Dáil Éireann Debate, Thursday - 16 November 2023
54. Deputy Bernard J. Durkan asked the Tánaiste and Minister for Foreign Affairs the steps he continues to take to increase contact with all the communities in Northern Ireland, in the context of moves towards the restoration of the Northern Assembly. [42534/23]
View answer55. Deputy Bernard J. Durkan asked the Tánaiste and Minister for Foreign Affairs the extent to which his Department continues to encourage and influence discussions with all sides in Northern Ireland in order to establish a level of mutual confidence that would facilitate the restoration of the Assembly. [45327/23]
View answerI propose to take Questions Nos. 54 and 55 together.
It is deeply disappointing that 18 months on from the last Assembly elections, Northern Ireland's political institutions remain blocked, and as a result the North-South Ministerial Council is also prevented from fulfilling the responsibilities mandated to it by the Good Friday Agreement. In my engagements, I have underlined the importance of getting the full range of Good Friday Institutions up and running, across all strands.
Elected leaders have a particular responsibility to demonstrate that politics works. The continued blockage of the institutions is the result of a political choice by one party, but damaging to the exercise of politics by all parties.
A clear message from my ongoing engagement with political and civic leaders from diverse backgrounds across Northern Ireland has been the importance of an urgent restoration of the devolved institutions. Unionists, nationalists and those who are neither have articulated a profound level of frustration that their local leaders are being prevented from playing their full part in addressing the myriad challenges facing Northern Ireland.
It is time that the democratically elected representatives of Northern Ireland were allowed to take up their responsibilities and deliver on the multiple and intersecting challenges facing the people of Northern Ireland. My engagement with political and business leaders at September’s Northern Ireland Investment Summit left no room for doubt that a restored Executive would be best positioned to advance a rich array of opportunities.
In the margins of the British Irish Chamber of Commerce Conference on 12 October in Dublin, I discussed the challenges of Executive formation with the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland. I was in direct contact with Northern Ireland political parties in late October.
I also recognise that Northern Ireland has always been strongest when the Irish and British Governments have worked in close partnership. In the ongoing absence of functioning Strand One and Strand Two institutions, it is timely to recall that both Governments, and the parties to the Good Friday Agreement 'committed to partnership, equality and mutual respect as the basis of relationships within Northern Ireland, between North and South, and between these islands.' In the spirit of partnership, my Government is committed to promoting cooperation, coordination and trust with all parties in Northern Ireland and across these islands.
This Government is committed to strengthening our relationship with our British counterparts, in particular through the framework of the Good Friday Agreement, which explicitly recognises the importance of East-West relationships in Strand Three. I am pleased that we will host the next British-Irish Council Summit on 23-24 November in Dublin Castle and meet there with the British Government and other BIC member administrations.
I will host the next meeting of the British-Irish Intergovernmental Conference, also established under strand three of the Good Friday Agreement, in Dublin on 28 November. The Conference enables engagement on matters of mutual interest within the competence of the United Kingdom and Irish Governments. I look forward in particular to discussing efforts to restore the Strand One and Strand Two institutions with the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland and other UK ministerial colleagues at that meeting.
Those meetings underline the importance of structures of the Good Friday Agreement for engagement between the two Governments, providing a framework for our partnership. They also underline the importance of getting the full range of Good Friday Institutions up and running, across all its three Strands.
