Bertie Ahern (Dublin Central, Fianna Fail)

I am sure those who follow the debates in this House will take note of the last suggestion. I always say to groups I meet from all quarters that everyone must realise that there were terrible atrocities on all sides and we should respect that. I agree with the Deputy's point.

I do not want to get into the Stormontgate affair. I agreed with the Chief Constable, Hugh Orde, that the meeting would be confidential and I would not discuss it. In spite of the fact that he issued a statement on one of the matters, I will not breach that confidence. It was a confidential meeting and I will accept it on that basis and will not break the agreement other than to say that all these issues are unhelpful, from wherever they come.

Unless we can move away from a situation where people and groups gather intelligence and spy on each other, or have agents or otherwise, from whatever quarter, we will not be in the democratic situation we all want to be in. All this should stop to allow everybody to move on and have a normal existence. In a normal society there are rules about these matters, namely, legislation and independent judges who oversee it. In a normal society — Northern Ireland has been relatively normal for the past decade — one cannot just act on one's own. Therefore, we should be moving away from this on all sides as it is unhelpful and the situation becomes totally convoluted by getting into blow by blow details of who did what. It becomes a bit of an endless argument. I understand the position stated by Hugh Orde and what he said to me, but I want to move on from that.

Deputy Finian McGrath will appreciate that nobody gets more frustrated than me at times about the ongoing delays. However, there are reasons for them as there are reasons for moving the process along. Hopefully, the clear statements of July and September last year have put us in a position where we are moving away from the torments of the past and paramilitary groups. There are some issues we must still move on from and these are clear and well documented. I accept it takes time to resolve these issues, but this must happen. Otherwise we will never get trust and confidence.

Last year we had, at least, an effort to get trust and confidence. I hope the meetings that have now started will lead us to what must be the agenda. The only agenda is the restoration of the institutions, based on the Good Friday Agreement for which the people voted and which is the reason we in the Republic made the decisions we did. We are committed to implementing that, and there is no other agenda. The two Governments, the US Administration and the European Union are totally committed to that path. Therefore, I do not think we should open up any other paths. I certainly will not, nor will I entertain any other because there is no point and they will not work.

We must stay with the agenda we have and try and work with the parties to get to the desired position. We have started working on it in a serious way and all the parties are committed to it. I know they all have a different endgame, but the negotiations are to see how we can move the agenda forward in the weeks ahead. As the Deputy said, there is no point in delaying. We must get to completion. We must put an end to criminality, intelligence gathering and these issues that have been highlighted. If we can do that we should be able to move to proper institutions based on the Good Friday Agreement.

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