Michael McDowell (Dublin South East, Progressive Democrats)

I thank both Senators for their contributions. This House is well aware of the seriousness of the threat we face. I echo what Senator Mansergh and Senator Hayes said about the dissident republicans. They are seducing innocent and guileless individuals into a wholly warped and hopeless expression of something which itself is a caricature of what it pretends to be.

As Senator Mansergh said, people are entitled to have convictions. I do not care if there are some people who believe they are the direct descendants of Cardinal Rinuccini's Confederation of Kilkenny or if there is a group of people in some back street in the Liberties still carrying on the Emmet revolution in their own minds. So be it; they are entitled to these views. If, on the other hand, one takes a life or sets out to murder somebody or to ruin young people's lives or have them thrown into our jails, it is a different matter. It is entirely wrong and evil and it must be confronted. The sad fact about the so called dissident republicans is that their only ultimate aim is to try and re-ignite an undeclared civil war on this island.

The true vocation of republicanism now is to hark back to Tone, Emmet and Davis and to the process of reconciliation. It is to take the tricolour which is waved so often these days and to state that its purpose was to symbolise a society that reconciled green and orange and that united both not simply by subjugation but by a voluntary act of the will. The crucial issue now must be that the Good Friday Agreement in the minds of all true republicans, among whom I number myself, be the context in which that great act of reconciliation, which has not yet happened on this island, can take place. Without that, the republican spirit of the people of this island will be completely thwarted. If there is no reconciliation of orange and green there will be no genuine republic in Ireland, rather there will be a separatist State. People will leave on boats, as Senator Mansergh said, because they cannot fit into a monochrome and introverted view of republicanism and Irish history.

I agree with what has been stated here and I echo what has been said on both sides of the House: this so-called dissident threat is threadbare. It is perverse and grotesque and is fated to fail. I address myself to the people involved because I know they read about all these matters through their various organs. People in Portlaoise Prison and elsewhere should not mistake the resolve of democratic Ireland to see them off the stage.