People across the North should use their votes in next month's local and general elections to show they are fed up with the failed peace deals of the past, SDLP leader Mark Durkan said yesterday.
Mr Durkan, who was in Dublin for talks with Taoiseach Bertie Ahern, said the Stormont Assembly was now suspended for 30 months, and people were impatient with the lack of progress in setting up a power-sharing government.
"Obviously a lot of people in the North are a bit fed up and frustrated and indeed cynical when they hear parties who produced flawed and failed deals over the last couple of years now asking to give them a few more votes."
Mr Durkan said Mr Ahern supported his view that there should be no more side deals, and that the Belfast Agreement must be implemented in full.
He called for an end to "stalemate, stand-off and set-piece politicking", and urged parties to face up to their responsibilities.
He also demanded that the British government stand by its commitment to hold a full public inquiry into the death of Belfast solicitor Pat Finucane in 1989.
He was very concerned that the British seemed to be reneging on promises given to the Irish Government and the Finucane family during the Weston Park Agreement. "The British government is preparing legislation which is going to fillet the whole concept of a public inquiry. It will mean that ministers will be in editorial control of what an inquiry will look at."
He called on the Taoiseach and Foreign Minister Dermot Ahern to make it clear that the British government must honour commitments on the Finucane inquiry.
On the official mourning for the Pope, Mr Durkan said his party's offices would be closing on Friday.
"It is important that people of all walks of life are afforded the opportunity to mourn the passing of a great man."