Erin McGreehan (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

There was anger. There was fury. There was hope. Hope won out then in the end because we had to do this, we could not go on anymore and we had to make that compromise.

For us sitting at the kitchen table in the Cooley Mountains, the Good Friday Agreement was a starting point and not the end point. It was the starting point to what we would have in Ireland and a re-unification. It put into that democracy that Northern Ireland did not have beforehand and we were guaranteed that democracy with the assembly and shared power. That democracy was coming. We knew we did not have that beforehand.

Mr. O'Connor mentioned earlier, as I was coming in, the need for maturity. As someone sitting down here in a privileged position, one is looking and one tries to detach emotion from it. Does Northern Ireland need to mature that little bit and have a little more independence?

Our independence in the Twenty-six Counties brought a great level of maturity. We are a drastically different country than we were 100 years ago or even 15 or 20 years ago. It is too easy for a party to pull down the assembly. We cannot do that in the Republic and it cannot be done in Westminster. Does Mr. O’Connor think that there is a level of immaturity or a need for a bit of growth to happen so that is not the case anymore? We have had nearly 30 years now. We see problems even in Kosovo with that shared power. Shared power has limits on it. There is a review mechanism in the Good Friday Agreement. I am very curious that if more responsibility was put on the Northern Ireland Assembly, would it grow and would we see a different Northern Ireland that could bring us towards a more pragmatic and better island? As a Border woman, I do not see a Border. I see a community and my neighbourhood. A strong Northern Ireland is a strong Ireland.