Joe Higgins (Dublin West, Socialist Party) | Oireachtas source

In view of what I have heard from the Taoiseach as the leader of Fine Gael, from the leader of Fianna Fáil and from the leader of Sinn Féin during the first 40 minutes of Question Time, will the Taoiseach admit that not only was the IRA paramilitary campaign an unmitigated disaster for the people of Northern Ireland but so also was the loyalist paramilitary campaign, the sectarian gunmen and bombers who inflicted massive suffering and division on a suffering people and the actions taken by the predecessors of Mr. Cameron, MP, whom the Taoiseach will meet in a few days? Does he also agree that the oppression exercised by previous British Governments, including their failure to prefer any solution and the failure by successive Governments in this State, including Governments of the Taoiseach's party was also a disaster?

Those Governments were incapable for decades of constructing anything here except a sectarian state with a significant economic crisis that was a repellant to people in Northern Ireland, particularly those in the Protestant community. Would the Taoiseach agree that what the parties here, between the lot of them, have delivered is in reality a power-sharing Executive in Northern Ireland that is an institutionalisation of sectarian division, that thrives on sectarian division and that will use sectarian division to bolster the position of its component parts when it suits them, and that they are capable of doing so? Would he agree that the ordinary people in the North, suffering enormous economic hardship and, indeed, problems related still to sectarian division, might feel cynical and revolted if they listened to this first 40 minutes, with the leaders of Fianna Fáil, Sinn Féin and Fine Gael raking over the past but apparently incapable of learning from it?

I ask the Taoiseach to focus on the issues confronting the working class people in Northern Ireland. Will he raise with the British Prime Minister, Mr. Cameron, the acute suffering caused by the economic policy of austerity that his Government is imposing and that is being implemented through that same power-sharing Executive, on the people of Northern Ireland? Will the Taoiseach make him aware of the significant poverty, worse than anywhere in the United Kingdom? Fewer adults, as a percentage of the work force, are employed in Northern Ireland compared to the United Kingdom and income distribution in the North is the most unequal in any region of the European Union.

Would the Taoiseach agree that in the North, in particular, because a disproportionately high section of the economy depends on the public sector, savage cuts to the public sector, imposed by the austerity of the Conservative-Liberal Democrats Government in London and implemented by the power-sharing Executive, are having a devastating effect on the lives, living standards, jobs and services of the working class communities there? Would the Taoiseach agree that these are real, vibrant and critical issues that need to be brought centre stage and will he ask the Prime Minister to desist from austerity and to change policy to investment instead in the North to resolve the problems, including the problem of sectarian?

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