Mr. David Donoghue:

We will try to answer a couple of questions as we go along, with the Chair's permission. I will pick one or two, in no particular order.

The OTRs were not part of the negotiations. It would have been extremely difficult politically for either Government to appear to be addressing the issue of those who had not even gone through the legal process. It was sensitive enough trying to find early release arrangements for those who were already imprisoned. There was speculation about side letters and so on but, as far as I am aware, they were not overtly part of the negotiations. I do not think they were covertly part of the negotiations either. I have never heard that. It was simply too sensitive for either Government to go there.

On the illegal activities, if the question is were they part of the negotiations, the answer is, "No, they were not". Of course, both Governments presumed that even after a ceasefire, some illegal activity of the kind the Senator mentioned would continue. It was just an unwelcome fact of life that it would happen. To give a direct answer, I am not aware of those having been on the agenda for negotiations and it is highly unlikely they would have been.

Sinn Féin was looking for clear assurances on prisoner releases. That was by far the most important topic for it on Easter Week. It can be understood why. As Mr. Montgomery said, Sinn Féin wanted to preserve the unity of the movement so the bargaining was done between Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness on the one hand and Bertie Ahern and Tony Blair on the other. It was very much at Head of Government level. It came down to a two-year release point but they took quite a while to get to that. That really was the main issue I am aware of from Sinn Féin's point of view. As Mr. Montgomery said, it did not take a very close interest in the detail of the institutions. It wanted to make sure that North-South structures would be acceptable but it was not particularly following the detail of that or, indeed, other areas. Equality was a major issue for Sinn Féin, as was a serious commitment to policing reform, decommissioning in the sense of making sure it did not jeopardise the negotiations and the prisoner releases. As I recall, that was Sinn Féin's agenda during that last week.

The question of who the real drivers were is a very good one. It could not honestly be said who they were. I would like to think that successive Irish Governments were driving the process. Mr. Montgomery has described how, in effect, two positives came together. I will repeat the point that, going back several years, unionists had wanted to get a replacement for the Anglo-Irish Agreement because they did not like the structure it set up. The British Government of the day supported them in that, in a sense. It wanted to reconcile unionists to what had been achieved, ideally by getting a new agreement. The British Government in the early 1990s was actively helping, or looking for a way to get "a new and more broadly based agreement". That was the phrase used. We were content to go along with that, although we had in mind an agreement that would transcend the previous one. We did not imagine a new agreement that would narrow the previous one. We wanted it to be bigger and better.

It could be argued that the British pushed harder than us in the early 1990s to get a replacement for the Anglo-Irish Agreement but we were part of successive Irish Governments that were pushing the peace process harder. We saw there was an opportunity - when I say "we" I mean at the political level. In fairness to John Major, he led a tricky administration in London. He would have liked to go further in some respects but was not able to do so because of his dependence on unionist votes. He was responding to, let us say, Albert Reynolds's lead at the time. I am trying to say that at different times one or other Government was perhaps slightly ahead of the other but, all told, it was the two Governments that really drove the final stages of the negotiations from about 1995 on. At that point, it could not honestly be said there was anybody else. It was the two Governments, two Taoisigh and the Irish Government, institutionally, that led. We were certainly the ones who were most impatient to get rid of the decommissioning blockage. We were trying to find ways of rebuilding the ceasefire. In that sense, we were leading. I have probably dealt with that point. Mr. Montgomery will take over.