Brian Hayes (Fine Gael)

I thank the Leader of the House for organising this debate. She had received requests from many colleagues on all sides in recent months. I appreciate that she has provided time today for the debate.

I warmly welcome to the House the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Deputy Dermot Ahern, and thank him for a comprehensive statement in terms of all the current issues that are before him and the British and Irish Governments concerning this process. I also congratulate him on the difficult task he has in steering this process with the British Government to its final conclusion, which we all hope will be the full implementation of the Good Friday Agreement. He is someone who has noted progress in this area with keen interest over many years, not just because of where he lives but because of his interest in reconciliation. He is the right person for the job. I congratulate him on his work to date, as I do the Taoiseach, the Government, and their officials for what is a painstaking task.

As the Minister said, yesterday we received a copy of the published report of the Independent Monitoring Commission. While it is quite encouraging in terms of the fact that the vast majority of evidence found would back up that of the Independent International Commission on Decommissioning and last September or October's report from General de Chastelain, there are some worrying signs which must be resolved by the Provisional movement before we see a full restoration of the Agreement.

The Minister referred to intelligence, which is one of the most disturbing outstanding issues. I still believe that within the Provisional movement there is low level intelligence gathering. I refer the Minister to the Special Criminal Court case of last year when known Sinn Féin activists were convicted in connection with information they had gathered on Members of the Houses of the Oireachtas. I believe that information is being used for fighting political campaigns, to try to discredit opponents and to target certain politicians. I take this opportunity to remind the Provisional movement that this is unacceptable and it must stop. Such behaviour is inherently undemocratic and, as long as it continues, Sinn Féin cannot be regarded as a normal political party.

Yesterday, we also saw results of the investigations currently ongoing by the Criminal Assets Bureau into the substantial property portfolio that has been amassed by the Provisional movement as a result of cleaning up its dirty money over a generation. I take this opportunity to congratulate the CAB on its work to date with the Assets Recovery Agency in Northern Ireland. I do not disconnect that criminality or illegality from the mainstream activities of Sinn Féin. This issue must be resolved. It must come before the courts. Assets must be stripped from that movement where those brought before the courts are found guilty of an offence.

The question of informers also came to the fore in recent months, in regard to Sinn Féin. We now know that a senior Sinn Féin politician, Mr. Donaldson, was part and parcel of the British security intelligence operation for the past 25 years. Who else is compromised and what other senior figures within the republican movement are British informers? I had to laugh recently when I heard a senior Sinn Féin Deputy in the other House issue a statement to the effect that he was not a Garda informer. He would have gone up in my estimation, immeasurably, had it come to public light that he was a Garda informer and he had given information to the authorities here to try to stop atrocities that have occurred over the past 25 years. I understand that on his local radio station recently, the Minister was asked if we want British agents as part of the Government of this Republic. This whole area is so murky and intertwined that I believe there are other senior republican figures whose position is entirely compromised as a result of the revelations about Mr. Donaldson in recent months. Sinn Féin must make that known.

It is a matter for the parties in Northern Ireland whether they want this Agreement to work. The British and Irish Governments can persuade them, cajole them, exert pressure and so on but ultimately, it is a matter for the parties in Northern Ireland, principally the two biggest parties, Sinn Féin and the DUP, to decide. I agree with the Minister that this year is the important one in terms of that happening. The reality is that Prime Minister Blair will be handing over his responsibilities as party leader to another Labour politician over the course of the next year or two and we go into an election next year. If the parties in Northern Ireland want to make this Agreement work, this is the year to do it. I would encourage them to make progress and to bring about the full implementation of the Agreement.

The DUP has given the British Government a document that has yet to be made public but of which I suspect the Irish Government has a good understanding. I have not seen the document but it argues for a phased re-establishment of the assembly, which would do day-to-day work for a period of time and hopefully lead to the full implementation of the Agreement. I understand this is also the Ulster Unionist Party's position. It wants the assembly up and running, even though the government is not yet in place.

I will not prejudge the outcome of the current phase of talks but if this is the outcome, it is important for the Government to tie in a firm guarantee that, if the assembly is re-established without an executive in place, there would be a specific timeframe for the executive to be established. It would not be in the interests of the process to have an open-ended, non-time specific process whereby the assembly could be re-established without an absolute guarantee that the full institutions of the Agreement are worked and up and running within a dedicated period of time. I am going into areas that I suspect the Government will discuss with all of the parties over the coming weeks and months but, if this is the outcome, we must have a specific timeframe. Constitutional nationalism will not buy a non-time specific re-establishment of the assembly.

It is important that we recognise that mistakes were made in the past. They were not deliberate but made as part of the process. One mistake, the current power play of the DUP and Sinn Féin, means that they are at the centre of the process to the exclusion of everyone else, such as the Ulster Unionist Party, the Alliance Party and the SDLP. We must return to the multiparty agenda and atmosphere present in 1998. Far too much is made of the significance of the DUP and Sinn Féin, their trading of concessions off each other and the Governments' pandering to them.

A point made by the leader of the SDLP, Mr. Mark Durkan, MP, was that we must work out the concessions made on the comprehensive agreement, one of which I will shortly refer to. One of the principles behind the Agreement is that of reconciliation. It was important that the First Minister and Deputy First Minister not only have a majority of the assembly behind them as a resolution but also a majority of the other community. This aspect was negotiated as part of a comprehensive agreement. If that comprehensive agreement comes to pass again in terms of this area, it will mean that the DUP and the majority of Unionism need not vote for Sinn Féin and vice versa. Will the Government examine this issue again? One of the key ideas behind reconciliation in the Agreement was that both communities needed to give support to the First Minister and Deputy First Minister candidates of the other community. I support the SDLP's position on this matter and ask the Government to return to its position prior to the December 2004 talks.

My party has held very different views to those of the Government on the McCabe issue. I welcome that it has since changed its position. The matter will remain off the table and Sinn Féin will not be allowed to put it back. I recently spoke to a member of the DUP and was informed that, when the assembly and executive were up and running, there were effectively 11 different governments.