Vincent P Martin (Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister of State.I commend Sinn Féin on tabling this motion and for the tone, tenor and language of its Members' opening contributions. As no doubt proud republicans, it demonstrated a generosity that was so needed in the past. For the future, including the current big challenge but even looking beyond that, we can take great strength from the past. Then UK Prime Minister, Tony Blair, and Taoiseach, Bertie Ahern, are quite correctly credited for their great contribution but we hear less about former Prime Minister John Major and former Taoiseach Albert Reynolds, who were vital precursors to the Good Friday Agreement. When Albert Reynolds was elected leader of Fianna Fáil, the republican party, he said at the press conference his number one aim was to bring peace to the island of Ireland.

Sometimes the roles of Gerry Adams, Martin McGuinness and, wait for it, Ian Paisley and Peter Robinson are airbrushed out of history. It is churlish not to mention the fact that Gerry Adams, Martin McGuinness and his fellow colleagues, as the strong republican voice in the North, delivered and led republicans. Equally and ironically so, Ian Paisley, who was against the Good Friday Agreement, probably did more to copper-fasten and cement it when he worked it. He and Peter Robinson worked that agreement; it is just a pity they did not do so sooner. We have to take strength from the sacrifices and compromises of the past and look to the future. If we get stuck in the past, it will not pave the way for a bright future of reconciliation.

In the context of a motion on the Good Friday Agreement, I will also single out the leadership of the late David Ervine. His sister-in-law, Linda Ervine, addressed the House a couple of years ago. David Ervine led loyalism. He said it was his community that was suffering on the front line. Ervine called out Ian Paisley, before Paisley had his road to Damascus conversion, by telling Big Ian to cop himself on, asking him what he was talking about, and telling him they were dealing with real people and lives. That was incredible, breath-of-fresh-air leadership. We correctly mentioned Monica McWilliams. History has been and will be very kind to the Northern Ireland Women's Coalition.

We should also remember Irish America. I am thinking especially of former Congressman Brian Donnelly who died in Massachusetts on 28 February. He was one of many people who sharply focused and unified the American view, which came on board, even if it was a little late, with the John Hume school of thought of respecting the consent principle. It was vital to have one unified voice. Of course, Teddy Kennedy, Brian Donnelly, Tip O'Neill and others, were so instrumental in establishing, as one of the vital precursors, the bipartisan approach of Congress. Only last year, a bipartisan congressional delegation visited the House and its leader addressed it. It was so important America could do that, when its politics are so fractured. America speaks with one voice on this. I spoke to the Republican and Democratic congressmen here; all were on the same page when it came to what is best for Ireland. They refused to turn it into a political football. It is too serious.

I am sure many will remember the statement made by Mike Nesbitt, leader of the Ulster Unionist Party from 2012 to 2017, "Wake up, the old certainties have gone." That was a brand new vision for unionism. Those old certainties are gone. I am not saying that in a triumphalist way but unionists are no longer in a majority. The days are long gone when there was a Protestant parliament for a Protestant people. We have a new beginning and a new dispensation. If we look to the past and what the Good Friday Agreement achieved, it was so much more and looked insurmountable compared with the challenge of the protocol. We can take hope from the work of the Good Friday Agreement and its complex infrastructure as the way forward now for the protocol and the next generation. The Good Friday Agreement was clearly the most important agreement in our lifetime.

We have to wake up. The old certainties have gone. The responsible leadership of unionism and republicanism is crucial to that but the catalyst for all this is in the middle ground. It is what the Alliance Party espouses regarding no veto by one of the big parties in the North. When we review and change the Good Friday Agreement, we should not allow one party to collapse the Assembly, be it Sinn Féin over cash for ash, when its members walked out for a number of years, or the DUP, which has currently collapsed it; not one party. We should remove ourselves from the sectarianism of a single party, which can be perceived as playing to a certain constituency. I know the DUP would disagree with that; it is not my opinion but that of certain people.

Although it is not about them tonight, I hope unionists take time - Senator Currie offered them words of wisdom in a very respectful way - to do what is best for unionism and this country. If they do not do so on this occasion, and I hate to say this, they give succour to the proposition and argument that they have a difficulty with a nationalist leader in the North, which the current electorate has decided, if the Stormont government reopens. All roads lead to reconciliation. Let us take inspiration, hope and strength from the Good Friday Agreement, and the role the EU, US, all those leaders I mentioned, and so many others I did not have time to mention, as the future of an authentic, long-term peace embraced by all.