Ireland of Equals Sinn Féin -- Building an Ireland of Equals

Ard Fheis speech by Sean Oliver, Sinn Fein's All Ireland Agenda co-ordinator

In opening this section on the All-Ireland agenda, I need hardly remind anyone here that this is the very core of our political project - this is what every single one of us is about, in our day-to-day work, wherever we are located - it is what inspired all of us to join in the struggle, to involve ourselves in republican politics.

The All Ireland Agenda is about using our structures in every county in ireland to take forward our vision of the new Ireland to the local communities around them, and to build a demand for the Ireland of Equals - the national, the social, the economic and the cultural.

It is about us coordinating and joining-up the work of our growing number of elected comrades in their different sites - Europe, Leinster House, the Assembly, the councils across the island, and now also in Udaras na Gaeltachta - to work to best effect, to use those institutions of governance into which the people have placed them, as vehicles to advance the republican struggle, and to make a difference in peoples' lives.

The strands of the all-ireland agenda are about building this struggle - the national and the social - on our path to our ultimate objective -

to open up a nation-wide debate on reunification,

mounting a campaign for the Irish government to begin the practical preparation and planning for this,

consulting across all sectors of society on the rights which must form the core of an ireland of equals

forcing the pace to expand the existing all-ireland arrangements in every sector - in combatting poverty, in agriculture, tourism, health, education, infrastructure and many many more

involving republican activists in regional campaigns, to be the leaders and the empowerers of the people, on the issues which matter to them,

and using our political strength in the border corridor to work on reintegration - making the border irrelevant and invisible, and producing integrated plans for that deprived and excluded region.

So, given all this, it is fitting that it is the All-Ireland Agenda section of our clar which opens the live televised session of this ard fheis.

As the viewing public - our supporters, our friends, our opponents and the generally curious out there - tune in at 11am, they see us for what we are - a 32 county party, stretching every sinew to work, not just for reunification, but to build, day by day, our vision of our goal - the democratic socialist republic - the vision which 90 years ago, brought men and women onto the streets of this city, and other parts of the country - and which they handed down to this generation of republicans to continue, in the words of the easter proclamation.

Other political leaders are now throwing references to the proclamation into their speeches as simple and cynical soundbites - no later than Monday past, Mark Durkan was at it, and Bertie, Enda, Pat and the rest have all suddenly dusted it off, as they trail in our wake, and clamber onto our ground.

But the viewers this morning will see the genuine article, the republican party, who walk it like we talk it, and who believe it in our hearts - who every day are striving for that vision, whether in Tralee, in Wexford, in the Creggan, Conemara, Ardoyne, Finglas or Gweedore, or anywhere else where republican activists live and breath.