The Australian newspapers have quite a number of reports about what is happening and I shall not enter into a long debate tonight, although I could. I could marshal my facts—I know the person who spoke on behalf of the Secretary of State to Sir Ninian, and I could outline the position. But tonight we are asking, "What is the use?"

My honourable colleague, the right hon. Member for Lagan Valley, and I started talking to the Government immediately after this Parliament was elected. We have continued to do so for a long time, and no one can doubt our dedication to the matter. Even the Secretary of State has referred to that fact over and over again.

The Secretary of State had better realise that the people of Northern Ireland cannot be fooled or deceived; the wool cannot be pulled over their eyes. They believe that if there are 10 weeks in which to do a job that seems impossible to complete in that time, extra weeks must be given to do that job. If circumstances arise that cut into those 10 weeks, the ways and means must be found to make available the lost weeks.

We have been prepared to work every day of the week except the Sabbath if that is what is required. We have made that clear from the very beginning. We are not trying to hold up the process. The same red herring is drawn in every time, that the Unionists will not meet the Dublin authorities, but we will do so. We look forward to confronting them with their claim over our territory.

I find it very offensive that the hon. Member for Eltham should say that the remarks made in the House tonight by the Unionist Members were offensive to the Dublin Government. My hon. Friend the Member for North Down said that the process was putting the nose of the Ulster people into the dust. He was right; it is offensive to pull the plug on them in the middle of these important meetings, because the 10-week obligation cannot be met.

I make no apology for saying again that Northern Ireland is not an annexed colony of the Irish Republic. It is part and parcel of the United Kingdom. The hon. Gentleman had better remember that it is not one-way-street loyalty and that the Ulster people have never sought to make it that. They have stood by the United Kingdom in days of peril.

The hon. Member for Eltham was in Northern Ireland, and he should return to look again at the various cenotaphs to learn how many Ulstermen gave their lives for his liberty as well as for those in the rest of the United Kingdom. Some of us will be on the Somme soon to mark the 75th anniversary of the occasion when an entire generation of Ulstermen was wiped out. I resent anyone telling me that I am offensive when I stand for Northern Ireland as an integral part of the United Kingdom and not as an annexed colony of the Irish Republic.

There are three propositions that I am asked as a Unionist to accept, and they are repugnant to me. First, I have to accept the inalienable right of the Dublin Government to be involved in the internal affairs of Northern Ireland. That I will never accept, and nor will the Majority of the people of Northern Ireland. Let the House be crystal clear about that. When talking to an hon. Member earlier today, he said, "I am amazed that such a thing should even be suggested." That, however, is the ultimatum that is put to me by nationalists.

Secondly, I am asked to accept that the aspiration of nationalists has never, from the time of partition to this day, been allowed to be expressed. Not even when nationalists were in the power-sharing Executive was the aspiration of true nationalism expressed, because they did not have the Council of Ireland. I am being asked as a Unionist and a member of the United Kingdom to accept that nationalists were never able to express themselves.

Thirdly, I am asked to accept that the police of Northern Ireland are now as great a part of the problem as the IRA. That I totally and utterly repudiate.

These are the propositions that are being pushed upon the Unionist people. The hon. Member for Newry and Armagh—I am sorry that he is not in his place—gave us a list of figures when he talked about discrimination. He need not read homilies on discrimination. The SDLP has controlled four area councils for a long time—Londonderry, Newry and Mourne, Down and Strabane. I have some figures as well—they are Fair Employment Agency figures, not mine. I have little time for the FEA, but its figures have "infallibility" when it comes to discrimination, and they provide the standard which others have to meet.

The figures show that 65 per cent. of the population who are represented in Londonderry council are Roman Catholic and that 75 per cent. of jobs go to Roman Catholics. It appears that 75 per cent. of the population who come within the area for which the Newry and Mourne council is responsible are Roman Catholics, and that 88 per cent. of the jobs go to those people. It appears also that 55 per cent. of the population for which Down council is responsible are Roman Catholic and that 60 per cent. of the jobs go to those people. That is an area which is represented in part by the hon. Member for South Down (Mr. McGrady). Lastly, 52 per cent. of the population for which Strabane council is responsible are Roman Catholic, and 60 per cent. of the jobs go to Roman Catholics. There we have discrimination over 18 years.

I listened to the hon. Member for Newry and Armagh talking about the civil service. I do not know anything about civil service figures, but according to the FEA, the largest grade in the Northern Ireland civil service has 12,000 members out of the 21,000 civil servants in Northern Ireland, and 52 per cent. of all recruits in the past five years have been Roman Catholics in that section, although only 40 per cent. of the population are Roman Catholics. Yet the hon. Gentleman says that we are always discriminating.

We have a controversy about schools. I do not think that the Secretary of State has been fair to the House. He has referred to Protestant schools. There is no large Protestant school movement in Northern Ireland today. There are state schools; there are no Protestant schools. To those state schools go Roman Catholics, Protestant, Jews, coloured people; everybody goes. They are all entitled to go there. Those schools grew out of Protestant Church schools.

The Stormont Government, a Unionist Government, said to the Churches, "Give us your schools and we will make a state system." Very foolishly, in my view, they handed over their schools. They should not have done so; they should have asked the Government to give them money to run their schools. But the Protestant churches handed over their schools. The Roman Catholic Church was wiser. It said it would not, and it went on agitating for money. Now it gets 85 per cent. of the cost of maintaining its schools and 100 per cent. for its teachers' salaries and 100 per cent. for its teachers' pensions. So the Roman Catholic schools are treated better in Northern Ireland than in any country I know. I went to America recently and asked how much it gave to its Roman Catholic schools. They told me, not a dollar.

What alarms the Protestant people of Northern Ireland is that we have a body in Northern Ireland, the Standing Advisory Commission on Human Rights, which I do not know much about—