Today, October 31st, should have marked the completion of the first stage of the Good Friday agreement. By now we should have formed a shadow executive and a North-South ministerial council. We have not succeeded.
As Deputy First Minister I feel a deep sense of frustration. As a politician I realise that the implementation of the agreement is the people's imperative. That was the instruction they gave us in referendums, North and South. Ignore that imperative and democracy is imperilled.
Continued failure is not an option. The decommissioning issue has been talked up into a roadblock. It is a roadblock around which too many have congregated on both sides. It is time for the protagonists to step back and to consider how to establish the mutual trust which will allow movement. Sinn Fein should recognise the moral and political obligation to decommission.
On the other side the time has come for the Ulster Unionist Party to show that it is fully committed to the agreement and its principles and to give the First Minister the support and space he needs in this difficult period. The litmus test of this commitment will be the negotiation of the North-South bodies. It is vital, as the Taoiseach has said, that we now move rapidly to identifying "serious co-operation in serious areas of the economy, not footling co-operation in marginal areas".
The North-South dimension is of practical importance to the entire community. The nationalist identity finds a particular and necessary accommodation in such structures. This accommodation will have the effect of strengthening the stability and security of the unionist identity. But the significance of the North-South ministerial council is not symbolic; it is practical; its role will be to deliver real benefits for both parts of the island.
There should not be real argument any more about the potential benefits of a one-island approach across the spectrum of economic and social issues. It must benefit the people of Northern Ireland to be able to link up with the most successful economy in Europe in this decade. The task of the council is to provide a dedicated forum for the systematic consideration of mutual interests. Over time the council will have a fundamental impact on the relations between North and South.
The agreement requires us to identify and agree at least six matters for co-operation and implementation and there will be an initial discussion in the Assembly next week on the matter. Considerable preparatory work has been done and a wide range of viable and attractive proposals have been made.
The task will be to make choices and establish priorities. Our concern will be to ensure that the areas of focused implementation and co-ordination have maximum impact and benefit; that they are not isolated islands, but rather are linked with each other and into overall economic and social life, North and South.
When President Vaclav Havel came to meet David Trimble and myself last week at Stormont I was struck by the coincidence of timeframe of Havel's painful political journey from the Prague uprising of 1968 and the path of people from the launch of the Northern Ireland civil rights movement's marches in the same year through to the present day. And it was not just the parallel of timeframe, because there is also a more profound parallel of utter adherence to the political path of consent, defiant of all other means and methods.
That process has taken the best part of 30 years to bring us to the Good Friday agreement. That agreement, we are beginning to see, has its own inner dynamics. These are dynamics I trust because they offer balance and provide an accommodation of the three sets of relationships reflected in the three strands of the agreement.
The balance is fundamental to the agreement between Strand One establishing an Assembly and Executive Government in Northern Ireland and Strand Two developing a North-South ministerial council to bring together those with executive responsibilities to North and South to develop co-operation and action within the island of Ireland.
Thirty years is a long time to wait, and one can be forgiven for wanting to "nudge history forward" as Havel puts it. But if we cannot nudge it forward, neither can we permit history to be nudged backwards. By that I mean for example, nudged backwards to the days before O'Neill-Lemass in 1965. The list (albeit of its time) of matters considered in their January 17th Belfast meeting of that year is worth recalling. It was the abolition of barriers to tourism, the facilitation of educational exchanges, sharing health facilities where urgent and necessary, trade matters, the joint development of nuclear power where this proves economic, joint agricultural research projects, reciprocal practising rights for lawyers, joint administration of certain charities.
It is inconceivable that the new North-South bodies to be brought into being by the agreement as a means of giving visible, tangible, indisputable expression to the Irish identity could be lesser in scope than the modest Lemass/ O'Neill agenda. Yet there are those today who would have us begin at first base.
Last weekend the European Union meeting under the Austrian President in a move to stimulate growth decided to go beyond normal co-operation and requested plans for mid-December from their perspective governments for closer co-ordination of economic policy among the states.
I doubt if the Germans co-ordinating with the French or Italians with Austrians on such plans will give a single thought to whether such action might jeopardise national sovereignty. However, it is such thoughts that leave us coping with a situation where, as the recent CBI-IBEC Report points out, "cross-Border trade on the island remains well below that between comparable EU neighbour states." That CBI-IBEC Report also drew attention to the scope for cross-Border activity in attracting inward investment, business support activities, EU programmes, agriculture and telecommunications. Commerce cannot stand still. In the modern era, nothing less will do.
Next week the First Minister and I visit Brussels. During the visit we shall be meeting the President of the European Commission, Jacques Santer, together with the Secretary-General, Carlo Trojan, both of whom have done so much for us in recent years. We shall also be meeting Commissioner Wulf-Mathies, who has played a crucial role on regional support and the special peace and reconciliation package. In these meetings we will be accompanied by the three MEPs.
The European Union is at present conducting an exercise - The European Spatial Development Perspective (ESDP), covering eight themes from transport to environment. Can we in this small island do less?
In less than a month the British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, will visit Dublin and in a historic and unprecedented occasion he will address the Dail. It has to be hoped that the occasion will permit him to present a set of relationships between the islands of Britain and Ireland and between the people of Ireland North and South that encompasses the commitments of the Good Friday agreement.
There will be some anxiety about missing the October 31st deadline for establishing the shadow executive and agreeing the areas for North-South implementation bodies and co-operation. That anxiety could turn to outright questioning of good faith unless progress on these areas is speedily delivered.
The two governments, with the full support of the First Minister and myself, must now drive the agreement to full implementation in all aspects without further delay.
We look forward to the Taoiseach's visit on Monday to meet in round-table format with those parties with whom we have engaged in North-South discussions and thereafter to nail down within days truly meaningful North-South implementation bodies and areas for co-operation.
"There's no going back now" is a phrase heard more and more frequently in the corridors of the new Assembly, and increasingly from all parties. If it be so, then it is the duty of each party to ensure that the obstacles are placed behind us, not in front of us. Monday is an opportunity for us all to restore the faith and hope invested by the people in the agreement. It is time to end the wishing and the waiting. Let's work it.