The DUP rhetoric is becoming tired and stale. The Peace Process is not a one-way street it is about resolving the conflict and providing a future away from the pain and suffering that has left no community unscathed.
Equality, democracy, a new beginning to policing – it is difficult to understand why there would be any level of opposition to progress on any of these issues.
There has been a summer of sectarian violence – and the facts show that the vast majority of attacks on homes, property, schools and churches have been carried out by unionists.
Not that I want to try and brush any attacks on the protestant community under the carpet because I don't. Sinn Féin have been unequivocal and forthright in our condemnation of any sectarian attacks. In fact we have done more than that, Sinn Féin representatives and activists have stood side-by-side with the community to try and manage interface tensions and reduce sectarian violence.
You have to ask where has the DUP been.
The answer is that they have been sitting down with the UVF and UDA on the North and West Belfast Parades Forum. We all saw the result of the tactics employed by that forum on the streets of North and West Belfast in the wake of the Orange Order attempt to force a sectarian parade through the nationalist community on the Springfield Road.
At the same time their refusal to talk to the representatives of the majority of nationalists sends out a clearly sectarian signal.
There is a gaping hole in the arguments put up by the DUP for not getting the Peace Process back up and running.
They complain about alienation. Yet it is only through dialogue and getting the political institutions back up and running that we will be able to really get to grips with these issues.
We would do far more to sort out interface tensions and tackle issues like poverty, housing, educational underachievement through a local Assembly than we will ever do thorough direct rule British ministers.
The questions for the DUP are clear – Do they want the peace process to be a success and are they prepared to provide positive leadership? Do they not have the confidence in their own political position?
The truth is that the historic, momentous and unprecedented initiatives from the IRA have liberated the peace process. We need to build upon that momentum.
That requires the DUP to take their collective heads out of the sand and take on they political responsibilities they claim to aspire to. This means that they must begin to show some positive leadership.
The DUP claim that they are representative of a new confident unionism.
If that is the case then what are they running away from? Let them sit down with Sinn Féin and work out a way to get the institutions back up so that we can work to improve the lives of all our people.
If their communities are saying that they have been left voiceless it is wrong to criticise Sinn Féin because it is unionism that has failed unionist areas.
I say with no small sense of irony that many would benefit from the type of representation that Sinn Féin deliver.
