Micheál Martin tells Wolfe Tone commeration Government has a ‘good slogan’ but no vision

The Taoiseach's adage that Ireland is the best small country in the world in which to do business is a good slogan "but it is not a vision for a country", Fianna Fáil leader Micheál Martin said yesterday.

He asked why the Government was not talking about being the best small country in the world in which to grow old or be educated or be innovative. “Why are we not talking about being the best small country in the world for supporting community life or for valuing and opening access to culture? Why are we not talking about the role we want Ireland to play in Europe and the wider world?”

Mr Martin said last week’s budget was “deeply regressive” with the biggest benefits going to those who had the most. The Government had no vision for the future of education. “Their cuts have been directly targeted at supports relied on by our most marginal citizens. Schools which are the lifeblood of small rural communities have been pushed to the edge of viability.”

Mr Martin was speaking at the party's annual Wolfe Tone commemoration at Bodenstown, Co Kildare. He said the tradition of Irish republicanism which Wolfe Tone and his colleagues began was never about a compulsion to engage in armed struggle.

“It has always been about building a politics which respects citizens, which works in their interests and where sectarian and party considerations are pushed to the side.”

Some groups had almost debased the word republicanism by their actions in recent years. “They have caused incredible damage to republicanism by their illegitimate campaigns of violence, waged in the face of the opposition of the overwhelming majority of Irish citizens and where the interests of their organisations have been put ahead of the interests of the Irish people.”

To loud applause, Mr Martin said the IRA never had a right to call itself the republican movement. “Now that the Provisionals have been pushed to abandon their campaign of violence, there has been an effort to try and falsify history.”

“Sinn Féin’s effort to promote the idea of an unbroken chain from earlier revolutionaries and themselves is sinister and dangerous. What is to stop the Real IRA and others from claiming the same justification for their equally illegitimate actions?”

Mr Martin said he had warned two years ago of an impending crisis in Northern Ireland but his warnings were ignored. “Today the crisis is acknowledged by everyone and we are seeing a blame game, where different parties seek to distance themselves from a situation which they allowed to happen,” he said. “We have come too far and achieved too much to allow a slow slide into sectarian division and institutional paralysis.”

Mr Martin said the new round of talks which began last week was welcome but they could not succeed unless the governments showed a deep commitment as full participants and guarantors of the talks.