Dermot Ahern (Louth, Fianna Fail)

We are elected to exercise responsibility on behalf of the communities we serve and we are directly accountable for the decisions we take. Our democratic institutions have been challenged by those who pursued their political objectives through violence and the gun. They have faced down that challenge and emerged stronger. We are right to take pride in this. Our main objective is the consolidation of truly democratic institutions in Northern Ireland. That means the restoration of devolved government with locally elected Ministers working in partnership for the benefit of all. We should not lose sight of that. However, in order to rebuild institutions we must first rebuild confidence. The loss of confidence was all too evident in some of the reaction to this week's developments.

Many will rightly need to take time to reflect on Monday's developments. They will look for assurances that the IRA is true to its commitment of 28 July to use exclusively peaceful means and to abandon all paramilitary and criminal activity. They will want to check against delivery on decommissioning and on the ending of all IRA paramilitary and criminal activity. Monday's developments represent a promising start towards the rehabilitation of trust in the peace process. The reports of the International Monitoring Commission in October and again in January next year, will be fundamental in building this confidence. The necessary elements can be put in place by January.

I welcome the bipartisan approach that has been present here for many years. However, I was somewhat disappointed by Deputy Kenny's questioning concerning meetings with Sinn Féin. To a certain extent, in that questioning he showed his inexperience.

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