Gerry Adams (Louth, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I am disappointed with the Minister's answer. Have we raised this at the UN? Have we raised this at the EU? Have we asked our ambassadors to lobby on this internationally? Have we raised this with the Obama Administration in the White House? This is what Governments are supposed to do. They are supposed to use diplomatic services to uphold the rights of citizens. The Minister should read Frank Kitson's book on the counter-insurgency strategy in the North. I commend it to him. That strategy was honed over decades of colonial actions around the world. At its core, Frank Kitson articulated that "the Law should be used as just another weapon [to get rid of] unwanted members of the public". Pat Finucane was an officer of the court and a human rights lawyer. He was got rid of not by murder gangs, but at the direction under the administrative practice that the British Government has cleared. Report after report has lifted the lid on many actions.

We know that the peace process did not happen by an act of divine mercy. It did not happen by accident. It happened because people took risks, chances and appropriate steps. We are not asking the Government to take huge risks. A British Government will be assisted. I remind the House that they have just had to open the books on their torture of Mau Mau detainees 40 years ago. They were recently forced to open the books on the people they tortured in Palace Barracks outside Belfast. This is good for the process of building the future. I will repeat what I have said many times. The British and Irish Governments are co-equal guarantors of all that has flowed from the Good Friday Agreement onwards. We are not junior partners. We are co-equal guarantors. I will repeat the call I have made. I know I sometimes speak very directly. I do not mean to be harsh. It is the way I talk. We should launch a diplomatic initiative in the US, at the heart of EU and in the UN on this and other cases. We need to develop a strategy and a campaign to bring this about. We should use our status as having one of the most successful peace processes in modern times. These issues continue to infect and draw down, rather than giving people closure. I respectfully commend this approach to the Minister.

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