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

The issues with the UUP and the SDLP have not just started this summer. There has been a lack of inclusivity around how the Executive works. I would put that to the Taoiseach. Will he indicate to me whether any progress was made on the need to involve all parties on the Executive in a much more inclusive way in terms of the governance of Northern Ireland, particularly in terms of the operation of the Executive? I asked him questions about the UUP and the SDLP and his meetings with them. That has been a consistent view of theirs, that they effectively have been squeezed out by the DUP and Sinn Féin in terms of any decisions taken by the Executive, that they are the last to know and that certain memos are frozen or do not get circulated. That has really undermined the working of the Executive. That has been a long-running saga. I can recall meeting the current Northern Ireland Minister for Justice, David Ford, who did not even realise his name was being touted. Sinn Féin and the DUP orchestrated that the Alliance Party, not the SDLP, would get the justice portfolio. Sinn Féin thinks the SDLP should toddle along and support everything, but there is a price to be paid for that. Governments, including our own, facilitated that as well.

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