Micheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail)

There are three outstanding issues with regard to North-South relations and the Good Friday Agreement. Some initial tentative steps have been made in the direction of the North-South consultative body and there have been good relations between the Speaker of the Northern Ireland Assembly and the previous Ceann Comhairle and Deputies. That has been slow, but not because of any lack of effort on this side. Rather, there has been a reluctance to engage although there has been change in more recent times from those in the Unionist community and others.

There is a specific commitment to a Northern Ireland specific Bill of rights. We should ensure that happens. People are trying to wriggle out of that commitment but given the unique circumstances that led to the Good Friday Agreement, this is a commitment we should honour and to which we should seek to get the British Government to commit.

The Taoiseach referenced the International Fund for Ireland. As Minister for Foreign Affairs, I took the decision not to preside over the ending of the remit of the IFI but to keep it going. That is why we lobbied intensively in the United States and brought the British Government - the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland was Mr. Shaun Woodward - on board with a view to getting collective financial support for the IFI from the United States and the EU Commission.

The one sector of society that has not reaped a dividend from the Good Friday Agreement and the peace process is what is termed the hard to reach communities on both sides of the divide. The health indices are still poor in the Shankill, as they are in other parts of Belfast and elsewhere. The education completion rates are appalling. We will regress again if we do not do something aggressively and proactively to focus on that issue. Much of this work is done behind the scenes with community groups on all sides. Notwithstanding our public finance difficulties, I appeal to the Government to retain and ring fence the direct conciliation fund in the Department of Foreign Affairs and the anti-sectarianism fund. Both those are small funds in the overall context, but they have been put to very good use in supporting community groups across Northern Ireland to build relationships and bridges and to work in areas that have significant economic and social disadvantage.

When the Massereene murders and some of the more recent atrocities happened, it was disturbing that people as young as 13 and 14 had no difficulty with what had transpired. Some of those young people were hardly three or four years old at the time of the signing of the Good Friday Agreement. There are inherent dangers here. We must work on the socio-economic side of the North-South issue if we are to reap dividends for future generations from the undoubted political successes of the peace process.

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