Seanad report: While warning that the absence of cross-community support for the Police Service of Northern Ireland was a threat to peace, Taoiseach Bertie Ahern stressed the need for reconciliation when he reported to the House on developments in the peace process.
"The task before us all now is to build a better future, a better Ireland," he said. "This must be an Ireland that is a warm home for everybody who lives here.
It must be a cold house for no one. Everyone must feel secure and respected. They must achieve a wholehearted and genuine reconciliation with the unionist people. They had a right to live in peace on this island.
"We too have a right to our aspirations. They can be advanced using only peaceful and democratic means. We must have a deeper dialogue with those who do not share these aspirations. We cannot just talk past them about what we want. If we are to talk of unity, let us talk of uniting people and not just territory."
He said he believed the Northern Executive and Assembly and the North-South Ministerial Council would return next year and that they represented "the best and only hope of a democratic, peaceful and prosperous future".
He said there was no question of granting Northern Ireland MPs speaking rights in the Dáil.
He said that recent events had shown loyalist criminal and paramilitary activity remained acute. He stressed the need to consolidate progress on policing.
The role of the PSNI was central to a future free of paramilitary threat.
"In my view, the absence of full cross-community support for the police service is a dangerous threat to the hard-won peace that we all enjoy."
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Despite media reports to the contrary, the safety review of the Corrib onshore gas pipeline would most certainly deal with the issue of its proximity to dwellings, the Minister of State at the Department of Communications, Marine and National Resources, Pat the Cope Gallagher, said.
Speaking in a debate on the controversy which led to the jailing of the "Rossport Five", Mr Gallagher said that clearly no safety review could take place without full consideration of the issue of proximity.