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

The facts show that today, the entire peace settlement is in crisis. Brexit has been incredibly destabilising but nobody can seriously deny that the crisis in the peace process began well before the Brexit referendum so we need some real talking and a bit of reality here. The core issue is a sense of people retreating from trying to find a shared approach, which was the essence of the Good Friday Agreement. Instead we have a return to communal sniping. That is what is happening right now. The entire point of the Good Friday Agreement was to stop an endless focus on a binary constitutional choice from destabilising society. The agreement provided assurances for all and an opportunity to focus on shared interests. At a point where it looks like there is a majority for permanent constitutional change, a process is provided for in the Good Friday Agreement which takes it out of the day-to-day business of party politics. The evolution to a pathway was already there in the Good Friday Agreement and it still is there.

We have been referenced by the Sinn Féin spokesman today. It is surprising to say the least that at the conference in Derry, Sinn Féin announced that it would set as a precondition for entering Government in the Republic being given cast-iron assurances about the holding of a unity poll. When one takes that in tandem with the book Burned: The Inside Story of the 'Cash-for-Ash' Scandal and Northern Ireland's Secretive New Elite, the definitive work on the cash for ash scandal in the North, and its revelation that the Sinn Féin Minister for Finance in the North had to seek the authority of non-elected Ard Chomhairle officials of Sinn Féin - Ted Howell and Pádraic Wilson - before he could cease the scheme, it reinforces the fact that Sinn Féin is unfit to be in government established under Bunreacht na hÉireann because its own party demands take the place of engagement and persuasion. I would put it to the Taoiseach that for Sinn Féin, it is a legitimate tactic to collapse democratic institutions until it gets its own way. I ask people to read Burned: The Inside Story of the 'Cash-for-Ash' Scandal and Northern Ireland's Secretive New Eliteand also to look at the fact that in a recent election within Sinn Féin, the challenger was disappeared from public view and was not allowed to make his case. That is not democratic. Anyone genuinely interested in the unity of the people of this island should be trying to get the agreed institutions of the peace settlement to work and to show those opposed to Irish unity that they share a community of interest. How does collapsing the Assembly and Executive advance Irish unity? It was deliberately collapsed by Sinn Féin.

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