Cowen condemns North violence

Taoiseach Brian Cowen has condemned the violence in the North and said the political system had to make politics work for people “who for too long have been alienated from the institutions of law and order and a civilised society”.

In his first address to the Seanad as Taoiseach, Mr Cowen urged the North’s parties “to reach an early agreement on the completion of devolution”. He said Monday’s violence was a “further challenge” to peace and a shared future.

He said the Belfast Agreement was the “bedrock of our peace and our common future” and added: “Too often we have seen in the past that once we have settled on the structures once we’ve met the ingredient in the letter we forget about its implementation in the spirit."

He said the spirit of the agreement was about partnership.

"It is about forgetting about the past, of putting a line under it and of being prepared to work for future generations.”

Mr Cowen said the “democratic institutions and the peace that we all worked so hard to achieve are being challenged by a tiny and unrepresentative group of people with no mandate and no support for their actions”.

He added that the "continued existence of sectarianism, of peace walls and of deep communal divisions in parts of the North" was "an affront to democracy and to a civilised society".

"It defies belief that this is continuing in the year 2009.”

Mr Cowen also paid tribute to late senators Gordon Wilson, whose daughter was killed in the Enniskillen Remembrance day bombing, and Billy Foxe, “the only member of the Oireachtas to be killed during the recent troubles”.