SF should return to acceptance of consent principle, says Bruton

SINN Fein accepted the principle of consent in 1994 and if it could go back to that agreement it could unlock the problem of decommissioning, the Taoiseach said yesterday.

He was speaking to reporters during a one-day visit to Fermanagh at which he sought, with mixed results, to emphasise cross-Border economic and social rather than political developments.

It was Mr Bruton's fifth visit to Northern Ireland as Taoiseach and his first since last June, when he was at Stormont for the opening of all-party talks.

It was a perfectly choreographed low-key visit, with Mr Bruton meeting both sides of the community. During a round of engagements he also had a private meeting with relatives of the victims and survivors of the Enniskillen bombing in 1987. He also met the son of one of the five men killed by loyalists at a betting shop on the Ormeau Road in Belfast.

Mr Bruton told reporters that in 1994 Sinn Fein accepted there could be no settlement in Northern Ireland without the agreement and consent of unionists. But now, he said, the republican movement was operating on the basis of coercion and this made the decommissioning issue more difficult to resolve.

After a visit to Belleek Pottery, the Taoiseach met a group of peace studies students from St Michael's College and Portora Royal School, whom he addressed on the Republic's economic boom.

He then went to a lunch at the town hall hosted by Mr Sam Foster, the Ulster Unionist chairman of Fermanagh District Council. Mr Foster told reporters that he welcomed Mr Bruton in his role as chairman and said: "I will not be rude to anybody who comes with decency and respect to this council."

The chairman had been criticised by a DUP councillor, Mr Joe Dodds (father of senior DUP member Nigel Dodds). Mr Dodds objected to the visit and said that any visit by an Irish prime minister was "political".

Mr Foster said he had made known unionist concerns about Articles 2 and 3 of the Irish Constitution and Mr Bruton understood that. "I thought he was a nice man," the chairman said. "I did not find him in any way authoritarian, high-flutin' or bumptious."

Mr Bruton merely said of the objections to his visit that everybody had the right to protest and he understood that.

The purpose of the lunch was to enable the Taoiseach to meet local community groups and industry representatives. Only one other councillor was invited, the Independent Nationalist Mr Paddy McCaffrey, who did not attend. The MP for the area, Mr Ken Maginnis, who was also invited, did not attend.

Later, Mr Bruton took part in a video-link between the University of Ulster extension at Enniskillen and Skibbereen in West Cork, an extension of Cork RTC.