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

First, I join others in wishing the Northern Ireland First Minister, Peter Robinson, the very best in his retirement. I dealt with him in my capacity as Minister for Foreign Affairs and negotiated with him in the context of the devolution of justice and related matters over a three-year period. In many instances I found him straight up in negotiations, although he came from a difficult position, dealing with many difficult strands within his own community and party and facing many challenges as a result. Throughout his career, he also went on a journey and changed from a strong hardline position in the earlier part of his career to a position where he brought the DUP into the Northern Ireland Executive and into the broader agreement and peace process.

On the fresh start agreement, as it is called, we all hope it is not a false start and I am somewhat concerned about Deputy Adams's remarks that, before we know it, there will be another crisis if certain things are not done. That is what upsets much of the middle ground in Northern Ireland, the sense that it is going from one crisis to another and they are becoming immune to it at this stage in terms of the stop-start nature of the operation of the Executive and the Assembly. Deputy Adams can go into semantics, but essentially the Executive was not working for the past while. One can say it was adjourned or call it what one likes, but it was not working because there was a crisis. The crisis was not caused by political parties. Two men were murdered. The PSNI made a judgment in terms of the links of the murders to paramilitaries and in particular to the Provisional IRA. We did not make that link and we did not seize on that. An attempt is being made by Sinn Féin to say the PSNI was wrong to say what it said, every other political party is wrong to say what it said, that Sinn Féin's narrative is the correct one and that everybody else was doing it for politics. That is wrong, so-----

See this speech in context