Paschal Mooney (Fianna Fail)

No, I am not. However, this is an opportunity to respond because such comments were cheap shots in the circumstances because, although I know the nature of politics, the Minister of State is very committed to his work.

I also support the requests for a debate on Northern Ireland in light of all that has happened in the past three to four weeks. This House has always treated debates on Northern Ireland with great sensitivity. I appreciate that the Government and the Taoiseach have been responsible for Northern Ireland policy and take initiatives. However, the events of recent weeks represent a crisis in the peace process and raise questions for the first time among this generation of Irish people about the true nature of that with which we have been living since the foundation of the State.

We have been somewhat inured and protected from the reality of what is the IRA and its political wing, Sinn Féin, as a result of the ceasefires, the Good Friday Agreement and all that has followed — all of which we all welcome and enthusiastically embrace. This is not to take a cheap shot at Sinn Féin but, as a representative of a Border county, I was not at all surprised that the party makes a distinction between what is wrong and what is a crime. As many of my colleagues from the Border counties will affirm, I am not surprised at Sinn Féin's and the IRA's attitude that the latter is the legitimate army and the former is the legitimate Government of this country. They have always believed that to be the case. This attitude has never changed — it has just been kept quiet — and has been accepted after a fashion in order to get the political wing of the IRA into the political process.

Now we are faced with a crisis and this House should take the initiative because we are elected politicians. We represent democratic values, which values it seems are now questionable within the republican movement until it clarifies its position further. It would be a useful and important exercise to send a message to all those outside this House. If we were to have a measured, ordered debate to discuss the alternatives and the way forward in the peace process, which would be helpful to the Government, we would be representing the overwhelming view of the Irish people on the issue.

In a week in which the rest of Europe is commemorating the 60th anniversary of the Holocaust and the liberation of Auschwitz, this House should also take note of it and I hope the Leader will acknowledge it. Although Ireland was neutral during the Second World War, it was proactively neutral. Thousands of brave Irish people contributed to the downfall of fascism. Although more emphasis is placed on those who were gassed at Auschwitz as coming from central Europe, one Irish citizen was gassed there. She was a lady, born and reared in the Jewish community in Dublin's South Circular Road, who married a Dutch man. It hit this country too. It is vitally important, particularly with the threats to the democratic values we all espouse and value, that we continue to recognise, acknowledge and remember what happened at Auschwitz and the other concentration camps across Europe.