The Minister of State at the Department of Foreign Affairs, Ms Liz O'Donnell, has welcomed the statements by Mr Gerry Adams and Mr Martin McGuinness accepting the principle of Irish unity by consent.
The Progressive Democrats TD said those statements had to be made a reality by building on the start to decommissioning. "They must make it a process, not a once-off". The apparatus and mentality of war had also to be decommissioned, the new Police Service had to be supported and Sinn Féin had to join the Policing Board.
Ms O'Donnell paid tribute to the SDLP as the only nationalist party to have joined the Policing Board at its inception.
Within unionism there was an unease and uncertainty, she said. "If we are genuinely committed to a partnership approach, we must listen carefully." It was inspiring, she said, to have had the fears over the North-South bodies largely allayed. The Good Friday agreement was about "the honourable accommodation of two different sets of political identities and allegiances".
Describing the party's national conference as a watershed, she said the achievements of the past five years, including the Good Friday agreement, were "not the accomplishment of any old hodge-podge coalition".