Republican News · Thursday 7 February 2002

Advancing the All-Ireland agenda

While others have paid lip service to the re-unification of Ireland, republicans have stood fast in exploring and advancing the mechanisms we need to make the aspiration of a united Ireland a reality.

The Good Friday Agreement has given form to the All-Ireland Implementation Bodies and the North South Ministerial Council, encompassing Waterways, Trade, Tourism, Transport, Inland Fisheries, Agriculture, the Environment, EU support programmes, Health and Education. Now we have the foundations created by these institutions and the framework of the Good Friday Agreement, we need to build the house.

As part of maximising and developing the All-Ireland strand of the Good Friday Agreement, we need to whip up the same level of enthusiasm and participation that we have generated around the debates on policing and demilitarisation.

A special Sinn Féin Ard Chomhairle meeting last month discussed the route map towards a united Ireland. An internal party All-Ireland Seminar will be held in the Ardboyne Hotel in Navan on Friday 22 February. It is the next step.

The All-Ireland project is a republican project and we will be identified with it, so the importance of understanding the opportunities within the current structures and the potential to push past current boundaries and claim ownership of this process cannot be underestimated.

It is a challenge that the entire party needs to be involved in. Yes, there are many many different priorities, not least the forthcoming election in the South, but if we do not inject our enthusiasm into the debate no one else will.

Delivering on our commitments and objectives as well as challenging political and structural inertia will not be an easy task. But for the re-unification of Ireland to become more than rhetoricm, we must turn ideas and analysis into action. People throughout Ireland and the Irish community spread across the globe depend on us to deliver.

We need to challenge not just unionist preconceptions or the lack of popular debate in both the 26 Counties and the Six Counties about how we move towards re-unification - we also need to challenge our own structures and personally held beliefs.

We need to examine our vision for the future, to sustain momentum and tackle political inertia. All this calls for clear analysis and perhaps most fundamentally, the building and nurturing of genuine All-Ireland networks within the party. We need to talk to each other, to explore the work programmes of the structures as they stand and we have to ask serious questions about how the work of the All-Ireland Implementation Bodies and the North South Ministerial Council can be expanded.