Adams: 'Republicans prepared to move forward'

The Sinn Féin President Gerry Adams told his party's annual Wolfe Tone Commemoration at Bodenstown in Co Kildare this afternoon that republicans must face up to the challenges ahead.

He said republicans had to be confident about the peace process and rise up to face the difficulties ahead.

Gerry Adams hinted this afternoon that republicans were prepared to move further towards resolving the impasse in the peace process.

He said they had already made repeated efforts to find a way out and that the party was again engaged in detailed and intense discussions which had reached a new intensity of dialogue.

This would mean republicans facing up to the challenge, sure in their belief in their analysis, and confident in their peace strategy.

The reality was, he said, that if the political will existed - and republicans had that political will - then progress was possible.

Consequently, intense efforts to agree a package must continue until there is an agreement or until we have exhausted all possibilities of agreement, he concluded.