Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail)

We will work on Connemara time, which is a bit slower and more leisurely paced. I would like to clear this matter up. Within a month of that meeting I was asked for another meeting. I am a patient man and will readily meet delegations but I did not see the point of discussing the same issues with the same delegation for another hour and a half when I was still not sure what it was about. I wrote to Monaghan County Council a number of weeks ago asking members to clearly spell out what they wished to discuss with me.

The nub of the matter is that everyone knows we are getting nowhere without the North South bodies working with a devolved executive in Northern Ireland as we understood they would and that lies in our hands as Irish people. I appeal to Sinn Féin and the DUP to cut the deal and get on with it, and I say to Sinn Féin particularly that in my early days as a politician I worked with everyone to try to resolve issues and did not condemn. I worked with republican prisoners to try to further the process and suggested to them that they would make much more progress politically than they would through violence. They accepted my argument that republicanism is a non-violent tradition and I am delighted that they called a ceasefire. I am a republican and somebody who believes in a united Ireland and reconciling the green and the orange, but what baffles me is that 11 years after the ceasefire it is within our grasp to get everybody around the table working in agreed structures, but they cannot make the final jump.

As somebody who is steeped in the republican tradition, I believe that anybody not willing to make that final jump is not acting as a republican. They must not have read the works of Wolfe Tone or the Proclamation of 1916. If Sinn Féin members want the Ulster Canal built and progress made on North-South issues and if they want me to move forward, it is in their own hands. They should act as proper republicans and cut the deal, as we always said we would, with our fellow Irish people. We can then sort out the problem of developing the Ulster Canal.

As Minister I would like nothing more than to see the current unnecessary impediment removed. We could then progress projects such as the Ulster Canal which would have a major effect on the counties through which it passes.

Tá an-áthas orm go raibh deis againn an Bille fíorthábhachtach seo a phlé ar an Dara Céim. Is é caomhnú atá i gceist anseo, cosaint an phobail seachas aon rud eile. Is é leasú beag teicniúil atá i gceist anseo atá simplí go maith. Ar fhaitíos na bhfaitíos, ba cheart go mbeadh tagairt do dhá Acht seachas Acht amháin, agus cuirfear é sin ina cheart inniu. Níor cheart go mbeadh náire nó faitíos orainn deireadh a chur le héiginnteacht agus rud a dhéanamh an-soiléir. Mar sin, molaim an Bille don Teach agus glacaim buíochas aríst leis na Teachtaí a labhair ar an mBille.

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