I move:
That Dáil Éireann welcomes the launch of the "twin track" process by the Irish and British Governments, calls on all relevant parties to co-operate fully in both tracks and approves the terms of the Joint Communiqué agreed by the Taoiseach, Mr. John Bruton, T.D., and the British Prime Minister, Mr. John Major, M.P., on 28 November, copies of which were laid before Dáil Éireann on 5 December 1995.
This motion, in requesting Dáil Éireann to approve the terms of the joint communiqué, will enable the requirement imposed by Article 29, sub-article 5.2, of Bunreacht na hÉireann to be met. That provision of the Constitution provides that the State shall not be bound by any international agreement involving a charge on public funds unless the terms of the agreement shall have been approved by Dáil Éireann.
A charge on public funds will arise by virtue of the joint communiqué as a result of the establishment of the international body to provide an independent assessment of the decommissioning issue. The international body is to be funded jointly by the Irish and British Governments. It will have offices in both Dublin and Belfast and its Dublin office will be in Dublin Castle.
On 29 November last the Taoiseach and I had the opportunity of informing the House on the joint communiqué issued the previous evening.
The need to meet the provisions of the Constitution provides another welcome opportunity to address the House in some detail on the significance of the agreement reached by the two Governments two weeks ago.
The immediate reason for the motion before the House is the establishment of the international body which involves a charge on public funds. The membership of the body is now complete with the agreement of Mr. Harri Holkeri of Finland and General John de Chastelain of Canada to join the Chairman, Senator George Mitchell of the United States. On behalf of the Government and people of Ireland I reiterate our appreciation to these distinguished individuals, all of whom bear heavy burdens in their own countries, for agreeing to serve on the body. They bring an impressive array of political, diplomatic and peackeeping skills and experience to bear on an issue which has threatened to impede progress to the all-party negotiations which are essential to a resolution of the Northern Ireland problem. I do not underestimate the scale of the challenge facing them. They deserve the gratitude of us all for being willing to begin their work in the cause of peace at short notice and under pressure of an extremely tight deadline.
I also want to express my thanks to the Governments of the United States, Finland and Canada for their readiness to endorse the appointment of their nationals to the body and to provide additional personnel to assist the members in their task of independently assessing the decommissioning issue. The international body has already begun this work with an informal meeting of the three members in New York in the past few days. Practical arrangements for the establishment of its Dublin office have been put in place by the Department of Justice. The first formal meetings of the body will be held in Belfast and Dublin from 15 to 18 December. I understand that it will meet in Dublin on 17 and 18 December. The body has already been in contact with relevant parties and has issued an open invitation to the public to submit written submissions. The Government will make a submission to the body at the meeting in Dublin.
I need not remind the House that the present peace is an unprecedented opportunity for all of us on this island. Anyone who has visited Northern Ireland — and it is good to know that peace has brought such a welcome influx from this part of Ireland — will know that a great burden has been lifted from the shoulders of the people there. That mood was well caught by the jubilant crowds who turned out to welcome President Clinton and to celebrate the peace with him.
It is vital that this unprecedented opportunity is not squandered. The overriding need is to consolidate the present cessations of violence through a lasting and honourable political accommodation. To do that, we must foster the qualities of hope and trust. Hope is needed to reassure the people of Northern Ireland, of this island and more widely that the nightmare of violence will never return and that only the values of peaceful democratic process will determine our future. We must also reassure those who have been persuaded to abandon violence that a genuine and meaningful political process is open to them and that the interests and aspirations of their community will be given no less importance and attention within that process in conditions of peace than in conditions of conflict.
We must reassure all the people on these islands who want to see negotiations and a settlement in place that the two Governments are living up to the pledges they made in the Downing Street Declaration and to the vision of the Framework Document to promote a fair and honourable accommodation across all the relationships. Above all we need to enable people to work constructively for their mutual benefit without compromising the essential principles or the long-term aspirations or interests of either tradition or community.
The greatest obstacle to the realisation of these hopes is the deficit of trust, reflecting a long and bitter history of confrontation and violence. Trust is needed to enable all the parties to embark on the necessary process of negotiation and growth of trust will be necessary to bring those negotiations to a successful conclusion. That was why the Government felt such deep concern at the prospect of a stalemate which it feared might arise from the strongly opposed positions which emerged, subsequent to the cessations of violence, on the question of the decommissioning of weapons. We saw a grave danger that the momentum of the peace process would be dissipated in a sterile and circular argument as to whether decommissioning came through political progress or political progress through decommissioning. Instead of seeing these as somehow conflicting goals we felt they should be seen as complementary to each other. Instead of a negative standoff we sought to create a positive interaction between them. For that reason we developed the policy of the twin-track approach in the hope that progress could be made in both areas in parallel. After a period of intense and difficult negotiation, and with the very benign interest and support of the US Administration, both Governments reached agreement on the terms of the twin-track approach in Downing Street on 28 November.
Apart from paying tribute to its distinguished membership the key point I wish to make about the international body, is that it is invited to present an independent assessment of this issue and is expected to consult widely. The communiqué invites it to address certain specific or technical aspects of the decommissioning issue. We hope, however, that in pursuing its consultations and drawing on the representations made to it the body will form its own judgment on the overall context and conditions in which progress towards decommissioning can best be achieved. As we see it, the obstacles to decommissioning lie not so much in the technical or legal issues to be resolved as in the creation of a context which would make voluntary decommissioning achievable in practice. We hope that the report of the body will advance the agenda on this point and suggest ways in which the co-operation necessary for this goal can be achieved on all sides.
Lest there be any doubt, the Government is firmly committed to securing the decommissioning of all arms and material held by organisations who formerly resorted to violence in pursuit of political ends. This is consistent with our unwavering position that a resolution to the Northern Ireland problem must be sought and established exclusively by peaceful and democratic means. We wish to see new agreed political structures within Northern Ireland, between North and South and between the two islands so that both communities in Northern Ireland can share fully in the ownership of, and freely give their allegiance to, the structures by which they are governed. This requires a comprehensive application of the principle of consent as envisaged in the Downing Street Declaration and the Framework Documents and a political climate free from coercion and from the threat or use of force applied for political ends.
It is important also to make clear that the current debate on decommissioning has nothing to do with tolerating the possession of illegal weaponry. Our laws and the actions of our security forces are unambiguous on that point. Rather the issue is about our efforts, building on the ceasefires and the climate of peace, to persuade those possessing arms which have so far eluded detection in either jurisdiction to decommission them voluntarily in the interests of a better and safer future for all.
It is well known there is a difference of view between the Irish and the British Governments on this issue. This difference arises not from any disagreement in principle on the desirability of the earliest possible decommissioning but from a different practical analysis of the conditions in which the paramilitaries will be capable of delivering decommissioning given the historical, psychological and practical factors involved. If a precondition is genuinely not deliverable, without putting in jeopardy the essential goal of sustaining and consolidating the ceasefires, then insistence on it can only prove counter-productive to the objective being pursued, and we believe an alternative route towards that objective must be found.
Both Governments are committed to a careful and constructive consideration of any recommendations made by the body. However, if the body is to properly assess the circumstances in which decommissioning can become a reality and meet the challenge of its mandate generally it must have the fullest co-operation of all the relevant parties.
The determination of the Government and its predecessor to advance the peace process has been on the clear understanding that Sinn Féin has joined us in an exclusive commitment to peaceful and democratic methods and that it will use its influence to sustain that commitment and to consolidate the peace. We expect that Sinn Féin will speak authoritatively to the body on the position of IRA weapons and on the issue of how the gun can be taken out of Irish politics. It will, of course, also be enabled to put forward any wider or particular concerns, as it sees fit, for the consideration of the body.
I have repeatedly stressed, and have done so again in the House today, the importance which the Government attaches to the goal of decommissioning. However, it is important also to keep this issue in perspective. We know that even total decommissioning of all existing material, however desirable that might be, would not be a reliable guarantee against an upsurge of violence in the future. We know from our experience the horrors of death and destruction that can be engineered from readily available materials. We know that, regrettably, weaponry is available on the international black market as never before.
Decommissiong in isolation amounts only to a decision or guarantee in relation to a particular set of weapons. The broader guarantee that the peace process is irreversible must come from the political process and, ultimately, the underpinning of a negotiated settlement. The real task is to decommission mind-sets and attitudes. I hope the Republican movement will see in the international body an opportunity to address the genuine and widespread fears that the obstacles to decommissioning are not just about the difficulty of dismantling the past but portend some sinister intention for the future. The work of the body can be used constructively to give added reassurance to those who fear that the democratic process will be tainted by violence. Political parties must be reassured that the commitment to the democratic process by former paramilitaries is genuine and irreversible and that the process of negotiation and agreement will be conducted free of the threat or use of force.
I would recall also that within the communities in Northern Ireland there is a strong sense that the issue of weapons is not the only significant barrier to confidence. Allegations of continued recruitment and training by paramilitary organisations, the rumoured targeting of individuals, the failure to restore missing bodies to their families, the banishment of individuals from their communities and above all the increasing incidence of brutal so-called "punishment beatings" are all manifestly corrosive of the climate of trust which is so necessary for the launch and successful conclusion of the substantive negotiations which we all need to see in place. The humanitarian objections to these activities are overwhelming, but they are deeply negative in their impact on the political process also.
The agreement reached on the joint communiqué has generated a renewed momentum in the search for a permanent peace. The visit of President Clinton has given a further and heartening boost to that momentum. The reaction of the people on the streets of Belfast, Derry and Dublin and throughout this island to this visit sends the clearest signal of all that the work of the international body and the approach of the twin tracks must work. The people will accept nothing less.
In his address in this House, in his speeches to public gatherings North and South and in his remarks since his return to Washington, President Clinton has demonstrated that he is a true friend of Ireland and of the United Kingdom. His continuing interest in the success of the twin track process and that of his senior aides such as National Security Adviser, Tony Lake, and the US Ambassador to Ireland, Jean Kennedy Smith, is a crucial support to all those who will be engaged in the process. It is a reminder to those who would refuse to engage in the twin track approach that the international community too is behind this process.
I have welcomed the sense of urgency which the members of the body have already brought to their task. We must bring a similarly urgent approach to the work of the first track of preparatory talks. The joint communiqué makes clear that these talks will have an entirely open agenda, allowing any party to raise any issue it wishes. The Governments have also made clear that they are flexible about the format of the talks as they develop, subject to addressing comprehensively all the relationships across the three strands. They are determined, however, that they should be intensive and geared to the firm aim of launching all-party talks negotiations by the end of February 1996. That is an ambitious target, but attainable with goodwill on all sides.
I am glad that both Governments are investing great urgency in the preparatory talks. When I met Sir Patrick Mayhew in London on Friday last we reviewed the invitations which we had extended to the parties. We agreed to intensify our contacts with them and to prepare in various ways the ground for productive bilateral and multilateral meetings. I have had contact made since that meeting with all the Northern parties with this objective in mind. I have good reason to believe that these will bear fruit, even if the prospect of meetings is not always as immediate as I would wish.
Unfortunately, the leaders of the Unionist parties do not as yet appear to have appreciated the potential of the twin track process. In President Clinton's eloquent words, "engaging in honest dialogue is not an act of surrender, it is an act of strength and common sense." The Unionist community prides itself on these qualities. I hope and expect that strength and common sense will prevail over fear and suspicion. Indeed, the Unionist community, which has suffered much and has perhaps the keenest sense of threat, has in many ways the most to gain from agreement.
If we are to reach agreement, then we must negotiate and before we negotiate we must agree on how and on what basis we are to do so. That is the sole purpose of the preparatory talks. No party entering them will prejudice its position on any of the many substantive questions to be resolved.
The tone of some of the reactions to my invitation to enter into preliminary dialogue has been regrettable. It offered encouragement to those who doubt the level of commitment which exists to serious dialogue. There has also been some apparent misunderstanding of the purpose of the preparatory talks and of the basis on which I wrote. That purpose is entirely consistent, not only with the agreement reached by the two Governments in the communiqué but also with the precedent of the 1991-92 talks. These talks were convened by both Governments and all of the Unionist parties took part in them. I hope it will be possible, through direct contact, to clear up these misunderstandings. In an inter-locking three-stranded process, the Irish Government will inevitably be centrally involved in discussion of North-South and east-west relations, but equally we accept, as we always have, that we will not be directly engaged in discussion of future internal structures, which are primarily for the Northern parties to agree.
I look forward to discussing these questions, and the many issues relating to the management of the process of negotiations, with the leaders of the Unionist parties at the earliest possible date. It is vital that instead of polemics we get on with the business of crafting a fair and honourable accommodation.
At our London meeting the Secretary of State and I also agreed that our officials should examine a number of issues which are likely to be raised in these preparatory talks, on the lines set out in the communiqué. We shall be reviewing this work at further meetings before Christmas.
It is encouraging also that the parties themselves in Northern Ireland have intensified contacts among themselves. The joint communiqué emphasises that the two Governments will treat each party on an equal basis and encourage any format for meetings that advances the objective of the preparatory talks.
My visit to Belfast this morning was relatively brief and had a primarily economic focus. Among the vast majority of those I met I found a strong sense that the twin track process is the way forward. My discussions this morning convinced me too that the launch of the joint communiqué and President Clinton's hugely successful visit have struck a deep chord. People in their daily lives, business people and trade unionists expect this process to succeed. They demand from us that we make it succeed. Political leaders would do well to take account of this groundswell of public feeling.
The motion before the House offers all the parties in Dáil Éireann the opportunity to renew their commitment to the policy of Anglo-Irish co-operation in resolving the problem of Northern Ireland followed by successive Governments. The bipartisan approach adopted by the Opposition parties, while allowing for constructive criticism, has been of considerable assistance to the Government in the difficult and protracted negotiations which led to the joint communiqué. I want to fully acknowledge this. By adopting this motion the House will send a clear message that is united in calling on all parties to co-operate in the twin track process. This co-operation must be wholehearted, transparent and given in both tracks.
I commend the motion to the House.