Gerry Adams (Louth, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I join the Taoiseach in thanking Speaker Willie Hay for the work he has done. I wish him and his wife well and hope that his health will improve. He worked with the Ceann Comhairle in setting up the North-South Parliamentary Forum. He was very fair in a difficult job in the Chamber. He was also very open to meeting one on the side to give advice on issues. He has been a friend of the process in the North.

That process, as I have said to the Taoiseach and have been saying quietly and diplomatically for the past year to anyone who wants to listen, is facing perhaps its biggest challenge since the Good Friday Agreement. There are three things converging to make that so, the failure of the Governments to honour aspects of the agreements from the signing of the Good Friday Agreement onwards, which are the responsibility of both Governments. That in itself is wrong. They are in breach, particularly the British Government and, because it is an equal relationship and an international treaty, the responsibility falls on our Government. It gives those negative elements within Unionism who do not want to see change room to manoeuvre because if they think they can stop, delay or dilute processes that is what they will do. The Democratic Unionist Party, DUP, has increasingly been “Trimble-ised” in so far as it does not fully embrace the power-sharing and all-Ireland institutional arrangements. On top of that, since the coalition Government came to power in London there have been cuts in the budget, and austerity - a subject dear to the Taoiseach’s heart - being imposed. There is also an ideologically driven effort to do away with the welfare state. This has caused huge difficulties in England, Scotland and Wales and was one of the key points underpinning the Scottish referendum debate. We can all play politics with these issues but we know the people in the political institutions in the North who do not want change and we know those who want the maximum change.

Deputy Martin cannot resist painting this as two problem parties who cannot agree and need the two Governments to come rushing in. If he was ignorant of these matters that would be an excuse but he is not ignorant of them, he knows the players, the personalities and the parties involved. As someone who comes from the North, who is there every week and who represented people there for a very long time, I can see a convergence of these elements to form an anti-agreement nexus within Unionism. It is anti-process. It is against what is happening. For all that Martin McGuinness stretches himself and tries to do his best, along with others in those institutions, these people are not for moving forward. I am sure there are people like that in states throughout the world, who want things back the way they used to be, who would not allow women have votes or gay people to have rights but they are not allowed to stop the process because politicians lead and progressive politics set the pace.

I welcome the fact that these talks are going to start. I spent the summer talking to everyone I knew who I thought was progressive within the British system, including people who I suspect are spies but they had the right side of this. I went to them. I talked to them on the telephone. I did the same in the United States on two occasions to alert them and did the same privately with the Taoiseach. I told them we have a problem here and no one is trying to sort it out. We saw, through all the media coverage around the twentieth anniversary of the IRA sos, and the very poignant events around the death of Albert Reynolds, how much progress has been made and how much we as a people and others value that progress.

This is a huge challenge for the Taoiseach. His Government does not do the North well. His instinct is not good on it. I do not know how strong the Michael Collins spirit is within Fine Gael but the biggest achievement in politics on this island in the past 30 years was the collective effort of everyone involved in bringing forward the Good Friday Agreement and establishing the arrangements that have been in place since.

I will do everything I can to help. I wrote to the Taoiseach last week in detail about these matters. The Taoiseach is my Taoiseach when he represents us before the British and I will support him in all he does. We need to seize this opportunity to get a pro-agreement axis in place. That means that the Taoiseach has to be a champion for the Good Friday Agreement and all the other agreements.

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