Mr. David Donoghue:

Just to add one or two extra dimensions to Mr. Montgomery's points, which I very much agree with, in the 1990s when we were limbering up for what became the Good Friday Agreement, remarkable personalities were involved, as Mr. Montgomery said. However, they were not necessarily in agreement all the time. They were strong personalities and frequently clashed. I do not want to give the impression that somehow it was easier then. A key ingredient was that there was a British Prime Minister at the time who was prepared to give a remarkable level of priority to the Northern Ireland issue. He was helped by the fact that he had a huge majority. He had the political pressure of his predecessor also having built up a head of steam on Northern Ireland. There was also an IRA ceasefire. The stars were aligned in such a way that it would have been difficult for Tony Blair to avoid giving it priority. However, I do not think that we quite expected that he would put it right at the top of his list of priorities. It was easier to imagine an Irish Taoiseach doing that. Bertie Ahern needed to have somebody with the degree of commitment that Blair had. That was quite unique. It is very hard to imagine a British Prime Minister normally putting Northern Ireland at the top of their list of priorities.

The Senator asked whether that can ever happen again, in effect. I entirely agree with what Mr. Montgomery said about the current incumbent. However, the truth is that even if there were a more promising incumbent, it would be difficult to imagine any British Government deciding that peace in Northern Ireland should get top priority. It goes without saying that the issue would be prioritised by any Irish Taoiseach. On the issue of officials, although they are career civil servants, in the 1990s the best and the brightest people wanted to work on the Northern Ireland peace process. They came from other British Government Departments; they were not all in the Northern Ireland Office. Some of them were in the Home Office or, dare I say it, the Ministry of Defence. They came from a variety of backgrounds and they were talented. One gets the impression that there is less commitment to the problems of Northern Ireland now. It is true that Brexit has changed everything but it is hard to imagine reproducing that degree of political and official level commitment that we had 20 years ago. It is a very good question. It is one that troubles me a lot. I wonder if it was really a fluke that we happened to have all the stars aligned, with Bill Clinton thrown in as well. As I said in my opening remarks, he was a particularly useful resource because both unionists and nationalists felt reassured by him. That is quite unusual for an American President. As is well known, he played a key role in the last night of the talks. It is hard to imagine a better constellation of circumstances.