Michael McDowell (Dublin South East, Progressive Democrats)

However, the unity that must come must do so through choice — through the principle of consent as set out in the Good Friday Agreement and as endorsed by the people of this island in two separate referendums.

I note that the Private Members' motion as put down by Sinn Féin urges that we should "actively seek to persuade Unionists, through dialogue, of the advantages of unification". I welcome that Pauline conversion but, goodness, it has been a long time coming. "Dialogue" is not a fair description of what the provisional movement engaged in for 30 years. Murder, crime, cruelty, arson, kidnapping, torture — this was the process by which the provisional movement then sought to realise its aims. It is worthwhile repeating that although it is now receding into the mists of our memories, there was a time when bodies were found on the Border, their hands tied behind their backs, bullet wounds to their heads and signs of extensive torture. We now know from revelations about the provisional republican movement that these atrocities were committed under the guise of courts martial conducted by the movement. Frequently, those who were tortured and left in a ditch in such terrible circumstances were persuaded through torture to taping confessions of collaboration with the security forces in Northern Ireland. The tapes were then sent to their relatives as justification for what had happened to them, although the tapes were extracted from them on the condition that the torture would stop if a confession was made.

The point we must remember with regard to this set of transactions is that these courts martial under the rules, if I may use those terms, of the provisional movement had to be confirmed by the Provisional IRA army council. Each member of the army council during that period bears direct personal and moral responsibility for each of those acts of torture and the ensuing killing. When I hear some of those army council members now appearing in public as champions of human rights, I wonder how hypocritical can one be. How can one parade the world, talking about human rights, when in secret one was authorising the torture and the killing of individuals in such circumstances, extracting taped confessions to be sent to their families to justify their fate? Every member of the army council who did that bears direct personal responsibility for those acts. The rules of the organisation they participated in required their direct consent to those events. They now strut the world. In South Africa, they shake hands with the statesmen who liberated that country when most of them are more Mugabe than Mandela.

These people, secretly in the murky recesses of their past, have such a personal history, it would not even be worthwhile establishing tribunals to discover what they were up to. There is no reason for Mr. Justice Barron to attempt to uncover one hundredth of the cruelty, cowardice and murder they perpetrated. Yet these people now posture as statesmen and write books about their views on the future of Ireland. I noted some of them were distinguished guests in the Houses yesterday. The one thing that distinguishes them is an absolute and radical inability to tell or acknowledge the truth.

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