New Assembly 'a monumental step': McDowell

The new political order in the North is a monumental step towards uniting green and orange, Tánaiste Michael McDowell said today.

Speaking before today’s inauguration of devolved government at Stormont, the Minister for Justice predicted the North had immense future potential as an innovative region of Europe.

The tough-talking Progressive Democrats party leader has been a harsh critic of the IRA and Sinn Féin.

He said today: “As a liberal Republican, I welcome this monumental step on the road towards reconciliation of green and orange. From here on, the two communities in Northern Ireland have the means to focus on the things they share rather than on the things that divide them.”

Mr McDowell will attend today’s ceremony with Taoiseach Bertie Ahern and party colleague Liz O’Donnell, a former junior foreign affairs minister who helped broker the 1998 Good Friday Agreement.

“Northern Ireland has immense potential as a prosperous forward-looking and innovative European region if the new political order translates into a society in which political and economic participation is enjoyed by all on an equal basis,” Mr Mc Dowell said.

The Minister for Justice said he had pushed for acceptance of the rule of law, the courts, and the police over the past five years.

“I have also striven to ensure that there was no room for criminality in the political sphere and that no participants in the political process could claim to be above the law.”

Mr McDowell remarked that there were now only a small number of paramilitary splinter groups in existence.

The Tánaiste also remembered all those who gave their lives or who dedicated their lives to the cause of political reconciliation in the North.

“While the tide of events may have flowed past some of them, their contributions and indeed the contributions of all those who have suffered for their beliefs and at the hands of the paramilitarists should be remembered on a day like today,” he said.