Trevor Sargent (Dublin North, Green Party)

Tá sé go maith go bhfuil an díospóireacht seo ann agus cuirim fáilte roimhe. Yesterday's developments involving Mr. Paisley and Mr. Adams were disappointing. However, these must be set in context. Last week and in the early stages of the meeting at St. Andrews it appeared that no deal would be possible. The parties have made progress in recent days and, indeed, in recent years. In all those years, the policing issue has not gone away. It must be resolved and I urge all parties to the talks to push ahead in co-operation for an agreement on this issue. Regarding the current dispute over the pledge of office, I urge parties to examine imaginative solutions, such as the SDLP's suggestion of a temporary shadow pledge. This issue should not be allowed to stand in the way of agreement.

While the Green Party, Comhaontas Glas, welcomes the St. Andrews agreement, even in its provisional form, I am concerned that, in advance of any final agreement, the Taoiseach, at this very early stage, has been seen to push for a referendum. We have concerns that another referendum may take from the foundational significance of the Good Friday Agreement which the Irish people view as the cornerstone of the process. Referenda should only be used if absolutely necessary, and that necessity has not been demonstrated to date. Moreover, with a general election approaching, the electoral benefits for the Government parties or for other parties should not enter into consideration. The focus should be entirely on the well-being of the people of these islands.

I urge all parties to remain focused on the business of delivering democracy to the people of Northern Ireland. There are fundamental issues for the economy and society which urgently need to be addressed. Education, health, transport and energy are the issues with which public representatives should be dealing. These issues have nothing to do with questions of nationalism or unionism, but rather are fundamental to the quality of life of everybody on these islands.

Take, for instance, energy, the issue that is fundamental to our economic well-being and quality of life. Dealing with energy on an all-island basis has nothing to do with nationalism. Dealing with Ireland's transport energy needs, given our status as an island nation, has nothing to do with nationalism either. It has everything to do with the well-being of the people of this island. East-west energy interconnections should never be seen as a form of toying with commonwealth. Increasing east-west connections on energy should be used for exporting surplus energy from this island, a surplus which renewable energy sources could provide. Likewise, east-west co-operation to protect people from nuclear accidents is simply a pragmatic response to a grave threat.

I urge the parties to the process to focus on practical solutions in a finite world which will ensure the quality of life of the people who elect them and pay their salaries. The Green Party has welcomed the fact that the Government is likely to support, at EU level, the designation of Northern Ireland as a special region for tax status, which would allow the harmonisation of corporate tax rates with the Republic. The harmonisation of corporate tax rates would help job creation in the North, reduce its competitive disadvantage with the Republic, give a spin-off boost to service jobs in the Border region and benefit the economy of the island as a whole. Such reform fits into the Green Party's policy on economic reform, which wants to shift taxes away from the cost of creating and sustaining jobs and towards the consumption of non-renewable resources. It is the Green Party's view that such harmonisation of corporate tax rates, North and South, should prioritise indigenous industry and the small and medium enterprise sector above foreign direct investment, which is temporary by nature.

In the medium term, I ask the Taoiseach, once again, to consider allowing a more structured and active contribution to the process from Opposition parties. As the Taoiseach knows, parties in this House have consistently supported Government policy on this issue, even before the Good Friday Agreement came into being, but we cannot help progress matters if we are excluded from the process.

There is now an opportunity for politics in the North to take a leap forward and political leaders will be judged very harshly if they fail to grasp the opportunity currently in front of them. I encourage all the Northern parties, the DUP and Sinn Féin in particular, to remain focused on the hugely important work at hand and deliver the outcome which people from all communities in the North deserve and for which they have waited for far too long.

See this speech in context