Brendan Smith (Cavan-Monaghan, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I fully agree with the Minister. Properly marking the 20th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement will remind us of what we all risk losing in the longer term owing to the short-term partisan gains of two political parties.

This year, 2018, marks the 20th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement, the 50th anniversary of civil rights, the 70th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the centenary of the 1918 election. My deepest fear is that we would be commemorating these anniversaries at a time when Northern Ireland is without an Executive and Assembly. I sincerely hope we will have those institutions back up and running and representing the people of Northern Ireland.

I wish the Minister, Secretary of State Bradley and all the political parties represented in Stormont every success in the negotiations that began yesterday. It is reprehensible that the Executive and Northern Ireland Assembly have not been functioning for the past 12 months. The one mandate we all have on this island comes from the referendum of May 1998. The will of the people, endorsed by 94% of the people in this State and almost 72% of people in Northern Ireland, is not being implemented at present.

I was in Fermanagh and Armagh at the weekend and in Belfast on Sunday and Monday. I noted there is a yearning in those locations to get a government and local executive back in place without further delay. What has passed for politics in Northern Ireland for the past 12 months is totally unacceptable.

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