Seán Sherlock (Cork East, Labour) | Oireachtas source

As a Minister of State, I accompanied Deputy Flanagan, then Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade, throughout both iterations of the Stormont House talks. It is perhaps apposite that Deputy Flanagan is now here as the Minister for Justice implementing some of the outworking of that agreement through the presentation of the legislation before the House tonight.

As part of that process, we looked closely at North-South co-operation at that time. Stormont House was an omnibus agreement that dealt with welfare, public infrastructure such as roads, north western gateways and flags. Most important, it dealt with the very legacy issues we are talking about tonight.

The Labour Party supports the Bill. I would have liked more consideration and briefings with officials from the Department of Justice and the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade to receive greater knowledge about the present context in which the legislation is being presented. That notwithstanding, it is vital that we push on with our commitments in those agreements and that is why the Labour Party supports the Bill.

We welcome that the Garda Commissioner can enter into co-operation agreements with non-police or law enforcement bodies outside the State.

Whether it is done on the island of Ireland, with people on the island of Ireland partaking in these processes, or whether we elicit the help of external people, we need to deal with these issues as they will not go away. Legacy issues and matters, such as the creation of the historical investigations unit and the independent commission on information retrieval, must all be dealt with. Anything which supports that process is worthy of support.

I reiterate our support of the Bill and acknowledge the words of the Minister on the vacuum in Northern Ireland at present and, to be fair to him, he was one of the architects of the Stormont House Agreement. One is always hopeful that we can reach some accommodation under the ambit of the two Governments' sponsorship and that we can get back to a position where we can deal with these issues on the ground through proper structures and that haste is made to set them up that we can move on and deal with the legacy issues. The Bill is part of that process.

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