`Unique event in Irish politics'

The leader of Democratic Left's negotiating team, Mr Eamon Gilmore, told the conference that the agreement with Labour was a …

The leader of Democratic Left's negotiating team, Mr Eamon Gilmore, told the conference that the agreement with Labour was a unique event in Irish politics. "Most political formations in Ireland have arisen from disagreement within parties. This one comes from agreement reached between two parties."

The new party's intention he said was to "become the major political party in Ireland and to lead government". The formal process of negotiations had begun in April, but the central question was much older. Echoing the sentiments of other speakers, Mr Gilmore asked why support for the left had never grown beyond 20 per cent.

"The excuses which were always given for the weakness of the left in Ireland no longer apply," he said. "This is no longer a backward conservative country where political thought and ideology were directed from the pulpit."

He said they could no longer escape the truth that "the left in Ireland has been divided; and that we have often devoted more energy to competing with each other than to building our movement".

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Mr Gilmore, a former minister of state for marine, emphasised the importance of the new party's policies and pointed to marine as an important first policy.

Outlining the details of the agreement to the more than 250 delegates at the one-day conference, the Dun Laoghaire TD said the new agreement was not a "Democratic Left wish list for what Labour should do". Every word had been agreed between the two negotiating teams.

Mr Gilmore said there would be a two to three-year transition period up to the conference in 2001. Constituencies would decide themselves what arrangements best suited them. There could be a unified integration of the two local organisations, or a single constituency council or they could have completely separate councils with separate officials if they wished. In that last scenario there would be a constituency management council comprised of three DL and three Labour members.

They would operate a new policy research foundation and would have a shared leadership team of three Labour members and two Democratic Left. There would be 50 Labour members on the general council and 20 Democratic Left members.