JUST GET ON WITH THE JOB
»»Martin blasts tanaiste’s ‘lack of diplomacy’ »»Coveney told to end ‘lecturing and hectoring’
MICHEAL Martin has launched a scathing attack on Tanaiste Simon Coveney, telling him: “Get on with the job.”
The Fianna Fail leader was particularly critical of his performance as Foreign Minister in recent months, describing his and others’ tactics as “megaphone diplomacy”.
On an exclusive interview with the Irish Mirror, he blasted Mr Coveney for his “wrong timing” in announcing in the Oireachtas he’d like to see a united Ireland in his lifetime.
Mr Martin said: “The actual challenge for me as a politician on the island of Ireland is to work the Good Friday Agreement, fulfil its potential.
“Simon Coveney should do the same, instead of going on and on about what he wants in his lifetime.
“For God’s sake get a bit of momentum back going in the peace process.
“Get the Assembly back up and running, get the Executive back up and running, get North-south bodies running again, get new North-south bodies.
“My point is that the dynamic of the Good Friday Agreement has in it the pathway to Irish unity, if that was ever going to happen.”
After the Tanaiste, spoke out on his hopes for Irish unity the DUP hit out at his timing and the row threatened to derail a Europe-wide agreed deal on Brexit and the future of the Irish border.
Democratic Unionist MPS are keeping the Conservative Party in power in Britain in a minority government in so-called supply and demand agreement.
But after a deal was announced on the first phase of Brexit negotiations, they claimed not to have been consulted on the detail and only agreed after receiving further assurances from British Prime Minister Theresa May. And Mr Martin claimed Mr Coveney, as the minister responsible for overseeing Brexit, could have derailed the whole process, suggesting his diplomatic deficiencies had been shown up.
He added: “In terms of the qualifications he put on it, I think the timing was wrong.
“He is entitled to be for a united Ireland of course, but I think in the context of the negotiations that were then ongoing, I don’t think he was thinking through the implications at all.
“I just think the mood music has become progressively worse.
“There’s a lot of hectoring going on, there is a lot of lecturing, whereas what we actually need is to be developing channels of communications with the British that are durable, less megaphone diplomacy.”
I don’t think he was thinking through the implications at all micheal martin On TANAISTE SIMON COVENEY