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

We need to reinvigorate the working of the agreed institutions and policies.  We need a Government that accepts its role as a co-guarantor of agreements, and this includes insisting that the dominant parties in the North meet their obligations. Our agreement with Fine Gael includes a commitment to seek to expand North-South activities. We want this to be activated immediately to stop the self-defeating spiral of inaction from beginning again. In our view, the matter of North-South bodies has been left in a vacuum for far too long. We need new North-South bodies. For example there is no reason not to have an all-island enterprise body similar to Enterprise Ireland. It makes perfect sense in terms of synergies between small and medium enterprises, SMEs, here and across the Border. There is just no activity from either of the parties in the North to move that agenda because, in my view, some do not have a commitment to the North-South agenda and have been very lax in promoting and developing that agenda. We can have all the meetings we like about the Narrow Water Bridge and so on, but that is taking people down the road of no return. The Narrow Water Bridge could have been built if there was a commitment by the parties in the North and by our Government in the past two years, but people played politics with it and it got put on the back burner as a result.

See this speech in context