Policing: Sinn Féin had made very substantial progress in negotiations to bring about improvements in policing in Northern Ireland, Mr Gerry Kelly told the ardfheis.
He said: "The job given to the Sinn Féin negotiation team was to achieve a new beginning to policing and justice. It is not an impossible task, and republicans need to be acutely aware that if the republican leadership achieves the objectives set in this area, then this in turn will raise fundamental questions and problems for all activists.
"There is a public commitment if we reach that point to then put a changed policy to our membership and nationalism as a whole.
"While we are a substantial distance from that point yet, activists need to realise that we can achieve it, and with achievement there is a responsibility."
He rejected an assertion by Séamus Mallon of the SDLP that Sinn Féin and IRA supporters in west Belfast, Tyrone and south Armagh did not want proper policing because, if you had policing, you could not have criminality. "No one wants a new beginning to policing and justice more than the nationalist and republican people of west Belfast, west Tyrone and south Belfast," Mr Kelly said.
Warning that both republicans and unionists faced major decisions in the future, he said: "Nobody said it would be easy. As political activists, we must rethink strategically, debate strategically and decide what is best for our party, for the cause we represent and, most importantly, for the people we represent."
Sinn Féin's opposition to the current policing arrangements was not a matter of timing, not merely a question of tactics. It was a matter of integrity and of inalienable rights.
"We, as republicans, will not be part of a police force which is involved in collusion, we will not be part of a police force which protects human rights abusers, or drug barons or sectarian murderers simply because they are state agents," he said.
Dublin South-Central TD Aengus Ó Snodaigh said that Sinn Féin recognised An Garda Síochána as the legitimate police force in the Republic, albeit one requiring fundamental reform.
Delegate Declan Kearney said that the Archbishop of Armagh, Dr Seán Brady, and others, including the deputy chairman of the Northern Ireland Policing Board, Denis Bradley, had acted as cheerleaders for the PSNI in recent times.
Dr Brady, Mr Bradley and others should get the political detectives out of the police, Mr Kearney told delegates.
He described the intention of the PSNI Chief Constable, Hugh Orde, to merge his CID and Special Branch units as "codology", adding: "The fact of the matter is that the branch men who ran operations in the 1980s are now the people who run the crime department in 2005."
Raymond McCartney, a Derry delegate, said that the Northern Ireland Policing Board should refuse to clear the purchase of new-style baton rounds known as "attenuating energy projectiles".
Delegates heeded a call to reject a motion that would have required Sinn Féin to refuse co-operation with the PSNI before the creation of a united Ireland.
"What do we do in the meantime? What do we do until the green flag flies over the 32 counties?" asked delegate Seán Oliver.
Michael Agnew, a delegate from Ballymena, said that the PSNI was still not accountable and was anti-nationalist. "I would like to advise young nationalists thinking of joining this police force that a good police officer is lost in a corrupt police force."
