Brendan Ryan (Labour)

Cuirim fáilte roimh an Taoiseach agus tá súil agam go gcuirfidh sé fíorfáilte roimh pé tacaíocht gur féidir linn a thabhairt dó sna cainteanna a bheidh ag tosnú. I congratulate my colleague, Senator Maurice Hayes, whom I am sure will be a distinguished and excellent chairman. As my remarks will, of necessity, be brief, some nuances may be missing. The last time I spoke on Northern Ireland I mentioned the ambiguities that surround Sinn Féin in the South, to which it took great exception. I was approached and told I had been regarded as impartial on these issues and that my speech was a departure from that impartiality. I suspect I will have more approaches after my speech tonight.

When I was an independent Senator in the 1980s, I stuck my neck out because I believed that excluding an entire section of a community was not the solution. I, therefore, met people from Sinn Féin both here and in Belfast, Aughnacloy and other places. On each occasion I accepted their position on human rights and prisoners because it was right to do so, but I also told them – in dodgy places like pubs in west Belfast – that even if their catalogue of complaints was the entire sum of what had happened in Northern Ireland, the killing of a human being was not justified by it. That was my position then as now.

At this stage Sinn Féin is moving into a different phase of its existence and must convince us it has made up its mind. I am tired of stories which are not explained but kept at arm's length, including one in my constituency where a prominent Sinn Féin activist was convicted having been found in a car with paramilitary clothing and weapons. We are entitled to know what is going on. This is the best organised, most disciplined and best funded political party on the island and that it continues to deny knowledge of any of these stories stretches credulity.