Lord Alderdice:

I thank Ms Gildernew. She has mentioned quite a number of important things. I may be wrong but my memory of it - and that is getting a bit more faulty as the years go on - is that Jim Molyneaux was describing the IRA ceasefire or cessation as the most destabilising thing, rather than the Good Friday Agreement itself. I think the reason for that was, whenever the violence was going on, you kind of knew where the enemy was, in his terms. Once that stopped, I think he realised that once republicanism moved away from depending on physical force and moved towards depending on the mandate, that did to some degree really change and eventually threaten the perspective that he would have held to in those days.

After 25 years, things have changed. I will say a little about what I think has changed. Ms Gildernew is quite right in that 25 years ago, I certainly believed that we would be a lot further along the road of collaboration with each other. For some time, it looked pretty good when Ian Paisley of the DUP was leader and Martin McGuinness was deputy First Minister and then, subsequently, with Peter Robinson replacing Ian Paisley. It was looking reasonably promising at that time. I would not overstate it; there were still all sorts of problems but there was at least a degree of optimism. Ms Gildernew, while she continues to look very young, is to some degree part of a previous generation that understood what the violence was like, how it adversely affected all sides of the community, and so on.

As the next generation came along and the longer there was a degree of "peace", if we use that word, the more people kind of took it for granted and second, the more the relationships diverged. Ms Gildernew mentioned civic unionism, as distinct from political unionism. Certainly, within political unionism, there was an increasing fear that ultimately, they were going to lose. It was not just a question of demography being a problem for them. I think they began to feel, and frankly, given that I have been over at the House of Lords for 25 years or more, I have seen a change in the relationship between politicians in London, on the British side if you like, and politicians in Northern Ireland. The sense of attachment to Northern Ireland and its people and institutions is not the same as it was 25 or 30 years ago. There are all sorts of interesting reasons for that but they are not reversible. I do not believe that political games being played with the protocol and so on represent a real deep sense of attachment and interest, as far as politicians on this side of the water are concerned, towards Northern Ireland or unionists. I think unionists realised that things are not going in the right direction. You might well say, with good reason, that if unionists feel that, surely the thing to do is to make a good relationship with the people they are going to be spending the whole of the future with. That is a completely rational position to take but one of the things that led me into my own approach to politics was a realisation that people frequently did not behave in their own rational best interests.

Even over the Brexit question, many of us were saying to people in the DUP, and indeed the Ulster Unionists, who did change their position, "for goodness' sake, do not vote for Brexit. It is not in your best interests at all". They did not listen and we know the outcome of that. There are all sorts of ramifications from it. The problem is that the three sets of relationships have not been attended to or nourished in the way that they could have been. It is important also to note that people in Northern Ireland and in other places too have long memories. They have long memories regarding historic hurts and difficulties.

Horrible things happened on all sides and it is quite difficult to let go of those. That was one of the things we tried to do and we were making some progress on it at the start but that has stalled, as Ms Gildernew described the institutions having stalled.

It is not impossible to get some of these things back together again. If the British and Irish Governments can find a way of working together to help, not use it against each other in some kind of political game but genuinely help, that would be most helpful because we must remember the Good Friday Agreement, and the Anglo-Irish Agreement before that, came about because the two Governments were the driving force that held things together. Insofar as they are not doing that in strand three or in any other context, that is unhelpful and we would both probably agree it is important that the two Governments work together to try to take us forward.