Emer Currie (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank Senators McGreehan and Blaney. I know that normally wild horses would not keep Senator Blaney away from a debate like this so I hope everything is okay. The Tánaiste and Minister for Foreign Affairs is welcome to the Chamber and I thank him for all the work he has done on reconciliation, Northern Ireland and the shared island unit as Taoiseach. It comes from a genuine place and that comes across. I am appreciative of his work and I am grateful for his kind words and gestures when my father died.

This is about the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement and the greatest gift we have is the opportunity to live in peace. When you have experienced the times when we did not have that, you never take it for granted. We have spoken about the Good Friday Agreement a lot in this Chamber and we also have to be honest that the vision we had for the Good Friday Agreement has not transpired the way we would want. We also have an imperfect peace. Power sharing has not worked exactly the way we wanted. It is all interlinked with the fact that we are still working with a divided society. We can blame Brexit for the problems in Stormont but we also know that over the course of 20 years there have been lots of times when the institutions of Stormont were not up and running and other parties have collapsed power sharing too.

I mention the impact of the North-South Ministerial Council. I would have hoped that 25 years on we would have seen more of an evolution of what we are doing between North and South. We have a disconnect North and South and our young people have a disconnect with the Good Friday Agreement and do not really understand how relevant it is. It is not a relic but a resource for us all to work together. The one area that is working at the moment is the third strand, the east-west institutions. That did not get the priority it needed over the years and for a lot of the time we relied on the relationship we had. It was a good relationship at that time but it was not a replacement for those institutions. This is a reminder of how important it is to work on all three institutions. That is even more important now that the UK has left the EU where we had that hand and glove relationship, working side-by-side and sharing common membership of the EU and of sharing regulations, laws and the European Convention on Human Rights. With that gone we have to rely on the institutions of the Good Friday Agreement to bring that relationship closer together again.

We are skipping on in time so I will move on to the most important thing I can say this evening, which is on legacy, and this is similar to what I raised, both at the British-Irish Parliamentary Assembly directly with the UK Minister of State for Northern Ireland, Steve Baker MP - Senator Wilson was there too - and also with the former Taoiseach, Bertie Ahern. We are in such a precarious place when it comes to the UK's Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Bill. I know the Minister has spoken to the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland on 25 May and on 16 May, as did Deputy Coveney before him.We have relied on diplomacy and encouraging the British Government to do the right thing. We talked about the Good Friday Agreement and have used its anniversary to impress upon it the need for multilateralism and working together by consensus in the spirit of that agreement, which is important in the context of everybody agreeing, apart from the British Government and the Conservative Party, that this is the wrong way to go. We talked about the importance of reconciliation and, of course, meeting international obligations on human rights but the British Government has gone ahead and appointed a chief commissioner. It is driving this through. We are looking at potential amendments on Report Stage in the House of Lords on 21 June. We know these amendments will not fix this Bill that is morally wrong and rotten at the core because it puts perpetrators before victims. Those amendments will not change that.

When do we stop encouraging? When do we shift this into another phase and really start fighting for victims? Everything the British Government is doing is showing us it is determined to bring in this legislation before the summer and have it operational immediately with this new chief commissioner. What is our plan B at this stage? We were told previously that we are not taking anything off the table in our next steps. Does that include an interstate case? Have we made any moves towards preparing for an interstate case? Are we communicating that with the British Government? So much is at stake here that we could be in a position where the rule of law does not seem to have mattered for 30 years. How are innocent families who never retaliated being looked after in this legislation, particularly at a time when the rule of law is so important? In the context of other developments in Europe and the Russian war on Ukraine, how can this legislation go forward? I would appreciate it if the Tánaiste would share with us what our plan B is.