Senator Hayes delivers Peace speech

Senator Maurice Hayes last night delivered the latest in the Tip O’Neill at the University of Ulster’s Magee campus.

Addressing an invited in the Great Hall, Senator Hayes took as his theme ‘Moving Out Of Conflict’.

He said: “There is a lot to be said for drawing the line, in order to let politics and mutual trust develop. The present democratic institutions are a delicate graft on a rootstock riddled with memories of sectarian struggles, deeply rooted in centuries of animosity.

“There is a real danger that the graft might not take if there is too much scrabbling in the underground looking for evidence of the bad husbandry or the criminal neglect of yesteryear.

“The general political will that the institutions should be made to work, should be allowed to do so, could easily be frustrated if we insist on picking at the sores of old wounds, raising old ghosts, revive old animosities and suspicions, and most of all shattering the burgeoning trust which is a prerequisite for peaceful co-existence and co-operation.”

Turning to the memories and investigations into the events of Bloody Sunday, Senator Hayes was unconvinced that the long, expensive enquiry will uncover any essential new truth about that day.

“I do not believe that the Saville Enquiry will unearth the essential truth, the definitive account of the events on Bloody Sunday, which are so deeply incised on the psyche of this city,” he said.

“I can think of many better things to do for the families of victims and survivors for £200m. And if Bloody Sunday, why not inquiries for every other atrocity beginning at Abercorn and ending at Omagh?”

Concluding, Senator Hayes called for a loosening of the tightly-packed knot of competing national identities on the island of Ireland, for a kind of breathing space in which new forms of everyday living and ordinariness could develop and flourish, free from the animosities and passions of the past.

(JM/SP)