Progress on the decommissioning of paramilitary weapons was demanded during a short debate on the North.
The party's spokesman on Northern Ireland, Mr Charles Flanagan, said decommissioning remained the major roadblock to future substantial political progress. "The responsibility for removing the serious obstacle to progress rests largely with the IRA and the loyalist paramilitary groups and their political allies, Sinn Fein and the loyalist parties."
He said Sinn Fein and the IRA, by word and deed, must persuade the Irish people that their commitment to achieving total decommissioning by May of next year was real and genuine.
"We remain to be convinced of their good faith. Statements by the IRA in the Sinn Fein newspaper, An Phoblacht, to the effect that there never will be decommissioning, are hardly the kind of confidence-building measure that is demanded of all parties to the agreement."
Mr Flanagan said it was outrageous that the vicious cycle of totally unacceptable and fascist-type paramilitary beatings and thuggery continued daily. "Last year, almost 250 people were savagely attacked as paramilitaries and hoods exercised control over areas by means of fear and intimidation. This year so far, almost 50 incidents have been reported, as terror strikes to the heart of the more disadvantaged estates in towns and cities."
Mr Karl Rock (Dublin South West) said the Belfast Agreement marked the first real chance of peace since the Sunningdale Agreement. "However, we do have a problem. We still do not have full North-South bodies set up. We still do not have the executive. We have not had a single gesture from the republican and loyalist groups of one bullet being handed in."
Paying tribute to the Garda, Senator Fergus O'Dowd said the murder of Det Garda Jerry McCabe struck right at the heart of society. "To be gunned down so coldly and callously, as he was by 15 bullets from an automatic machinegun, deserved the imposition of a minimum 40-year jail sentence."