Martin Mansergh (Fianna Fail)

I wish to share my time with Senator Maurice Hayes. I would like to say at the outset that in future when debates on Northern Ireland are organised, more time should to be given so that those who want to participate can do so, and perhaps there should be a more even distribution of time.

I welcome the Minister of State and the speech by the Minister for Foreign Affairs. The Minister goes back to the beginning of the peace process when he took part in a meeting in Dundalk in 1988 with the leadership of Sinn Féin. I would also like to take this opportunity to praise the commitment and dedication of his Department, which has always been at the centre of Anglo-Irish and Northern Ireland affairs. Together with their colleagues from the Department of the Taoiseach and the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform, I know they will do their best to get the Good Friday Agreement working fully.

It is important to distinguish the wood from the trees, even though I am not sure we are always good at doing so. While there were bad setbacks last year, there was also enormous progress with the ending of IRA activities and the complete decommissioning of arms. If it had happened earlier, it is difficult to see how the devolved institutions would not be running.

I am quite depressed sometimes by the reflection that the institutions have been suspended for four years. Political progress is very slow and one would need to be a considerable optimist to expect an early breakthrough. It was said about the Middle East that politics should be pursued as if there were no security issues, and the security issues should be pursued as if there were no politics. We need to remind ourselves that the power-sharing executive is devolution for quite limited purposes. Given that it is for quite limited purposes, I am not in favour of settling for some sort of interim half shilling. It must be a fully restored executive.

Like other speakers, I am troubled by what happened in 2002. I am not suggesting that the fault was all on one side but, as we see to this day, there are private wars going on of one kind or another. With regard to the two reports yesterday, the fact is that General de Chastelain and the Independent International Commission on Decommissioning were given the responsibility to determine whether the IRA had decommissioned its weapons. Its report carries much more weight with me on that point than the IMC.

I welcome Mr. McGuinness's statement last night that smuggling of diesel and so on at the Border was wrong and, effectively, that the people concerned should be prosecuted. I repudiate completely the suggestion by Senator Ross that the Governments are going easy on those involved for political reasons. One need only read the recent headlines in the newspaper for which he writes about businesses being raided and so on. I have never heard a more ludicrous suggestion. All the evidence of the past 12 months is that the Government, the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform and all the law enforcement agencies have been going relentlessly after the Provisionals. Please let us have no more nonsense and insinuations about some kind of appeasement.

The Government must pay attention to both dissidents and loyalists. Despite certain reservations, Sinn Féin should be part of policing. My final point relates to North-South co-operation for which there is much scope. I am pleased it is going ahead. The British Government is the one that sets limits in terms of corporation tax and its currency policy. I am of the view that in the end one will only establish a single island economy in the full sense of the word when people decide by agreement and consent to establish a united Ireland.