Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein)

Thankfully it will be the membership of Sinn Féin that will determine our response to policing as it presents at any given time in the North of Ireland and any plans and proposals regarding same.

Does the Minister of State agree that the most pressing issue at this time is to get the political institutions operating and that setting arbitrary preconditions is totally unhelpful? The Minister of State will be aware that during this week, the Sinn Féin president, Mr. Gerry Adams, proposed Mr. Ian Paisley for the position of First Minister and Mr. Martin McGuinness as Deputy First Minister. He set out our party's absolute intention to get the political institutions operating again as soon as possible. Would the Minister of State agree that the best way for that to work is for all parties, including those in this House, to play a constructive role? Can the Minister of State outline to the Dáil the steps the Government proposes to take to make progress towards the re-establishment of the Executive in the immediate period ahead? Is it a case — I hope not — of watching matters as they unfold? What steps, if any, are being considered or pursued by Government to achieve that end?

It is not only the 61-odd matters that have yet to be addressed within the Patten proposals. We have yet to see sight of the facilitation legislation from the British Government, which will be critical in informing Sinn Féin's response. The issue of policing has a personal resonance in my case. Allegations were made last night on a BBC television programme by a retired RUC CID member Trevor McIlwrath concerning the involvement of at least two British agents in an attempted bomb attack on the Sinn Féin office in Monaghan town, which happens to be my constituency office, in March 1997, shortly before my election to this House. There was advance knowledge on the part of both the RUC special branch and CID about that operation.

As a Member of this House, whose life and the lives of whose colleagues in his constituency office were clearly at risk by that operation with the full knowledge of the RUC and the CID in the North and was carried out by agents of same, I ask what steps have been taken by the Minister for Foreign Affairs to raise this matter with his counterpart in the North of Ireland? I take no pleasure in asking this question, but I must do so. With such certainty of foreknowledge now established on the part of the RUC and CID, is there any question that there was foreknowledge in the Garda of the intended attack on the Sinn Féin office in Dublin Street in Monaghan town? Has that been inquired into? Has it been established? Can we have an assurance, if not before the House this afternoon, at the earliest opportunity that there was no such knowledge?

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