Gary Gannon (Dublin Central, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

I fully appreciate the extraordinary achievement that is the Good Friday Agreement. It is captured perfectly in some of the statements made recently by George Mitchell, who was instrumental in achieving it. He captured it in numbers when he said that from the start of the Troubles until 1998, more than 3,500 people were killed and an estimated 50,000 were injured, and that in the 25 years since the agreement was reached, there have been about 164 security-related deaths. These deaths are extraordinarily lamentable and we need to continue to work every day to ensure this number drops to zero.

When we talk about the achievement of the Good Friday Agreement, we also need to acknowledge those who contributed to it. Many of them have been mentioned in the Chamber today or have been captured over the past couple of weeks. It has also been said and I repeat that it was achieved by those who engaged with each other and engaged in the process over decades. They sat across tables from people who they previously probably could not have comprehended and achieved that peace, and that belongs to them. Other notable figures include Mo Mowlam, whose impact is severely missed. As we celebrated the anniversary, a lot of people brought her contribution to the fore. I read today about her visits to prisons and talks with leaders of the loyalist community. That capacity to roll the sleeves up and get stuck in was remarkable. Monica McWilliams from the Northern Ireland Women's Coalition was another notable figure. We must also remember those who campaigned in the North for a yes vote. Going from door to door during very tumultuous times showed extraordinary bravery that should be remembered.

I read about the manner in which the truth about the Good Friday Agreement is taught here and in the North. I was reflecting on that as I passed by Oriel House, which sits on the corner of Westland Row. That building will feature as part of an RTÉ documentary tonight on the Good Friday Agreement that talks about its role in the Civil War as a place to which pro-treaty forces brought anti-treaty prisoners and engaged in significant levels of torture. It was referred to by one historian on "Morning Ireland" this morning as almost a Gestapo-like building where extraordinary acts of cruelty were carried out.

Coincidentally, I used to work in that building as part of Trinity access programmes where I taught leadership to younger people. Two people I would regularly invite to that building to share their experiences with young people were Steven Travers and Eugene Reavey. They would talk to transition year students from DEIS schools around Dublin about the tragedies they experienced during the Troubles. What always struck me was the extent to which young people here had very little concept of the achievement of the Good Friday Agreement or the Troubles and its depravity. Through Mr. Travers's incredible dignity and capacity to tell his story with courage and Mr. Reavey's ability to relate, young people would become aghast all of a sudden when they heard about what these two individuals experienced.

I think about the importance of telling the truth and sharing and teaching our history. Not teaching our history is dangerous. Emma DeSouza captured this in a recent article when she spoke about how many young people in the North and indeed in the Republic are not taught simple truths about the Troubles and the Good Friday Agreement. The Troubles is an elective module for the minority who study GCSE history, so only pupils in the North who choose GCSE history and are taught the Troubles module will learn anything about it. The same is true for students in the Republic. If they do not choose history, they simply will not be taught anything about the Troubles and the importance of the Good Friday Agreement. We are missing generations of peace babies who have grown up and felt the peace and its achievement but are simply no longer learning about it. As we move further and further away from those times, we need to ensure on both sides of the Border that those histories are taught because although it is hoped people like Steven Travers and Eugene Reavey will be with us for a very long time, they will not be around forever and there is an onus on us to ensure we never lose sight of those histories.

When we talk about the achievements of the Good Friday Agreement and what it has meant for those born in the 25 years since, we must remember that while ending large-scale violence remains its greatest achievement, realising reconciliation remains an elusive aspiration. I thought again about Steven Travers and Eugene Reavey in connection with that. They have set up an organisation called the Truth and Reconciliation Platform, which simply seeks to tell to policymakers and anybody who will listen the truth of their experience and the experience of those like them to ensure we never forget it and that we become conscious that it could happen again.

Those peace babies have felt peace but they also experience significant levels of social injustice the same as young people do down here when it comes to educational attainment, emigration and absence of housing. The chief executive of the Simon Community in the North, Jim Dennison, described the current housing situation in the North as the worst in the history of the charity. He said that another 1,000 people, including families, are deemed legally homeless every month with almost 44,500 currently on the social housing waiting list, many of whom are classed as being in acute housing need. Of the 600,000 young people born in the North after the signing of the Good Friday Agreement, thousands are leaving every year. The poverty rate in the North in 2021 was 16% - 300,000 people estimated to be living in relative poverty.

I would like to go on and talk about the fact that there is an onus on those of us who believe in and are committed to achieving a united Ireland at some point to make the case for it. There is an onus on us to bring people on that journey. There has been some discussion today about constitutional change and even decades of persuasion, but we need a decade of reimagining what a republic could look like.

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