Northern Ireland

My Lords, I welcome the general thrust of the Minister’s repetition of the Statement made in another place. Northern Ireland is going through a wonderful period at the moment. Generally there is peace and the economy is growing at a far more rapid rate than it is in many other parts of the United Kingdom or, indeed, in western Europe. The statement made in Armagh by the two Prime Ministers has, none the less, set alarm bells ringing across Northern Ireland because it did not simply imply what would happen if the Assembly created by the Belfast agreement failed. At the moment it appears to me that it will fail because the situation is not like that of Scotland and Wales, as has been simplistically stated, with elected representatives forming a devolved government. The Stormont Assembly and executive are different: it is a case of forcing those who are elected to work together—law-abiding elected Members and those who are involved in criminality. That is the big difference between Belfast, Cardiff and Edinburgh. The IRA still exists. As the southern Irish Prime Minister said, the IRA and Sinn Fein are inextricably linked, and, as the Independent Monitoring Commission report stated, the IRA is still involved in criminality. So, as of today, the Government are asking law-abiding Members elected to Stormont to form a government with those with that kind of background. It cannot succeed. But does the Minister understand that it can succeed if the criminality ceases and if the IRA ceases to operate? If these people are so intent on being democrats, why do they not say that the IRA no longer exists? It is as simple as that. But it is still there and it is still involved in criminality. That is the problem. Does the Minister understand the second major problem—that is, that alarm bells are beginning to ring again across Northern Ireland, which could eventually lead to violence returning? Those alarm bells are within the loyalist community—in the streets of Belfast and in the valleys and hills of western Ulster. I trust that everyone recalls the reaction to the Anglo-Irish Agreement. Certainly, the noble Lord, Lord King, who is beside me, will recall the events of that time. I warn that the alarm bells are beginning to ring as a result of what the two Prime Ministers said was the alternative option to the success of the Belfast agreement. They did not just give the impression that there was co-operation between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, which I fully support—I am involved in business in Northern Ireland and in the Republic of Ireland with no problem whatever—but implied that there would be an extension of the involvement of the Republic of Ireland in the internal affairs of Northern Ireland, which is an entirely different matter. That is why the alarm bells are now ringing and I fear that that means that the loyalist paramilitaries will delay their decommissioning.