Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I wish to share time with my colleague, the Minister of State, Deputy Sherlock.

I welcome the opportunity to speak on the situation in the North. I fully support the talks that are under way and hope they conclude successfully. I am encouraged by the updates from the Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade, Deputy Charles Flanagan, and the Minister of State with responsibility for North-South co-operation, Deputy Sherlock.

To be a fully peaceful and democratic society Northern Ireland requires a functioning Assembly and Executive, but in order to be truly successful, the talks must be ambitious, comprehensive and robust. They cannot simply be about another quick fix. That approach has been tried and has failed far too often. All issues dealing with the past, welfare reform, paramilitarism and criminality must be dealt with once and for all. This brings me to the recent reports by the British Government and An Garda Síochána regarding paramilitary organisations. These reports arose from the murder of Kevin McGuigan in August and ongoing criminal activity by a range of paramilitary groups. The assessment by the British Government of the IRA indicates it is clear the army council continues to exist and exerts control over Sinn Féin. It asks fundamental questions about our democracy if a party that is in government in the North and aspires to be in government in the South continues to operate in this way. It is vote Sinn Féin; and get the army council.

There must be a break from all forms of paramilitarism and criminality. This does not just mean words, but requires action. It means allowing relevant authorities to investigate, co-operating with them and ending paramilitary activity in all its forms. When I became Tánaiste, I emphasised the need to tackle crime by paramilitary organisations in the joint statement of priorities with the Taoiseach. We must now recommit ourselves to doing this. This means escalating and expanding co-operation and developing a specific strategy for addressing crime in Border areas. An organised crime task force already exists at ministerial level and there is much North-South co-operation between relevant agencies. The Labour Party supports the position outlined by the Minister for Foreign Affairs to establish a new cross-Border task force to move to tackle more comprehensively organised crime in the region. If Sinn Féin is similarly supportive, it should not only endorse the proposal but also the national crime agency in Northern Ireland. That would be the biggest step it could take to demonstrate a real commitment to ending criminality.

I want to speak on the upcoming centenary of the Easter Rising. Commemorating the events of Easter week, as the State is doing, is both appropriate and natural. We have put in place a commemorative programme which reflects not just the events, but the differing perspectives on them.

We have come a long way since 1966.

We should also consider addressing some of the legacies of 1916. One of those is partition. The politics of this country up to 1916 revolved around attempts to arrive at a solution to the national question on an all-island basis, albeit within the United Kingdom. Following the Easter Rising and subsequent events, a partitioned island emerged creating two separate states. I am proud to be the Tánaiste of an independent Irish State, yet I also believe that the people of the island North and South suffered from the creation of what were and became two sectarian states for much of the period.

Close to 100 years living in separate jurisdictions on a partitioned island has also had its own impact. During the first half century, the two states largely ignored the issue and existed in splendid isolation from each other. The next 25 years were spent coping with the horror of a bitter and brutal sectarian conflict and the last 25 years have been about managing a peace process to ensure that the previous quarter century never happens again. Over that period, the most radical and effective new thinking on partition came from John Hume, the SDLP and people like Seamus Mallon. They restated the problem as being the division between the people living in Ireland rather than the contemporary malfeasance of the British State. Their outlook forms the basis of the Good Friday Agreement and the structures that flow from it. That analysis is challenged by those who assert the idealism of the 1916 Proclamation while ignoring the political reality on the ground. That divide continues to this day. It is why, for example, Sinn Féin members, who are self-styled republicans, have no visible strategy to bring about a united Ireland. Winning a Border poll is no answer to the question posed by John Hume, unless we simply wish to create the same problem in reverse.

One recent example highlights how the contradiction of the republican position can lead to nonsensical situations. I saw a Sinn Féin representative being involved in a minor row about the IRFU being west Brits for using "Ireland's Call" as a representative anthem of the all-island rugby team, which has been doing all of us proud during the world cup. Surely somebody genuinely interested in bringing Unionists and Nationalists, North and South together would be supportive of an all-Ireland institution like the IRFU. In fairness, Sinn Féin has come a long way in recent years. We are now talking about all of us, Sinn Féin republicans included, laying wreaths at memorials, not blowing them up.

There are over a million people loyal to the UK living on the island of Ireland. That is not to ignore the strong relationship that the rest of us continue to have, 1921 notwithstanding, with our nearest neighbour and sister island. After partition, undoing the Border rather than ameliorating the factors which gave rise to it became for many the sole goal of Nationalists. As we approach the centenary of the 1916 Rising, we might do well to consider these issues again.

It is over 30 years now since the New Ireland Forum first met. We have come a long way since then. The principle of consent remains paramount yet I remain of the view that the long-term future of the people of this island would be better faced together. Were that possible, it would not be on the basis of the domination of one tradition over the other. It would involve all of us who are republican and Nationalist recognising the essential British identity of Unionists, and Unionists I would hope embracing a greater sense of their own Irishness. In the context of the 1916 commemorations, we should set ourselves the challenge of convening a new forum or body, one that is separate from but supportive of the institutions of the Good Friday Agreement, specifically to discuss our island's future.

The men who fought in 1916 were idealists. The women who fought in 1916 and were involved in it were idealists. Those who died on all sides were victims. We have tragically had many more victims since then. What better tribute to all of them than to have a sensible discussion about our common future?

I was involved in the Royal Irish Academy last night in launching a book about 43 of the major figures involved in 1916, many of them household names and some of them relatively unknown. What stands out from the biographies and the Dictionary of Irish Biography, a seminal work of scholarship for this country about the people of this country, is that they all had a vision of an Ireland which was for all Irish people. Somehow in the course of the 1916 celebrations and the commemorations of the Somme, we have to really begin to embrace the other as we would ourselves and to reach out on both sides.

We are all here republicans and descended from proud traditions in respect of 1916. My own party, the Labour Party was founded by James Connolly. The first person who was shot was a Labour Party councillor, Richard O'Carroll, on Dublin City Council. We all of us are and have the right to be seen as republicans but we have to embrace that other strand that runs deep in our island, particularly in the North, and that is the issue of unionism. We have to create an island where all of us can live in peace. We have to see an end to paramilitarism. Paramilitarism in a democracy is a step on the road to fascism. That is where paramilitarism leads to. We have to put it away and see it off.

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