Pearse Doherty (Donegal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I acknowledge that parties have a principled role in relation to the negotiations but there is also an obligation on the Taoiseach, his Government and the British Government. The Taoiseach and the Government are not spectators or commentators, nor is the British Prime Minister. They are all co-guarantors of the Good Friday Agreement, with all the responsibilities that entails. Over the past ten months the focus of the negotiations has been on the issue of rights which are the norm on the rest of this island and in Britain. Marriage equality, language rights, the bill of rights, rights to legacy inquests and such things are not only supported by Sinn Féin but by the majority of those in the Assembly and in wider society. These rights benefit all sections of society and should threaten no one. The only reason they are being denied is that the DUP has resisted a rights-based agenda and the British Government has acquiesced in this.

This is compounded by the fact the Tory-DUP pact is in place. It is completely unacceptable and I hope the Taoiseach has reflected this in his conversations with Theresa May. Sinn Féin did so in our conversation with her last week, and it is important that the Government does this on behalf of the Irish State. The issue of rights is not going away and it needs to be dealt with satisfactorily. For our part, we have done our best to be flexible and we did our best to stretch ourselves in the common good, and I believe the Taoiseach knows this. He also knows that in the context of an agreement on the delivery of rights, and these are rights which have already been agreed in previous agreements, Sinn Féin will enter government. In the absence of these rights the Executive is not sustainable. What is now needed is the two Governments to act urgently to deliver equality. This is their joint responsibility under the terms of the Good Friday Agreement. This is to honour the outstanding commitments and deliver the rights enjoyed by everybody else on these islands to the people of the North who are being denied these rights. In the absence of doing this, perhaps the Taoiseach will enlighten us on which rights he believes we should forego.

See this speech in context