THE Green Party TD, Mr Trevor Sargent, has called on the IRA to resume its ceasefire and has described the British government's handling of the peace process as "appalling".
Addressing the party's annual convention in Westport, Co Mayo, at the weekend, Mr Sargent also criticised the British Labour Party for failing to offer any "valid critique", and the Irish Government for the indefinite suspension of the Forum for Peace and Reconciliation.
"Everybody at the forum had full confidence in the bona fides of the Sinn Fein delegation," Mr Sargent said. "Anybody with an ounce of knowledge of the realities of life within the republican movement knew full well that there were two distinct points of view within that movement." Yet, after the break in the ceasefire, the forum had been suspended "just when it was needed most of all".
Other parties at the forum had contributed to a "misconception" that the forum had failed to reach a full consensus on the principle of consent, Mr Sargent continued. Its final report had failed to reach a consensus on "the means of measuring consent", not the principle, which had been agreed, he added.
The British government's "botched attempt" at designing an elective process which could be described as"elections by government invitation", flew in the face of democratic principles, Mr Sargent said.
"It really beggars' belief that a government supposedly seeking inclusivity and true proportionality would abandon transferable voting and exclude independents and some parties from standing," he said.
Referring to current Government policies, Mr Sargent said too many people were "sick of the public relations imagery which passes for politics".
He added: "There is so little to choose from between all the other parties now that John Waters in The Irish Times described the Green Party as the only opposition party in the Dail."
The Green Party needed at least seven TDs to transform the political landscape through long overdue legislation in every single department, Mr Sargent said.
The parts's former lord mayor of Dublin, Mr John Gormley, predicted that the party would be a "player in the postelection negotiations". Many who had voted Labour last time round, seeking change, were now "disappointed, disenchanted and more alienated than ever before", Mr Gormley said. Politics had, if anything, become "more meaningless, more detached from people's lives", he added.