Seán Crowe (Dublin South West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I welcome that we are having statements and a debate on the North. Like other speakers, I wish it happened more often and that more time was given for the North to be a regular feature on Dáil business. As an Irish republican, the North is not an abstract issue that can be ignored or set aside. It shaped my politics. What I have seen, heard and experienced has honed my political outlook and brought me on a journey to this institution.

I welcome the fact that Stormont voted in favour of legislating for marriage equality on Monday. While 53 MLAs voted in favour of the joint SDLP-Sinn Féin motion and 52 voted against, there will be no moves to legislate for marriage equality because the DUP, Democratic Unionist Party, used its petition of concern on the legislation. It is disappointing the DUP used this power to block the extension of fundamental rights to a minority group, as well as opposing inclusivity and equality. There is a responsibility on all of us to continue to fight for equality for all citizens in the North and across this island.

The Good Friday Agreement has had a hugely positive affect on politics on these islands. It is a cross-party and international agreement between two Governments. The current crisis in the political institutions in the North has been created by the negativity and disengagement of the British Government, the lack of leadership among unionism and the lack of creative conditions for a better future.

At the heart of the problem, however, is the failure to deal with the past and the present. Positive change in people's lives was promised and is still demanded.

The talks are intensifying and we all hope they can come to a satisfactory conclusion but all outstanding commitments of the Good Friday Agreement, previous agreements and agreements subsequent to it, need to be delivered on. More than 17 years have passed since the signing of the Good Friday Agreement, yet we still do not have an Acht na Gaeilge because unionists have said they will not agree to it. We still do not have a bill of rights for the North or a formal role for the community sector and civic society.

Two weeks ago, the Good Friday Agreement committee, of which I am a member, met to discuss the lack of a bill of rights. In a post-conflict situation, human rights are even more important and a key component and a bill of rights is essential to building confidence in any peace process. It appears to be quite clear that the public has bought into the idea of a bill of rights but the British Government seems intent on producing a watered-down British bill of rights as opposed to one based on the European Convention on Human Rights, which would have a rights-based legislative approach. This narrow approach of the British Government would, if implemented, be a blatant breach of the Good Friday Agreement and must be opposed by all political parties on this island and the Irish Government.

In recent weeks we have seen the British Government attempt to depart from the Stormont House Agreement on legacy and victims' issues. The Stormont House Agreement clearly sets out the need to provide justice and truth recovery mechanisms for the families of victims of the conflict, but this needs the Irish and British Governments to pass legislation. The draft legislation being put forward by the British Government on dealing with the legacy of the past would allow them to regulate the handover of what they term "sensitive" information to historical inquiries. This is a clear breach of the Stormont House Agreement. It is a blatant piece of stroke politics designed to hide the British State’s role as an active and central participant in the conflict and, in particular, its collusion with loyalist death squads, including those who planted the Dublin and Monaghan bombs.

It is undeniable that elements of the British security establishment with a political oversight that ended up in Downing Street armed, trained, supplied intelligence to, directed and controlled these loyalist death squads. The British Government has continually failed to meet its legal responsibilities on dealing with the past. The British Government needs to shoulder its responsibilities in this latest round of negotiations but so does the Irish Government. They need to stand with the victims of British state violence and collusion and support the right of families to full disclosure in their long pursuit to get truth and justice for their loved ones. This latest attempt by the British State to use the fig leaf of security to cover their wrongdoings needs to be stopped in its tracks as it will compound the hurt of victims and their families.

The British Government is refusing to hold a public and independent inquiry into the killing of the human rights solicitor, Pat Finucane, who was shot dead in front of his family by the UDA on 12 February 1989. Collusion was a matter of institutional and administrative practice by successive governments. The British Prime Minister, David Cameron, has admitted there was collusion in Pat Finucane’s murder and apologised to the family. However, the Finucane family wants the public inquiry that the Irish and British Governments promised.

In the Weston Park Agreement the British Government committed to holding a public inquiry into his murder but it has failed to do so and reneged on the commitment. The failure to hold such an inquiry is a repudiation of the international agreement between the Irish and British Governments. The Finucane family has now lodged an appeal against the judgment and an order of Mr. Justice Stephens on 8 September that the British Secretary of State was justified in reneging on this commitment made at Weston Park. A full and independent international tribunal of inquiry, where all documents will be examined in public and witnesses compelled to attend and cross-examined by the lawyers of the Finucane family, remains the only model capable of uncovering the truth behind Pat's murder.

There is an onus on this Government to go beyond polite requests to David Cameron that are brushed aside and ignored by him. Teachta Adams raised the issue with the British Prime Minister during the Stormont House talks and the Taoiseach decided not to comment. I call on this Government to put in place a vigorous political and diplomatic strategy to raise this case with our international friends, including those in the United States and Europe, at every opportunity.

The difficult political situation is being inflamed by the social and economic cuts imposed by the British Government. The British Government continues to cut the block grant to the North by a further £1.4 billion and an estimated £120 million per year will be taken from the pockets of the poorest families as a result of Conservative cuts to tax credits.

The North is in a post-conflict cycle and has unique needs and expectations but the British Government refuses to accept this fact. Despite what the former British Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, once said, I think we can all agree that Belfast is not as British as Finchley. Tory advisers based in London refuse to face up to this and their austerity dogma is deepening the political instability in the North. The British Government must provide a workable and sustainable budget for the Executive in order for it to deliver public services and protect the most vulnerable and must devolve fiscal powers to the North. Sinn Féin will not be a part of the institutions if their function is to implement mass social spending cuts that Tories in London are dreaming up.

The MI5 report shows that there are still elements of British intelligence and other State agencies fighting a rearguard action to try to stop the rise of Sinn Féin. The MI5 assessment that the IRA still exists and the army council exerts influence over Sinn Féin is a partisan, self-serving exercise by the British security services. The report was subject to cherry-picking, distorted and contained unsubstantiated claims by a shadowy intelligence agency that was part of the conflict in Ireland. Any real journalist worth his or her salt would have to question not only the source but examine the strength of the evidence. That evidence, if one reads the report, was based on the statements of informers, Internet gossip, chitter chatter, posts on Facebook, pub talk and journalistic imaginings.

MI5 colluded with loyalist death squads in the wholesale slaughter of Irish citizens. The Garda Commissioner, Nóirín O'Sullivan, is on record as saying the Garda has found no evidence in this jurisdiction that the provisional army council continues to meet or to exist in the form that was once assumed. For some reason the fact that former IRA members have now become involved in purely peaceful political activities as Sinn Féin members has caused hysterical outrage in some quarters.

Sinn Féin is committed fully to and supports policing North and South. There is no alternative or halfway house. We are committed fully to policing and the peace process.

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