John McGahon (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

This has been really good. Going back to comments made at the start of the meeting, my view is that it goes back to Tony Blair that morning on Downing Street when he stated, "A new dawn has broken, has it not?". I have always wondered whether the British Government would have had any interest in trying to tackle Northern Ireland if it was not for the stonking majority Tony Blair had received and the zeal that a new Prime Minister experiences after such a political win. Such a euphoric win brings with it a zeal and zest to try to do something new and put one's mark on history. As noted in the Alastair Campbell diaries, in the first 18 to 24 months of the Blair Government, they wanted to make history on a range of things and they saw Northern Ireland as their opportunity to do that. I always wondered what would have happened if there had been a different election result back in 1997.

To come back to the point, there has been a series of questions in respect of our guests' views on what the Good Friday Agreement is and what we think of it today but I would love to know hear their insight as people who were in the middle of the negotiations. I am looking for the view of a fly on the wall. Who were the main players to deal with? Who was difficult and who was not? Was there a time in the days of negotiation when they felt things were going south? At what point of the negotiations did they feel an agreement was going to be reached? What was it like being inside the pressure cooker of those negotiations?