Mr. Rory Montgomery:

In a way, the declaration of support at the beginning, which I was involved in drafting and which was not subject to a lot of scrutiny, deliberately avoided trying to offer a view as to the root causes or where blame lay. Implicit in the part on the constitutional issues was a kind of balance or recognition. The right of the Irish people as a whole to self-determination, which was a key republican demand, was balanced by the need for consent. Within that there was a key unionist requirement of acceptance of the legitimacy of Northern Ireland as part of the UK, on the basis of consent, without going back to what happened in 1920 or thereafter. However, it also recognised that a substantial section of the people in Northern Ireland share the legitimate wish of the majority of the people of the island of Ireland for a united Ireland. The text was balanced. It implicitly nodded at these things but when it came to violence in particular, it stated:

The tragedies of the past have left a deep and profoundly regrettable legacy of suffering. We must never forget those who have died or been injured, and their families. But we can best honour them through a fresh start, in which we firmly dedicate ourselves to the achievement of reconciliation, tolerance, and mutual trust, and to the protection and vindication of the human rights of all.

That was an attempt to recognise the huge injuries and stresses people had suffered, including physical, moral and emotional, but not to take a view as to the precise chain of causation or otherwise.