Tá mé an-sásta a bheith leis an gcoiste inniu. Mar fhocal pearsanta, gabhaim comhghairdeas leis an gCathaoirleach agus a chlann fá choinne na hoibre a rinne a dheirfiúr Orlaith, agus Ciaran agus Kathleen, ar son sepsis agus Rory Óg. I thank the Chair, Deputy O’Dowd, and the committee for the opportunity to speak this afternoon. I use this opportunity to congratulate Deputy O'Dowd and his family on the work being done by his sister Orlaith, her husband Ciaran and their daughter Kathleen on sepsis. Their son Rory died of sepsis and since then they have fought a wonderful campaign and saved thousands of lives. Comhghairdeas le clann O'Dowd. An old friend of mine is being buried today - I should be at his funeral - Tommy Devereux from County Mayo, a staunch, long-time Irish republican. I dedicate my remarks to Ann, Orla, Oona and the Devereux clan. They were there when it was tough and were the backbone in County Mayo of Irish republicanism.
I do not think it is putting it too strongly to describe the Good Friday Agreement as the most important political agreement of our time in Ireland. When it was agreed, George Mitchell told me and Martin McGuinness that was the easy bit. He said that the hard bit was going to be implementing it, and he was right. The twists and turns from 10 April 1998 to now have been many.
Currently, the institutions are not in place due to the intransigence of the DUP, the machinations of successive Tory Governments and unionist efforts to force the European Union and Irish Government to scrap the protocol.
However, despite these difficulties, the success of the agreement is that there are many people alive today because of it. The Good Friday Agreement brought an end to almost three decades of war. It is seen by many internationally as an example of how deep-rooted conflicts can be resolved.
There are still those who seek to use violence or threaten the use of violence. They represent the past, as do the securocrats who manipulate the groups and individuals involved. All of them should end their actions and go away. The Good Friday Agreement is not a perfect agreement. It was, and is, a compromise between conflicting political positions after decades of violence and generations of division. It is also a fact that crucial elements of the Good Friday Agreement have still not been implemented by the British or, the committee should note, the Irish Government, including a bill of rights for the North, the civic forum and a charter of rights for the island of Ireland. The British Government still refuses to honour its Weston Park commitment to establish an inquiry into the murder of human rights lawyer, Pat Finucane. Likewise is the British Government’s refusal to fulfil its commitments and obligations to deal with the legacy of the past and the concerns of families bereaved during the conflict. It is obvious to everyone that this and recent Tory Governments have no real investment in the Good Friday Agreement. In fact, Tory Government policy in London is to emasculate the human rights elements of the agreement. Nonetheless, the new dispensation ushered in 25 years ago has replaced the years of violence which preceded it. It is important to remind ourselves that earlier initiatives, both political and military, on the part of the British Government, often supported by the Irish Government, failed to bring peace because they were not inclusive. They consciously failed to address the causes of the conflict. Rather than tackling exclusion, censorship, discrimination and repression, they entrenched these injustices and, in so doing, deepened and perpetuated conflict.
Previous efforts by the Irish and British Governments, from the Sunningdale Agreement in December 1973 through to the Anglo-Irish Agreement in 1985 and the Downing Street Declaration in 1993, were all about defending and protecting the status quo. They were about stabilising and pacifying, rather than removing the injustice that was driving political dissent and resistance. The policies of both Governments sought to criminalise and marginalise Irish republicans. The British state’s counterinsurgency strategy also relied heavily on state-sponsored collusion with unionist death squads, including in this State. None of this worked. On the contrary, it made the task of peacebuilding more difficult. It led to an entrenchment of conflict. Peacebuilding requires a different approach. Peace is not simply about ending conflict; it has to tackle the causes of conflict. Peace must therefore mean justice. The work of the late Fr. Des Wilson and Fr. Alec Reid was central to this endeavour. Sinn Féin also came to understand the importance of the international dimension. We began, along with our work on the island, to explore that area of work, most successfully in the USA and South Africa.
At that time, the British Government was resisting any scrutiny of what was happening in the North from the international community. The British Government insisted that these issues were an internal matter for the Government of the United Kingdom. The Irish Government had no consistent strategy to contest this. As Sinn Féin increased our electoral mandate, rather than addressing the core issues that were driving conflict, policies were developed to subvert and set aside the rights of republican voters. This, of course, was entirely counterproductive. A key part of our focus, therefore, was about turning the governments away from this disastrous, undemocratic and deeply flawed policy of refusing to talk to Sinn Féin. Sinn Féin argued in A Scenario for Peace in 1987, in our talks with the SDLP in 1988, in Towards a Lasting Peace in Ireland in 1992, in my joint statements with John Hume, and in the Hume-Adams agreement that inclusive dialogue was essential for building peace. John Hume was pilloried, vilified and condemned by governments, most of the political parties and by large sections of the media here for daring to talk to me. Thankfully, he refused to give in and succumb to that pressure. Imagine where would we all be today if these folks had had their way.
Sinn Féin had also begun the slow process of talking to others, occasionally publicly, but often privately and secretly. This was especially the case when dealing with the British and Irish Governments. The dialogue between John Hume and I was probably the clearest example of this developing alternative strategy. It generated enormous public attention when it came into the public view accidentally. Most of the attention was negative, as the establishment in Britain and Ireland pushed back against any new approach. Others were starting to listen and talk to Sinn Féin and to acknowledge the rights of our electorate. Taoisigh Charles Haughey, Albert Reynolds and Bertie Ahern authorised and facilitated a dialogue with the Sinn Féin leadership. Bill Clinton, both before and during his presidency, listened to Irish-American voices and broke with the pro-British agenda that had been followed by successive US administrations. Tony Blair, while leader of the Labour Party and when he was Prime Minister, also recognised the need to talk and to listen. These key leadership figures were critical to ending the failed approaches of the past and developing a new approach based on dialogue and inclusion.
The process also involved republicans taking significant initiatives and risks to create momentum in the process or to end crises. All of this took many years of hard work - too many years - but in the end, collectively, we succeeded in building a conflict resolution process that, for all of its imperfections, has become a model for peacebuilding. The negotiations, which commenced in September 1997 and led to the Good Friday Agreement, were based on this new and different approach grounded in inclusion, equality and democracy. As Jonathan Powell remarked in his contribution to this committee in June, "The crucial point about the Good Friday Agreement negotiations was making them inclusive". That was the key to its success. The Sinn Féin leadership went into the negotiations knowing we would not achieve all of our objectives, given our political strength at that time. However, we had red line issues. For example, we had already decided to compromise on the need for a single unity referendum by holding two referendums North and South on the same day. Our leadership decided that the policing and justice issues should be dealt with in a separate negotiation. The RUC had to go, and in our view, a commission could best deal with this issue. One of our key objectives was to get rid of the Government of Ireland Act. I am pleased that we succeeded. The issue of equality had to be embedded in the agreement. As a result of the collective efforts of all involved, measures were put in place to achieve this and the agreement correctly refers to "equality" 21 times, in sharp contrast to the Sunningdale Agreement, where it was not mentioned at all. Crucially, there is the issue of consent. Previously, this was interpreted as referring specifically to the consent of the unionist majority defined in Article 4 of the Sunningdale Agreement as “represented by the Unionist and Alliance delegations”. The Good Friday Agreement is clear: constitutional change requires the consent of "a" majority. That is the democratic position. The sensible goal for all democrats must be to persuade the largest number of people to vote yes. That is obvious and common sense.
Finally, it is important to understand that the Good Friday Agreement is not a settlement. It never was. It never pretended to be. It is an agreement to a journey without agreement on the destination. The promise of the agreement is for a new society in which all citizens are respected, where the failed policies of the past are addressed, and where justice, equality and democracy are the guiding principles. It also provides, for the first time, a peaceful democratic pathway to achieving Irish independence and unity. This is and was crucial at the time and central to the decades-long effort to provide an alternative to armed struggle as a means to advance these legitimate goals. From a Sinn Féin perspective, the efforts to reach that position involved prolonged engagements with John Hume, back-channel communications with successive British governments and Fianna Fáil-led administrations, ongoing outreach to Irish America and subsequently the White House, as well as ongoing attempts to outreach to elements of unionist and loyalist opinion who would talk to or communicate with us.
No Irish Government, to this day, has produced a strategy to build a new and inclusive Ireland and give effect to Irish unity. Now there is a mechanism to achieve this. The absence of Irish Government planning is indefensible and incredibly short-sighted. There is no excuse for this. What is needed is the full implementation of the Good Friday Agreement, including setting a date and preparing for the referendum on the future. This requires inclusive discussions about the future to ensure not only that citizens take informed decisions, but also that the new Ireland which emerges when the union ends is one in which everyone is valued and social and economic rights are upheld.
The Irish Government should establish a citizens' assembly, or a series of such assemblies, to discuss the process of constitutional change and the measures needed to build an all-Ireland economy, a truly national public health service, an education system and many more essential public services. This makes sense. Very few countries get a chance to begin anew. We in Ireland, North and South, have that chance. Most leaders would be excited by the prospect, and would embrace and welcome it. Most leaders with a vision for the future would carefully and diligently seize the opportunity but not here, not in this place. Political parties which have enjoyed being in power in this State since partition do not wish to give up that power. That is why our outgoing Taoiseach, Deputy Micheál Martin, refuses to establish a citizens' assembly to plan the future, or to plan for an inclusive, citizen-centred, rights-based society of equals. It is certainly Sinn Féin’s desire to encourage and help to create such a new departure for all the people of our island.
This is all about democracy. The people should decide. At a time when the debate on constitutional change is dominating most of our politics and opinion polls are being produced regularly, it makes no sense not to plan and not to prepare for unity referendums. The Irish Government has a responsibility and an obligation to plan for constitutional change. The Government and the rest of us need to be totally committed to upholding and promoting the rights of our unionist neighbours, including the rights of the Orange Order and other loyal institutions. The protections in the Good Friday Agreement are their protections also. This is their land. This is their home place. There needs to be a clear commitment by the rest of us to uphold their rights and to work with them to make this a better place for everyone. As Martin McGuinness said, “I am so confident in my Irishness that I have no desire to chip away at the Britishness of my neighbours”. Surely the new Ireland planned and built by all of the people of the island can accommodate and celebrate our differences and diversity. Irish unity, and the end of the awful union with England which was forced upon us, will profoundly transform the political landscape here. A new multicultural society, embracing and respecting all traditions, will emerge.
At the core of the progress we have already made is dialogue. That is the way forward also. Talking and listening to each other is the key to resolving conflict, problems and differences. Dialogue is key to planning an inclusive society. Yes, there will be many challenges but there will also be many opportunities. I look forward to the future with hope and optimism. Go raibh maith agat.
