Speaking at the special Seanad session on 18 September, I said:

Emotions may dull over time but attitudes should change forever.

I will speak about the change we should focus on and what we should do in Ireland after this horrific experience. We should fix our minds on getting our house in order rather than indulge in playing hurler on the ditch.

What happened last Tuesday in a single act was not different on a moral dimension from any of the thousands of individual acts that have taken place on this island over the last generation.

Any act of terrorism, whether it kills or injures a single person or many thousands, is wrong.

Terrorism is always wrong.

The sincerity of our response to last week's events can be judged by what we do in the future about terrorism in this country, not in how we support any action the United States may take. If we believe what we saw last week was an attack on civilisation itself, then we must also believe that any terrorist act makes that same threat, even if it happens on our own doorstep.

"Terrorism is always wrong."

Is that really our attitude in Ireland?

Is that the attitude which has governed how we have reacted and coped with the events of the past 30 years in this country?

Have we, for whatever reason and by acts of omission and commission, allowed an atmosphere of tolerance towards terrorism to build up?

Has this toleration encouraged terrorism to grow and to extend its power over what we do and to extend its reach deep within the political process?

There are many in the Unionist community who believe the Republic is a safe haven, in exactly the same way as Afghanistan is for Osama bin Laden and his organisation. Can we put our hands on our hearts and sincerely declare that there is no grain of truth in that belief?

There are many, in the context of decommissioning IRA arms, who ask how such caches of arms can go without being discovered in a country as small as this.

The events of the past week have brought home to me the realisation that we have been sending the wrong signal to the terrorists in our midst. We have allowed them to misinterpret our hatred of terrorism by the way we have offered them methods to withdraw from it.

We have been so anxious to persuade them to give up terrorism for politics that we allowed them believe they can have both.

From now on we should leave them in absolutely no doubt whatsoever on this issue. We should now make it clear beyond all possible doubt that politics and terrorism do not mix.

They must choose, but more importantly we must choose - between right and wrong.