Brian Hayes (Fine Gael)

I thank all the contributors to this debate, including the Minister. It was an excellent debate. While we disagree on this issue, because it is a matter of strategy and of principle, all of the voices of constitutional politics in this House should be heard on this issue.

It is not and was never the intention of our group in putting forward this motion to divide the House on a spurious matter or to seek party-political advantage. However, we believe the Government's strategy on this is wrong. We have now reached the time when those parties connected with the republican movement must make a decision once and for all. By offering this carrot in the form of this amendment in the context of overall ending of paramilitarism, we are giving away a game we should not give away. I believed the Taoiseach when he gave that commitment in 1998. I do not believe Mr. Adams. The Minister posed that question. I do not believe Mr. Adams because I spoke privately to people who were in Capitol Buildings that night who told me that the IRA leadership came directly and asked the Government whether these people were included, and they were told "No". I believed the Taoiseach on that.

The dilemma is that the goalposts have been moved since 1998. The Government is wrong in putting forward this amendment, this final carrot in terms of the ending of paramilitarism. It is naive to view this group of killers as the only group remaining and to believe the IRA will go out of business, that all criminality will cease and that knee-capping will end. That is the group of people it denied in its first statement. The Minister knows better than I that a close family member of one of the people who is serving a sentence, a constituent of mine, was taken across the Border recently in South Armagh and shot in both knees.

The notion that the provos have great respect for the four people who are doing time in Castlerea is nonsense. It is naive to believe the world will be transformed if they are allowed out. I do not believe the world will change simply because these people are released from their prison sentences. That is the issue of strategy I suggest the Government has got badly wrong on this occasion. As the Minister knows, there is cross-party agreement on the Northern Ireland peace talks, but we disagree on this issue, and it is right that this disagreement be heard in public. One of the great dilemmas of this process is that it has been between executive and executive and has bypassed most of the parties in this House. For ten years we have put up with it. For ten years we have seen advances by the Provisional IRA as it continues to use bargaining chips along the way and make fools of us all.

The time has come for that to end. We must tell them we will not cross this Rubicon. If the Minister accepts the motion and takes the attitude with these people that our republic is strong, that we will not capitulate to every demand they put on the table, that after ten years we have had enough of them, he will be in a much stronger position in the end-game discussions to which colleagues have referred.

The Minister is well aware that 55 people in this State and 444 people in Northern Ireland were released under licence.