Micheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

That is playing the politics Deputy Adams accused me and others of doing earlier. I put it to the Taoiseach that if we wish to build trust between the parties in the North, we should work the agreement to which we all signed up and under which there is an obligation on every party. The Good Friday Agreement was passed by the people of Ireland and they voted for that. They did not vote for it to be torn apart within years but they want it to be worked. If one talks to the middle ground people in Northern Ireland - I put it to the Taoiseach that he should go up and meet them - they want it to work. They want the politicians in the North to work the institutions and not to keep looking back to their electoral base time and time again, to the detriment of the institutions and the fulfilment of the potential of those institutions. This is at the heart of the current impasse in Northern Ireland and remains at the heart of the inability of the actors up there to get going and move it in terms of Northern Ireland and of those involved in the institutions, on all sides, to work the thing fully. Unfortunately, the reflex is to go back to one's own electoral base. The whole issue about economic disadvantage has not been addressed in any comprehensive way by the Executive or by both Governments. As for the people of east and west Belfast, it is a crying shame that, in many cases, the children there still do not complete their second level education and that years on from the Agreement, their health indices still are worse than anywhere in Europe. This is the kind of responsibility the politicians of the North should take upon themselves but they do not do it.

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