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Remarks by the Tánaiste and Minister for Foreign Affairs Mr Eamon Gilmore T.D

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Remarks by the Tánaiste and Minister for Foreign Affairs Mr Eamon Gilmore T.D Remarks by the Tánaiste and Minister for Foreign Affairs Mr Eamon Gilmore T.D. at a discussion to mark the 15th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement Metropolitan Arts Centre, Belfast 29 April 2013 “It is time to leave the politics of the past in the past and start building the politics of the future” Good morning everybody. I’m delighted to be here this morning with Secretary of State Theresa Villiers for what I think is a very important gathering. We’re here almost fifteen years to the day that the Good Friday or the Belfast Agreement was signed. There are many people in this room who remember exactly where they were when the Good Friday Agreement was concluded. I watched it on television. More importantly, there are people in this room who can’t remember the signing of that Agreement at all, either because you weren’t born or just about born. And I think there are a couple of things we need to remember about the Agreement. The first is this - it didn’t happen by accident. The overwhelmingly majority of people in Northern Ireland, the overwhelmingly majority of people throughout the island of Ireland and throughout Britain wanted it to happen. They wanted a peaceful society to be able to get on with their lives and to be free of violence and conflict. A number of political leaders, who showed great courage, wanted it to happen. And even though from time to time as the talks went on, many times they broke down and sometimes it looked as if they had broken down irretrievably, we stuck with it, and kept with it until we got that Agreement. And they were helped by people overseas -people like President Clinton of the United States, Senator George Mitchell, and former President of Finland Marrti Ahtisaari - people who helped and encouraged political leaders to stick with the talks and to achieve that Agreement. It was a great achievement. It brought to an end thirty years of conflict and killing. It laid a basis for a peaceful society in Northern Ireland. There has, of course, been a lot of progress since then. There have been, as the Secretary of State has said, additional agreements which have added to it such as St. Andrews and Hillsborough. There has been great progress in the relations on the island. The Irish government has no better or stronger relationship than we do with the Northern Ireland Executive. There is no other set of political leaders outside of our State that we meet more frequently and have deeper conversations with than we do with the Northern Ireland Executive. We have a North South Ministerial Council that meets on a regular basis across Ministerial areas of responsibility: doing new work together; co-operating trying to build a better country - North and South. The relations between Ireland and Britain have never been better than they are at present. And that’s reflected not just in the amount of trade that passes between the two islands - over a billion Euros a week trade between the two islands. It’s reflected in cooperation at European Union level and in international fora. We have established a Parliamentary Association both between Britain and Ireland and between North and South meeting regularly. There is, of course, more that needs to be done. We are committed to having a Languages Act. We are committed to having a Bill of Rights; committed to establishing a Civic Forum. All that is work that has to be done. But all of that is at the political level, at the institutional level. And I think fifteen years on into this Agreement, we need to be looking at now is where it takes us to the future. I remember when I was growing up, when I was fifteen, sixteen, and I suppose political opinions forming and my views were forming about where the country should go and where the world should go. I remember people talking to me about the Civil War. Politics in the South when I was growing up at fifteen and sixteen was dominated by the Civil War and your stand on the Civil War - were you for de Valera or for Collins? And to be honest I thought that was old hat. I thought that was the Past. What I was interested in - and I know many of my contemporaries were interested in - was the future. And I think that that is where we need to be today. I believe it is time to leave the politics of the past in the past and start building the politics of the future. The way I look at it is this. The politics of the future is about employment opportunities and what kind of future we want to build for ourselves. Where do we get employment? How do we get investment to provide the jobs that will give us a future? What kind of services do we want to see developed? What type of education system? And how does that education system relate to research and innovation and all of the new things that have to be done to build the economy and society of the future? Ireland holds the Presidency of the European Union at the moment and that involves a lot of meetings and a lot of discussions. But the one issue that we have made a priority in that Presidency is the issue of youth unemployment. Because there are far too many young people in Ireland, Britain, Northern Ireland, throughout Europe who cannot get jobs or who cannot get the jobs for which their education qualifies them. We have taken the view that the biggest priority right now is to try and secure employment opportunities for young people. That’s why we secured an agreement across European Union States on the idea of a Youth Guarantee. This is basically the idea that if somebody is four months or more out of work that they get either an opportunity of a job or work experience or training or education. We’ve got agreement across Europe as well to provide a fund of six billion euro to underpin that. The question now is how we should use that. And I think this really is where you come in. You are the generation who have grown up in peace time in Northern Ireland, who have grown up after the Troubles. I think you need to take ownership of the future. And I think you need to take ownership of the politics of the future –What needs to be done to ensure that jobs are available for you? ; What needs to be done to ensure that there is a better education system? What now needs to be done to ensure that there is a genuine friendly, shared cohesive society in Northern Ireland? Because we all know that despite the Agreement and the huge progress that has been made at political level, we still have some problems. We’ve seen it over the past number of months. You know as well as I do that there are still divisions in our society. And what we need to do is we need to talk about how do we heal those divisions, how do we bring people together and build a genuinely shared society. How can we, all of us, proclaim our own identities or national identities, where we come from and our traditions in a way that is respectful and respected by each other? We still have work to do in that area. I believe there is work also, to do, in looking outside of Northern Ireland, looking at where we are looking at the kind of Europe we share. Both Britain and Ireland are members of the European Union, and we need, I think, to talk with each other about the kind of Europe that we want to build. And also we need to talk about the kind of world that we want to build. Because some of the challenges that we are facing in the future, - like the challenge of climate change or the way in which the world in which we all share is changing - weren’t perhaps high on the political agendas or any agendas in the past. For example, the fact is that between now and 2050, when those of you who are in these rooms fifteen or sixteen today will be in good solid middle age; there will be two billion extra people in the world. The world will have to produce sixty percent more food than it does today. But, we already know that 25 percent of that food will be wiped out by climate events. These are challenges that are not problems that are unique to Northern Ireland. They are problems that we share with people elsewhere in the world and we have to start addressing how we are going to solve them together. So I think that what we need to be thinking about today. As we remember back fifteen years ago to the Good Friday Agreement, I believe the huge contribution that the Good Friday Agreement made is to put the politics of the past into the past and leaving it in the past. And I think what we need to be doing today is addressing the politics of the future for Northern Ireland, for Ireland and Britain, for Europe and for the wider world. And I look forward to hearing your contributions later this morning and to that discussion. Thank you very much indeed. .
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