Mary Lou McDonald (Dublin Central, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Certainly nobody wants to see any 11 year old or children of any age involved in riots and getting arrested. Without trying to take for a second from the very deep social problems in many areas across the Six Counties, statistics reflect that while the indices of poverty and deprivation are found in loyalist areas, they are predominantly within what would be termed Nationalist or republican areas.

Poverty is poverty, want is want and there is no doubt we need a strategy to deal with that. However, the issue of the flags exposed in quite a dramatic way a failure within political unionism - the DUP has been mentioned - to really grasp the notion of equality. The flags issue did not just come out of nowhere on 3 December. These are issues that we have debated long and hard, they are sensitive but we have an agreed approach now and it is about parity of esteem and sharing.

Undoubtedly the DUP and other forces within unionism, for their own ends, stoked up the kind of reaction that was seen on the ground. It would be entirely wrong for it to be left unchallenged in this Dáil that somehow there was a stoking up on both sides of the community divide. That did not happen. People in the North, of the Unionist tradition have a perfect entitlement and right that their emblems and flag are respected. I say that out loud because it is entirely reasonable. Equally, people who are not of a Unionist persuasion, Nationalists and republicans in the city of Belfast, in their city, have a right to have a sense of a shared space as well. The proposal coming from the council was modest and in fact is reflected in other areas, some of them Unionist, across the six counties, with the flying of the Union flag on designated days. We agreed to that compromise because it was the right thing to do.

I wish to encourage the Taoiseach again on the bill of rights. I know he wants to hear other people's views and opinions but, in his own words, he is the "co-guarantor" of the Good Friday Agreement. The bill of rights is not an optional extra. Like the concept of equality, a bill of rights will serve the rights, entitlements and opportunities of all.

Finally, I wish to say in response to one of the Taoiseach's remarks that I would acknowledge absolutely the trauma for any family and every family, irrespective of who they were, arising from the loss of life in the course of the conflict, be they a police officer, a soldier, an IRA volunteer, a UVF volunteer. Whoever they were, the loss of human life and the scale of it was an immense tragedy and failure of politics. However, I would remind the Taoiseach that the RUC was disbanded and it was disbanded for a good reason. In fact, this State and the Good Friday Agreement to which we are signatories and to which the Government is a signatory, recognised that fact and was the vehicle for disbanding it. Can I suggest to the Taoiseach that he should not insult An Garda Síochána by saying that it is an equivalent of the RUC. It simply was not and that is not to take for a moment from the human tragedy of any loss of life. The RUC was disbanded, discredited, swept away and a new policing dispensation, on which we are still working, was introduced. The Taoiseach knows that as well as I do so I ask him not to use that matter to have a cheap jibe at me. If he is going to have a go at me, he should make it more substantive.

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