Rose Conway Walsh (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

We are very dissatisfied that a deal has not been done to get the assembly up and running in the North. I thank the Sinn Féin negotiating team for doing everything humanly possible to get a deal, and indeed others in wider civic society for the hugely positive role they have played in trying to get the Executive and assembly up and running.

The fact that we do not have a deal rests squarely on the shoulders of Theresa May and her Tory Government. This is a monumental failure by her Government, which, after all is supposed to be a co-guarantor of the Good Friday Agreement. To hear a leading DUP voice this morning saying that the Irish Government should keep its nose out shows exactly, to right minded people, what we have been up against. He cited that Ireland doesn’t tell other countries to operate a rights-based society.  What kind of nonsense is this?  It is obvious that he and his party fail to acknowledge the legal responsibility of the Irish Government under the Good Friday Agreement.  The fact that the Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade, Deputy Coveney, said he was in favour of Acht na Gaeilge sent them into a frenzy of hostility. What part of the right of any person living on this island to his or her Irishness or Britishness do they not understand? The entitlement of any of us to our Irishness or Britishness surely should never be offensive to anybody. Why are they so frightened by the prospect of two people who love each other expressing that love in a lifelong commitment of marriage? Why are families denied inquests decades after their loved ones have been killed? Why is it, when more than 15,000 republican men and women have served more than 100,000 years in jail, that the British Government refuses to open the files that show the extent of the collusion between its security forces and loyalist paramilitaries? The fact is that the DUP have not addressed the equality and rights issues that caused the collapse of the political institutions. Nineteen years after the Good Friday Agreement and ten years on from the St. Andrews Agreement, the DUP have blocked an Acht na Gaeilge, a bill of rights, marriage equality, respect, anti-sectarian measures and progress on legacy issues.

It is clear that a restored assembly and Executive is only sustainable and tenable if it is based on fairness, respect and equality. To agree to the restoration on any other basis would be to facilitate the denial of basic rights that are protected in England, Scotland, Wales and the rest of Ireland. This would facilitate cruel discrimination against hundreds of thousands of people on our island. It is something that we in Sinn Féin refuse to do. Sinn Féin will not consent to be governed by the DUP on their terms, just as we would not expect the DUP electorate to consent to be governed by us on Sinn Féin terms. I ask that the Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade, Deputy Coveney, come into this House to debate how the Government plans to ensure that the rights of people living on this island are upheld and implemented and how he, working with the Government, intends to play his part as co-guarantor of the Good Friday Agreement.

As a party, we completely support Senator Swanick's Bill and wish him well with getting it through the Houses as speedily as possible.