Gay Mitchell (Dublin South Central, Fine Gael)

Sinn Féin talks regularly about its mandate and it is absolutely right. It won seats in this House and deserves to be heard. With rights, however, come responsibilities. It must accept the mandate of the other 161 Members of this House and the democratically expressed wish of the Irish people for a complete and irrevocable end to violence and to all forms of criminality.

Democracy is not as exciting and attractive for some of the members of the Provos as the direct action of the baseball bat and the lump hammer. Democracy can be frustrating if, as is the case for my party, there has only been a chance to shape the direction of the country inside Government for two and a half of the past 17 years. That, however, is the challenge of democracy, the need to convince people of their free will to grant their support and to accept the decision of the people and the democratic institutions to which they have given their allegiance.

Over 36 years ago, in December 1968, as the island began to slip into the abyss of a quarter of a century of death and destruction, the then Norther Ireland Prime Minister warned the people of the North that they stood at a crossroads. Unfortunately, the opportunity to right the wrongs of 50 years was missed.

Over the past 100 years there have been many crossroads for people of the broad republican tradition: the treaty in the 1920s, the response to the Army mutiny of 1924, the entry of Fianna Fáil into this House in 1927 following the murder of Kevin O'Higgins, the emergence of Clann na Poblachta in the late 1940s or the evolution of Sinn Féin the Workers Party and its final entry into Government as Democratic Left in 1994. All these developments had one thing in common, the acceptance that the democratic will of the Irish people had to be respected, as had the sovereignty of the Oireachtas as the representative body of those people.

Now Sinn Féin and the Provisional IRA face their own crossroads. They have an opportunity to build on the contribution they made in saner moments in developing, with others on these islands, the peace process following, in the words of the Mitchell principles, exclusively democratic means. Alternatively, they can continue the impossible task of keeping one foot in the democratic world and one foot outside it, endangering the opportunity of a new beginning for these islands, which we all so passionately desire.

If we are to make the Ireland of the 21st century a place where enterprise can flourish and the fruits of that enterprise can be used to bring about a just society where we each take on our responsibilities as well as our rights, we need the mindset to do so. There must be no more violence or threats of violence. We have a golden opportunity, unprecedented in the history of this island, to bring about and sustain an Ireland of full employment where poverty can be eradicated and a high quality of life can at last be sustained. We can build an Ireland which meets in full its obligations to the hungry and the oppressed at home and abroad. We could become a beacon of light for others to follow. Let us put our collective energies into creating such an island and such a society. To bring about such a society, we do not need intimidation. Intimidation must end and inspiration and perspiration must take its place.

I thank all who contributed to this debate and commend the agreed motion to the House.

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