Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I am glad to participate in the Seanad statements on Northern Ireland as we mark and celebrate the 20th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement.

I welcome that this House is taking the opportunity to discuss and reflect on the anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement, which comes at another critical time for Northern Ireland. Twenty years on, it is important that everyone should recognise just how far the peace process has been able to progress since the agreement was signed on 10 April 1998, but also the path that is still ahead of us.

The anniversary is an opportunity, first, to remember all that has been collectively achieved through the agreement. The horrendous violence of the past has been ended and peace has been secured. Politics and daily life in Northern Ireland has been transformed, as anybody who takes the time to travel to Belfast or Derry will see. The agreement ushered in a new era in North-South co-operation, which brings practical benefits for people across the island. The Good Friday Agreement has also served as a key to unlock the full potential of relations between Ireland and Britain, which is so important given the depth of the mutual connections between our economies and our people. Perhaps most profoundly, the agreement enabled the journey to full reconciliation to begin, but there is a lot of work still to do on reconciliation.

In reflecting on these achievements secured through the Good Friday Agreement, we must also remember all of those who lost their lives in the violent events of the Troubles. We remember also the survivors, the family members and communities who suffer still from this legacy. The legacy of the past has still to be addressed and this requires the implementation of the Stormont House Agreement framework and there are, of course, other difficulties and challenges today that also need to be overcome within the framework of the Good Friday Agreement. Most immediately, the devolved institutions and the North-South Ministerial Council need to urgently operate again, and the Government is working with the British Government to seek a way forward from the current impasse.

In the declaration to the Good Friday Agreement, participants pledged to work in good faith, "to ensure the success of each and every one of the arrangements to be established" under the agreement. As we seek to address today's challenges, that commitment to the Good Friday Agreement, in all of its dimensions, must be renewed. The Good Friday Agreement is the fundamental framework for relations in Northern Ireland and across these neighbouring islands. The anniversary is a moment to renew our commitment to that indispensable framework and our belief in what can be achieved collectively through the agreement.

Partnership between the Governments, power-sharing between the parties and parity of esteem between communities is what was agreed on 10 April 1998. The agreement was then endorsed by the people in the historic referendums, held North and South, the following month. It is incumbent on everyone with responsibilities under the agreement today to ensure that the overwhelming and enduring democratic mandate for the Good Friday Agreement is upheld. The agreement must be fully implemented, all of the institutions of the agreement need to operate, and the principles of partnership, equality and parity of esteem need to be respected and lived, particularly by those of us in politics. This demands leadership, courage and sheer hard work and diligence. That is something that the two Governments, working with the political parties, can and must provide in order to get all of the institutions of the agreement operating effectively and to continue to move the peace process forward in the years ahead.

As the House will be aware, over the course of the last year the Government and the British Government, as co-guarantors of the Good Friday Agreement, have worked to support and facilitate the parties in their efforts to form an executive. The devolved power-sharing institutions are at the heart of the Good Friday Agreement and they need to operate, as does the North-South Ministerial Council, as I have already mentioned. Unfortunately, to date it has not proved possible to reach an agreement on the formation of an executive, despite intensive engagement. Following the absence of an agreement between the two largest parties in the last talks process at Stormont, the Taoiseach spoke to the British Prime Minister, Mrs. May, and emphasised the Government's full commitment to the Good Friday Agreement and our continuing determination to secure the effective operation of all of its institutions. I have been keeping in close and frequent contact with the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, Karen Bradley, who I met in Belfast on 10 April and again in London two days ago. I will continue my contacts with the main parties in Northern Ireland, as will the Secretary of State, and we will meet again in two weeks' time.

We must also work together in the context of Brexit, to protect all of the relationships and co-operation that the agreement has built - within Northern Ireland, between North and South and between the United Kingdom and Ireland as a whole.

As we renew our commitment to the Good Friday Agreement at this time of its 20th anniversary, I have also been placing the focus on the duty to seek a full reconciliation, which was finally made possible with the accord in 1998. Reconciliation is the deepest part of the peace process and it is understandable that it is a slow and difficult process given the tragedy and history involved.

I want to highlight and commend the many people, organisations, communities and politicians who have made enormous progress to try to advance the reconciliation that is needed. The Government is proud to support this work through my Department's reconciliation fund and through our contributions to the International Fund for Ireland. Our commitment will be sustained in the years ahead, as we seek collectively to further the process of reconciliation. We only have to switch on the news, listen to political debates or see some of the simply unacceptable views that are posted on social media to understand that we are not where we need to be in moving on from the past.

The full promise of the Good Friday Agreement can only be realised through the commitment in its first lines "to the achievement of reconciliation, tolerance, and mutual trust". That means neighbours living together in peace and treating each other as neighbours. The Irish language version of the agreement translates reconciliation as "athmhuinteras". Athmhuinteras means friendliness, neighbourliness or connection. The Good Friday Agreement enables us to live together on these islands as neighbours and friends, realising the full potential of our connections, without in anyway diminishing our identities, cultures or language - allowing for Irish or British, or both. A more complex set of identities is possible through the agreement and that can only enrich us all.

All of us need to keep that focus on reconciliation at the forefront of all that we do in respect of the Good Friday Agreement and Northern Ireland - to seek a connection, and to speak and act, as a friend, or at the very least as a neighbour. As I have said, there is a particular onus on those of us who are politicians to stretch ourselves and to make ourselves uncomfortable if necessary to try to advance the greater good. That will not always be easy but it will be needed to make progress with the demands of this stage of the peace process, just as it was displayed at Castle Buildings in April 1998.

There is no better alternative than the Good Friday Agreement to reach the higher goals of peace and reconciliation through sheer determination to bridge practical differences because we are all in this together. After hundreds of years of strife and decades of recent conflict, we all stand - Irish, British, unionist, nationalist, loyalist, republican or something else entirely - as people who have the responsibility to find a way of living together.

Twenty years ago, we agreed through the Good Friday Agreement an accord to pursue new and better possibilities. Since that time, we have realised many of them, however imperfectly. On the anniversary of the agreement, we should remember how much has been achieved by brave courageous people from communities, from political parties and in terms of broader leadership. We should renew our commitment to the new beginning the agreement represents. We must take the next steps in our peace process with confidence and determination to address today's challenges and to achieve the full reconciliation that the Good Friday Agreement and its structures make possible. I look forward to hearing Senators' views.