TAOISEACH BRIAN Cowen has added his voice to the condemnation of the violence in the North and said the political system had to make politics work for people “who for too long have been alienated from the institutions of law and order and a civilised society”.
Mr Cowen, who urged the North’s parties “to reach an early agreement on the completion of devolution”, said Monday’s violence was a “further challenge” to peace and a shared future.
Highlighting the importance of the Belfast Agreement as the “bedrock of our peace and our common future” he said “too often we have seen in the past that once we have settled on the structures, once we’ve met the ingredient in the letter, we forget about its implementation in the spirit. And the spirit of the agreement is about partnership. It is about forgetting about the past, of putting a line under it and of being prepared to work for future generations.”
In his first address to the Seanad as Taoiseach, Mr Cowen said the “democratic institutions and the peace that we all worked so hard to achieve are being challenged by a tiny and unrepresentative group of people with no mandate and no support for their actions”. But the “continued existence of sectarianism, of peace walls and of deep communal divisions in parts of the North is an affront to democracy and to a civilised society. It defies belief that this is continuing in the year 2009.”
He also paid tribute to late senators Gordon Wilson, whose daughter was killed in the Enniskillen Remembrance Day bombing, and Billy Foxe, “the only member of the Oireachtas to be killed during the recent Troubles”.
Mr Cowen stressed that “the next vital step is to complete the devolution of policing and justice to Northern Ireland so that locally elected leaders can deal with some of the most serious and central issues faced by any society.
He said: “The great genius of the Good Friday agreement is that it has overturned the old historical analysis where people from different traditions sought an end destination which is mutually exclusive from the other. The great genius of the Good Friday agreement is that it commits us to a common journey regardless of the destination, a common journey that is about signifying our mutual interest in working together.”
He said “we all know that poverty and hopelessness provide a fertile ground for disaffection and alienation”. The recession “reinforces the mutual dependence that we have on each other. It reinforces the need for politics to be seen to work.”
Fine Gael Seanad leader Frances Fitzgerald said of the ongoing violence that “a small segment of subversives, some trying to recruit south of the Border, is determined to destroy, hurt, maim, kill and end peace”. The word should go out to these “enemies of peace and democracy” that “you have no mandate, no right, no authority . . . to speak on behalf of the Irish people.”
Fianna Fáil Seanad leader Donie Cassidy said “nothing that has happened in recent days was done in the name of the people, North or South”.
Rónán Mullen (Ind) said “the unity of political voices is essential in facing down those who would seek to sow discord and regenerate chaos”.
Pearse Doherty (SF) said “the individuals and micro-groups responsible” for Monday’s violence “exploited a situation in which the Orange Order refuses to show real leadership and continues to force five or six marches among thousands through an area where they are not accepted”.
Alex White (Labour) asked the Taoiseach to consider an underground tunnel or bridge to connect “this island to the neighbouring island, which itself has a high-speed rail link to the European mainland”.
