Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the commitment on the part of all parties in the House to the call for justice by the Ballymurphy families. It is good, at least, that we have come this far such that all parties can endorse the call. Having just come from a discussion about Shannon Airport, neutrality and the role Shannon played in the Iraq war, it strikes me as a terrible indictment of our political system that it takes 30 or 40 years for an acknowledgement that a state has done violence against ordinary citizens, that it takes decades for the victims of state violence to get acknowledgement that a wrong was done to them. While it is good, even if belated, that there is a recognition in this House, if not in the British Parliament, that justice is required, we must do much better.

In decades to come, there will, eventually, be an acknowledgement that the people of Falluja and other parts of Iraq have had terrible crimes committed against them by the United States, Britain and the other coalition allies, that appalling things were done, and that it helped hasten the rise of sectarian conflict and the disintegration of Syria. Eventually, in decades to come, we will admit all of this and the families who were devastated by the violence may receive some acknowledgement, or they may not. It should not take so long. Ordinary people who resist unjust actions by a state are often vilified and demonised for doing so, and are called terrorists and extremists. Much later, it turns out that it was the state, those who were supposed to be the guardians of the people, who were responsible for the runs and injustices. Nonetheless, this is progress, if not from the British side.

Whatever debates and political battles we have to have, we all very much welcome the fact that the gun has been taken out of Northern Ireland politics and the vitriol and violence that characterised the political conflicts around the North have been somewhat diminished. This happened largely because the people of the North had had enough. I give far more credit to the ordinary people, both Roman Catholic and Protestant, than to any political force for bringing about the ceasefire and the current climate and atmosphere in which we can begin to talk and move towards a resolution of sectarian conflict. I fundamentally disagree with what seems to be the commitment on the part of parties on both sides of the House to the Stormont House Agreement. It is not a good agreement and it will not help matters but has the potential to inflame sectarian conflict.

As Deputy Shane Ross said, and as is clearly the case, despite the progress we have made, sectarianism still exists in the North. Given that the political arrangements in the Northern Ireland Assembly are based on sectarian quotas and on the continued existence of tribal, community-based parties, battles that should be over economic injustices and other issues are shoved through the prism of sectarian and communal conflict and express themselves in that way, always creating the potential for a flaring up of communal violence.

Against this background, the Stormont House Agreement is an austerity agreement. How can agreeing to 20,000 job losses in the public sector, the sale of State assets and the imposition of social welfare cuts do anything other than add fuel to the flames of the continuing festering sectarianism in the North? It cannot do it. If we impose further economic hardship and Roman Catholic and Protestant people in the North, against a background of continuing and bubbling sectarianism, it will be a potential recipe for sectarian violence to flare up again. If we want peace in the North, the Stormont House Agreement, in so far as it is an austerity agreement, is not part of the solution but may be a significant part of the problem.

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