share the territory of the island of Ireland in all the diversity of their identities and traditions, recognising that a united Ireland shall be brought about only by peaceful means with the consent of a majority of the people democratically expressed in both jurisdictions on this island. I also speak as a constitutional republican who believes that the tricolour of green, white and orange, our national flag under Article 7 of the Constitution, is a symbol of a fundamental value that the vocation of true Irish republicans is the reconciliation of those traditions and their unity, not the creation or perpetuation of conflict between green and orange.

I also speak as one who believes the Good Friday Agreement, which is embodied in our Constitution, is a solemn, legitimate and an authoritative expression of the democratic wishes of the people of both parts of this island freely given in fair and democratic referenda. As a republican, I, and everybody in this House, cannot accept that any contending mandate from history or any theory overrides or supersedes the Good Friday Agreement. Still less could any genuine republican claim that a tiny group of secret paramilitaries have some superior right or root of title to governmental authority on this island which authorises or justifies them in usurping the freely given, solemnly expressed will of the Irish people embodied in that Agreement.

Such a claim is the very antithesis of republicanism. Not only is it bogus, it is bereft of any historical truth or morality. The very notion that the popular mandate of the second Dáil, as we are told by some theorists, could be somehow handed down 20 years after its election in December 1928, long after the Dáil's term was spent, by two elderly persons describing themselves as Comhairle na dTeachtaí in secret to a paramilitary body, such as the IRA, and that it would in January of 1939 announce that it was, as a consequence of that transmission of authority, the legitimate Government of this country is not simply absurd but it is grotesque.

Democratic mandates, like democracy itself, are not capable of being taken hostage or of being transmitted like property by tiny groups to be used or abused by them in their future quest for power or influence. On the contrary, true republicanism can never be severed from the principle of democratic mandates, about which we hear so much. It is not a holy flame kept burning by some secret cult. The Irish Republic derives its authority from the strong voice of the people not from some ghostly whisper from history. That is why we republicans in this House must stand by the one and only Republic that exists on this island. We must stand by its Constitution — Bunreacht na hÉireann — its Defence Forces, the only Óglaigh na hÉireann on this island, its Garda Síochána, the only police force of this State and its democratic institutions, courts and laws. Nobody on this island has the right to say they make up their own laws or that they decide what is lawful or unlawful or that they decide what is criminal or not criminal. All of those obligations are impressed upon us by our fundamental political duties as citizens of this State and of loyalty to that State, which is also set out in the Constitution.

The motion before this House is, happily, one that I think commands the support of the majority of Members. It is a motion which has been crafted not to be negative but to be positive and, above all, to be truthful and to describe things as they are and to identify the problems that now exist. Those of us who believe in the values of republicanism, in a united Ireland, in reconciling green and orange and in the rule of law and the authority of that rule of law must unite in expressing those values and in standing by them.

We must take this opportunity to unite behind a simple message to those who have difficulty with these concepts. The message is that there is no room on this island, North or South, for those who seek to share in the executive authority of any institution set up by the people on the basis that they can pursue democratic politics while in alliance with paramilitaries. That cannot be done. It is a cul-de-sac and a road that has no end as far as republicanism is concerned.

Like many other speakers, I support the Good Friday Agreement. However, we must realise now in early 2005 that, going back to the time the Agreement was hammered out in 1998, it was based upon the supposition and assumption that all who were to take part in its implementation would abandon paramilitarism, end any alliance with the use of violence for political ends and use entirely peaceful and democratic means thereafter to achieve those ends.

However, it also requires, and this is the point the House should dwell upon for a moment, some basic element of political integrity. This is not some high, moral and arch political posturing. It is the basic political integrity which recognises there cannot be a situation in which some people distinguish between acts that are against the criminal law of this State or of Northern Ireland and say that when they are carried out by some people they are lawful, and when they are carried out by other people they are not, and that crimes are not committed by some people depending on their theory of history, where the self-same identical act when committed by another person without that mandate from history is a crime. That cannot be a basis for going forward.

I have been accused, as have other Government members, of somehow being unenthusiastic about the peace process. The Good Friday Agreement is the peace process and working it out and implementing it is what the peace process is all about. The Government is united, and no effort to divide it will succeed, in the full and fair implementation of the Good Friday Agreement. We are positive about everybody's opportunity to participate in implementing that Agreement. We seek to exclude, marginalise or criminalise nobody.

Criminalisation, marginalisation and exclusion on the part of the provisional movement are self-inflicted handicaps deriving solely from its refusal to face up to the implications of what it claims to have agreed to in 1998. This was the terms of the Good Friday Agreement, the Mitchell principles and the commitment not merely to exclusively peaceful and democratic means in the pursuit of political goals, but also to oppose the use of violence by others. That obligation of the Agreement to oppose the use of violence by others is as central to participation in its implementation as any mandate.

It is not possible to claim opposition to the use of violence by others if armed robbery, armed punishment beating — which is a euphemism for torture and mutilation — extortion, exiling under threat, attempted murder and murder fall to be viewed by one as things that are not crimes. One cannot hope to participate in the political process while one has those mental reservations. I say this not on an exclusionary basis but on the basis of appealing to those who hold those views to exit that time warp and parallel universe and to come into the democratic world occupied by the rest of us on equal terms.

Equality is what is on offer but equality is a challenging item. It is a matter of give as well as take. Those who seek equality for their mandate must equally accept that their mandate was not sought and obtained on the basis of a continued alliance with the threat and use of violence and criminality to support any particular end.

Where does this leave us now, looking at where the negotiations in December ended? It is not true to say they ended on the basis of an impasse about a photograph, nor is it true to say they ended solely because of reservations and an unwillingness of the part of the Unionists in Northern Ireland, the DUP and the UUP, to take part in the democratic institutions. They ended in large part because the Sinn Féin negotiators communicated to the two Governments that they could not sign up to the simple proposition that in future the provisional movement, in both its parts, would undertake solemnly and as a condition of further progress to respect the rights and safety of others.

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