Joe O'Reilly (Cavan-Monaghan, Fine Gael)

I wish to share time with four minutes each for Deputy Griffin and I and two minutes for my constituency colleague, Deputy Sean Conlan. I take this opportunity to offer my sincere condolences to Nuala, Ronan's mother, to Cathair, Aaron and Dairine. They lost a son, a brother and a friend and the PSNI has lost an excellent officer. Go ndéana Dia trócaire ar a anam. At 4 p.m. last Saturday, the PSNI lost one of its newest members, 25 year old constable Ronan Kerr. Ronan was in the service only for a few months when his life was cruelly taken from him in a barbaric act by individuals who can only be described as enemies of peace. The bomb was the size of a lunch box and weighed 500g but it was enough to fatally injure the young constable. As a representative of a Border county, I can say without hesitation that this heinous act has been met with abhorrence across the Border, North and South. The actions and views of the individuals who carried out this attack do not represent the feelings of the majority of people in the North or in the South. A Facebook page dedicated to the memory of Ronan has already attracted more than 24,000 people. That is an indication of the level of condemnation of the atrocity by members of the wider public. Young Unionists and republicans in Northern Ireland wear their PSNI uniforms with pride, and rightly so, as they represent all that is positive about the ethos of the Good Friday Agreement and the continual striving for peace in Northern Ireland.

The Taoiseach, Deputy Enda Kenny, said:

Those who carried it out want to drag us back to the misery and pain of the past. They are acting in defiance of the Irish people.

I fully endorse that statement.

Those who carried out this crime have no place in the future of either Northern Ireland or the continuing work that is being done by the peace process. They betrayed their community and those who have strived for peace in the North for decades and in recent years. They will not and must not succeed in quenching the democratic will of the people of the North.

Dr. Seamus Hegarty, Bishop of Derry, has pleaded with any young Catholic person considering joining the PSNI not to be deterred from serving the public and his or her community. We must do everything in our power to prevent us going backwards. The radical ideas of the past do not reflect a united vision for the future, which is what we need. The peace process got its ultimate endorsement in the massive endorsement, North and South, of the Good Friday Agreement. This Agreement needs to be constantly worked on at community level. It needs an exchange of visits between people North and South, an interaction by communities and schools, further injecting of moneys and the building of communities North and South.

The best and ultimate tribute we can pay to Constable Kerr is that we will work for peace, build peace in our own communities and build links between the North and the South. A start has been made this evening and working to build peace is the ultimate tribute in how we can best respect the memory of Constable Kerr.

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