Brendan Ryan (Labour)

I believe in due process and I do not intend to move out of the hotel. I am reliably informed that a senior member of the Government, who has a security position, also stays in the hotel. Life gets complicated.

A satisfactory explanation has not yet been provided regarding the Stormontgate-Donaldson affair. I am old enough to know that not everything can be said about an incident at the one time but questions remain, the replies to a number of which could legitimate Sinn Féin's reservations about elements of the Northern security services. Whatever the suspicions about what was happening in Stormont, the arrival of a barrage of police dressed to kill to raid the offices of a political party was a poor image of trust, together with the emergence of Mr. Donaldson as a police agent and the disingenuous reference to the large number of stolen documents found in the office, which it later emerged were found in Mr. Donaldson's house. I am the last person to believe in conspiracies. Most conspiracies develop to cover up stupid mistakes. There may well be a conspiracy because somebody in the security forces made a stupid mistake and is endeavouring to cover it up by weaving complications.

I refer to the issue of reconciliation. I appeal to the Government to bring the work of the British-Irish Council and the British-Irish Interparliamentary Body closer together. The BIIPB still awaits the arrival of our Unionist colleagues. We keep hoping they will join and it is sometimes difficult for us to understand why they have not. The more extreme manifestations of Tory politics engage quite happily with the body and members of the Unionist parties, who are sensible by that standard, are disinclined to so engage and that is a pity. If institutions are established, which bring us together in sensible ways in our common interest, we cannot continue with a totally independent intergovernmental council and a totally independent parliamentary tier. The role of government is to be accountable to parliament and the role of parliamentarians is to make government accountable. A formalised institutional structure must be examined, which will bring those two bodies into closer harmony. There are issues about which one would like to ask many questions.

A hair-raising presentation on the state of the Northern Ireland economy was given at the Edinburgh meeting of the BIIPB and it is an enormously significant matter. Northern Ireland is so dependent on public finances that the private sector is practically non-existent and the level to which there is a self-sustaining private sector should be of serious concern to anybody who will have responsibility for the governance of Northern Ireland in the future. A closer working relationship between the British-Irish Council or a more appropriate body and the BIIPB would greatly help. However, when the BIIPB meets, it does not help when my Sinn Féin friends describe anybody who says a word vaguely sympathetic to unionism as a "Unionist". That does not reflect much of an insight into the difference between understanding somebody's position and agreeing with it.

Ironically, one of the spin-offs of the collapse of the Northern Ireland Assembly is that because the North-South bodies have become intergovernmental bodies, for the first time since 1922 one can ask questions in the House of Commons about the condition of the River Shannon. It is a considerable contribution by a republican party that there is limited British sovereignty over aspects of how we do our business.

I support all my colleagues who stated it is high time Sinn Féin did what is obvious to everybody else and accepted that Northern Ireland policing has been transformed and the best thing the party could do to win trust across the political spectrum is to join the relevant policing bodies, fully participate and acknowledge that Northern Ireland has an acceptable policing and judicial system, from which we could learn a great deal.

At the risk of being controversial and falling out with my own party, the distinction made between Sinn Féin in government in the North and in the South is becoming more difficult to make. It is becoming easier for the Unionists to say, "You accept them in your Government and we will accept them in ours". At the beginning of the peace process, it was different but, years later, Sinn Féin has moved further away from violence. We will sooner or later have to confront whether there is a logic to our position.