Emer Currie (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I express my deep sympathy to the family of the former Senator, TD and councillor, John Connor. I hope that the positive words and stories being shared about him will come as some comfort. My mother commented on Monday night about meeting him in Frenchpark during the presidential election. From my family to his, my deepest sympathies.

I welcome today’s good news that the DUP has backed a deal to return to Stormont. Am I giddy about it? No, because I cannot applaud any position that oversaw the boycotting of power-sharing institutions for the past two years or the crumbling of public services in the North. Am I hopeful? Yes, always. The other political parties will meet the DUP later today and we will get to see the proposals tomorrow, which will be important.What I do want to see is change, stability and the end of the stopping and starting of power-sharing. I want Stormont up and running to tackle the problems, challenges and opportunities we have in the North of Ireland. How do we do that? We need reform of Stormont. We need to end the veto on appointing a Speaker and forming an Executive. We need reform of the North-South Ministerial Council, which has not sat properly since 2017. This has come about at the hands of the DUP and Sinn Féin. We need an end to that situation. We need stability.

The North-South Ministerial Council appoints chief executives to the implementation boards of the North-South bodies. Last week, we had representatives of the special EU programmes body, which oversees the PEACEPLUS programme, before the Joint Committee on the Implementation of the Good Friday Agreement. I said that if it was not for their determination to roll out PEACEPLUS, which is a package of funding worth €1.4 billion, between now and the end of this decade, and to see communities supported all around the Border counties, then they would not have the resources to do this. As a result, we need the North-South Ministerial Council up and running. We need reform and we need to see a new era of reconciliation politics.