John Gormley (Dublin South East, Green Party)

I was in Wexford at our party conference late on Saturday night when I learned of the brutal murders of Mark Quinsey and Patrick Azimkar. I was at home with my family late on Monday night when I heard of the brutal killing of Stephen Carroll.

I use the names of those men here to again put them on the record of Dáil Éireann. I do it to remind myself and all of us that, first and foremost, we are talking about human lives. We are talking about the deaths of men who were husbands, sweethearts, sons, brothers, cousins, neighbours and friends. We are talking about the callous taking of human lives. We are talking about so many others close to those men whose lives are now blighted and who are in our thoughts as we share their sorrow. This morning, with a heavy heart, I read the words of Stephen Carroll's wife, Kate, when she spoke of how her life is now destroyed. The grief and sorrow she and the other bereaved families are suffering requires no further explanation.

The attacks on Saturday and Monday nights were not just attacks on the security services. They were not just attacks on the police service nor on the British army. They were attacks on our communities, our cousins, brothers, sons, sisters and grandfathers. They were cowardly and callous attacks on everything the people on this island, and in these islands, have worked to create over the past decade, namely, a peaceful society in Northern Ireland that provides everybody living there with opportunities of dignity, equality, prosperity and safety.

Monday night's attack in Craigavon has killed the first member of the Police Service of Northern Ireland since that organisation took over from the RUC. The PSNI was established following the Patten report with a mandate to provide a police service that could enjoy the confidence of everybody in the community. Under Chief Constable, Hugh Orde, it has met its responsibilities well and is staffed by officers hailing from backgrounds that fully reflect the diversity of the people that call this island home; Catholic and Protestant, Northern and Southern, Polish and Chinese.

Saturday night's attack in Antrim was no heroic act. It was inspired neither by freedom, nor borne out of inequality. It was a cowardly slaughter of two young, unarmed soldiers living their daily lives, taking delivery of their dinner on an otherwise unremarkable weekend night. Mark Quinsey and Patrick Azimkar were not figures of hate in the community in which they were stationed. They were there doing their jobs. Constable Stephen Carroll was shot in the head with a sniper's bullet while responding to a resident who had her windows broken. He was, like the dedicated members of our own Garda force, working to keep his community safe. He was simply doing his job.

Despite the challenges and the ongoing frustrations that prevent an inclusive and integrated society from fully developing in Northern Ireland, there is a sense of normality now in everyday life that gives comfort to communities that have lived through decades of horrific violence. It is the very ordinariness, the mundane nature of two young men paying a delivery man for pizza on a Saturday night, of a policeman responding to a call from a homeowner with a smashed window, that the psychopaths who committed these murders are fighting against.

There is an obligation on all of us to help end that division and to establish one society in the North in which everybody feels at home, and a community of ideals and aspirations on this island of which everybody is proud to be part. There is also an obligation on us to have politics which address the bread and butter issues, the ordinary and sometimes mundane things which are central to all our lives and to bring about a society in which the murderers of Mark Quinsey, Patrick Azimkar and Stephen Carroll enjoy neither refuge, nor support nor tolerance.

In Wexford on Saturday night, when news of the murders of Mark Quinsey and Patrick Azimkar came through I was with party colleagues from all parts of the island of Ireland. The Green Party members who travelled from various parts of the North had come to Wexford to debate the real issues of life in a region which had emerged from a 35-year nightmare of violent strife.

As we salute the memory of Mark Quinsey, Patrick Azimkar and Stephen Carroll here, let us redouble our resolve that there will be no return to the darkest days of our recent history. I would like to commend the role of our colleagues in the Sinn Féin Party who have stood solid in the cause of peace. I hope all of us here and, in particular, the parties of Northern Ireland can unite in this political crisis and that democracy and the Good Friday Agreement will triumph.

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