Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Tá áthas orm go bhfuil deis agam labhairt ar an ábhar seo agus gur éirigh liom deis mhaith a fháil laistigh de 11 nóiméad.

The first thing I must say is that although I am only stating the obvious, throughout my life I have been opposed to violence no matter where it is used. I have always made my best endeavours to discourage people from seeing violence as the way forward. That is particularly relevant today because more and more states as well as individuals seem to be turning to violence as a solution to our problems. The second thing I would like to say is that organised crime is a major challenge in our society. Again, I have always believed as well as dealing with the perpetrators of crime, we must try to reduce crime. We must look at the causes of crime. We must ask ourselves why so much crime derives from intergenerationally deprived communities with poor educational activities. What could we do better to try to help those communities which is, in the ultimate, best way of trying to reduce crime? In that regard, I particularly regret the demise of the RAPID programme. It was abolished in 2011, which hit the most deprived communities hardest. We must ask those who take illegal drugs, including people who use cocaine and say, "Sure, it's only recreational", who they get it from and whether they are part of this whole problem collectively.

I welcomed the report on the Special Criminal Court and the Offences against the State Act. I have not had an opportunity to read this report yet. I normally do these things over the summer. I collect all the reports and then when I got a bit of an opportunity I read them, and I will do that over the summer. The report proposes a consultative process with An Garda Síochána, the DPP and so on. I suggest that there is one glaring omission in the people the Minister plans to consult. That is the Independent Reporting Commission established by statute here and in London on foot of an international treaty agreed in November 2015.

Its purpose is to progress towards ending paramilitary activity relating to Northern Ireland in both jurisdictions. It is worth noting what its members said in their recent reports, with which the Minister is familiar but perhaps the House is not so familiar. They said, inter alia, that “to those two Tracks should be added a further dimension, namely that to end paramilitarism we also need an agreed formal process of Group Transition, involving direct engagement with the Paramilitary Groups themselves.” They went on to say that a critical question is who would own the process. Our answer last year was and remains that it is the two Governments and the Executive acting on a co-ordinated, collective basis, as happened for the Fresh Start agreement. They say they envisage that “the overall process would be overseen by a formal body established for that purpose by the two Governments”. In the meantime, they suggest that the two Governments appoint an independent person who would be authorised to speak to the various parties, including the paramilitary groups.

As the Minister knows, this is a statutory body with three very responsible people on it. Its recommendations should be acted upon forthwith. I understand there is a favourable disposition here. We have to persuade the British that having set it up, they should act on the recommendations.

I noted the Minister's comments regarding the high threat level in Northern Ireland. In light of the very wrong attack on Chief Inspector Caldwell, that is very obvious and very unfortunate. However, it seems to me that the threat level is much lower here, based on my observations and on verifiable fact, which I will come to. We should ask ourselves what is so remarkably different about the approach in this State compared with the approach in Northern Ireland and why the threat level is demonstrably very different here.

This is where implementing the recommendations of the Independent Reporting Commission report becomes vital. Thirty years of work with republican prisoners has convinced me that dialogue is the most effective way of reducing republican violence and persuading people that there are more peaceful ways of promoting their objectives of a united, independent Ireland. I would like to cite some interesting figures. In December 2020, there were approximately 30 prisoners held in the republican wing, E block, in Portlaoise prison, including three from a group called ONH, or Óglaigh na hÉireann. ONH went on ceasefire in January 2018. It is worth noting there are no prisoners associated with that group in prison, either North or South. In regard to all other groups that are in E block in Portlaoise, the number has reduced from 30 to seven in that time and there is one further prisoner awaiting finalisation of a request for extradition which is before the Supreme Court. To my knowledge, there are no prisoners out on bail or on remand who would be likely to wind up in E block. Of the prisoners there, a number are due out within the next year or two.

In view of what the Minister said about the threat level, would it be possible for her to get me figures in respect of the number of republicans brought before the Special Criminal Court in each of the past five years? As I have said time and again, when working towards peace and interacting with various groups, and I have visited prisoners, North and South, on a consistent basis, I find that we make more progress through dialogue, interaction, listening and persuasion. That is what the body that the two Governments set up are actually saying and they have validated this view. They have validated that it is interaction and acting on that interaction that is likely to see a rich seam of progress.

I do not have time today to go into all of the issues from the different perspectives but we need to move forward. The Good Friday Agreement has been discussed ad nauseam. There must be a lot of people making money out of running symposia on the agreement. One thing I was disappointed about when it was discussed was that I did not see an awful lot of debate. I did not go to too many of the events. At those I did attend, an important issue was the role of the prisoners in progressing matters in the 1994 to 1997 period. Without dealing with that issue and without interacting with them, the Good Friday Agreement would never have happened. I can remember back in 1994, 1995 and 1996, when I was going over to England to visit the prisoners - to say that the conditions were not good is an understatement - that people were saying: “What are you doing? You are consorting with men of violence.” I believed at that time, as I still believe today, that dialogue with anybody is never ever wrong. If somebody is willing to speak to you, it is only reasonable to speak back. I have boxes of files at home from that period, and letters, correspondence and submissions. There were a lot of people who eventually got the message. In my view, there was no Good Friday Agreement, no matter what the politicians agreed, if we had not grasped that nettle. We had to interact with the people who were involved in violence because if we did not, we were missing the problem.

I remember talking to politicians many years ago when they would not talk to Sinn Féin, as the Sinn Féin Members present today will remember. They were not going to talk to the DUP, although they liked talking to the SDLP, the Alliance Party and the Official Unionists. I said that if that was the problem, there was no problem; there was no problem with violence. We had to get down on the ground to see how we could move forward.

The Minister mentioned that, thankfully, there have been relatively few killings since Omagh. There have been a number, and I seriously regret each one, but what I say to myself is this: you never, ever got thanks for the person who did not know that if history had been different, they would have been attacked or killed. You will never get thanks for that. The only way that can be measured is by measuring what it was like before action was taken and then measure afterwards. Ultimately, Irish history tells us one thing when it comes to republican violence, which is that repression does not actually have the effect that those who promote it think it does, and dialogue always seems to have more effect. There are people in our society who could speak much more authoritatively about that than I can.

In recent years, I have been working with two other people who are well-known and well-respected community activists. They are impeccable individuals who have worked against violence. It would also be worth listening to them and to their perspectives. They are people who interact with the Northern authorities. We need to move this forward. I am not convinced. I will put it this way. If we measure North against South and what we do differently in the South compared with the North, we will find the key to the way forward.

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