Mr. Tim O'Connor:

The word "legacy" cannot be found in the Good Friday Agreement. It is not in there. We did not deal with it. If the Senator is asking me personally why there is no reference to legacy in the Good Friday Agreement, my own totally personal view is that it is because we were not sure this was actually a final agreement. Legacy comes into play when a conflict is over and when it is being looked back on. The Good Friday Agreement was negotiated in the context of a desire to get a deal and an agreement. Discussing how we were going to deal with the past would almost have been a luxury. We did not have the capacity to deal with it. When did legacy start to become a political issue? The answer is in about 2012. That is 17 years after the agreement. You could say it is a positive that there is now a general view that the conflict is over and that we now have to start dealing with its legacy.