Michael McDowell (Dublin South East, Progressive Democrats)

Is that a demanding question or requirement to make of anybody? Of course it is not. It is the basis upon which we all participate in politics, to uphold the rights and safety of others. Time and again, however — and I know this because I sat there and saw the drafts going this way and that — this proposition was put to Sinn Féin. Time and again, every effort was made to avoid signing up to that proposition. Every effort was made to equivocate around that obstacle, as they saw it, to get around it, to fudge it and to claim it would be all right on the night and they would think of something later. In the last analysis, however, that simple proposition was apparently too much to be swallowed.

Criminality did not begin on the day the Northern Bank was raided, nor did it begin with the recent rash of punishment beatings in Belfast which was turned on with the click of fingers by a provisional movement which decided it was now time to exert its authority on the Nationalist communities over which it holds sway. Criminality has been taking place on both sides of the Border on a sustained basis since 1998, moderated now and then to suit the provisional strategy.

I told this House of how the Dublin brigade of the IRA was stood down because its members were sticky-fingered and began to share in the proceeds of the fund-raising operations which they were carrying out on behalf of the provisional movement. Some of them were brought north of the Border and shot in the limbs for their troubles. However, the implication of that action to the gullible might be that this was an end to all that behaviour — far from it.

What took place afterwards was that criminal activity, including fund-raising, robberies and so on, were then moved, as far as their organisation and planning was concerned, to Belfast. The adjutant of the IRA in Belfast, a man who rubs shoulders with people we see on television prating on about human rights, the peace process and their mandate, began to organise major criminality in this city and came down here to discover what was going wrong and to threaten with death those who had made a mess of his arrangements if these things ever happened again.

Criminality will not go away as an issue. As long as that is in doubt in some minds, we have a major problem. However, when it is clearly understood, we have the chink of light that will allow those people who have sought a mandate to create peace in Northern Ireland and on this island and to pursue their republican and socialist policy objectives to participate as equals. This is possible once light begins to fall on that one simple proposition as to whether it is possible to continue with violence into the future in tandem with democratic politics or whether violence and the threat of violence and criminality must end.

No basis exists for anybody to claim they are being victimised by the unanimity and consensus that has emerged in recent weeks on these matters. Nobody is being marginalised or has their mandate devalued and above all nobody is being cornered or pushed towards some intolerable position. Nobody has his or her patience tested. On the contrary, as in the past, every opportunity is being offered to those who are democrats to take up the challenge of the mandate they have received and to contest the democratic process on equal terms with the rest of us. I welcome the fact that this motion was tabled on an all-party basis.

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