Mr. Bertie Ahern:

I remember sitting my leaving certificate in 1969 when the Troubles started. I also remember 1968 and the civil rights movement. We watched it all our lives from down here. We discussed it many times in this House. Many things happened. There was always that sense of hopelessness that if we did not get everybody on board, we were never going to get anywhere. I always thought that the Sunningdale Agreement in 1974 and what happened in 1985 were good efforts. I never want to take away from the people involved in both those efforts because they worked very hard to achieve them but there was a fundamental difficulty with them. They did not make a lot of difference in the end because everyone was not involved. They were not inclusive. If you did not have an inclusive position, you were never going to stop the Troubles.

What Tony Blair and I set out to do more than anything else was to try to stop the violence. In 1995 and 1996, when we were working together when in opposition, along with Mo Mowlam and others involved, such as David Andrews, we were trying to find a way to reach out to and work with everybody. That was a long path. The Downing Street Declaration was in 1993 while the ceasefire was announced in 1994. It broke down in 1996. All the time, we were trying to build up relationships and to understand the people. I always thought my job was not to blind them with science or tell them I was right and they were wrong. That was not it. We were trying to see where we could find common ground and make progress. Some people here know that it involved plodding along with all the parties trying to see what the issues were, where compromises could be found, what could be achieved and who could carry people with them. Many of these matters were very difficult. David Trimble and I ended up getting on and being great friends. I can tell the committee that the shouting matches during the process were unbelievable. I started from a very different position to that held by Mr. Trimble but we worked our way along. Much of the time, it involved talking to my Sinn Féin colleagues, bringing those arguments back, talking to loyalists, bringing those arguments back and trying to see where we could make progress. The reality was that David Trimble made significant changes. Martin McGuinness, as chief negotiator at the time, made significant changes. It was give and take. The negotiations were tough. The only way you could do it was to talk and talk.

This is what I worry about now. If a document was drawn up last October and there has been no meeting since then, what happens? We used to pass each other out having meetings but it was necessary to do that. It was necessary in order to analyse and comprehend where we could go and talk to people actively involved in the Troubles and people with different points of view. You could talk to the SDLP, which was against violence of every shape. Seamus Mallon would always give us lectures. He would give out to me for talking so much to the others and then we would talk to him. That was the name of the game. You had to try to bring people into an inclusive process, which was what we succeeded in doing. In my view, if the two governments and the parties did not continue this, a solution that left somebody out would not have worked in 1998 and it will not work in 2022. This is the difficulty.

I am often asked, particularly on UK programmes, whether I am saying we should bypass somebody and, if they are difficult, go ahead. You feel like doing this sometimes but it is not the solution. This tends to be frustrating and difficult. The reality at the moment is that the US President is on side, the British Government is kind of on side, the EU is on side, the Irish Government is onside and most of the parties are on side but one group is not but that is the challenge. The challenge is to try to convince it and see if you can get there. It can only happen if there is intensive dialogue. That is the issue. It will not happen if there is no intensive dialogue. The reason I spent such time is because that was the only way. There was no alternative. We would have failed in 1998. It was not Tony Blair and me; it was Tony Blair and me and everybody else. We were a group. The group represented the key people and backroom people of all the parties who slaved away. We did lose people in 1998. We lost the DUP. The DUP was out the door shouting at us from over the wall and we had to wait a good few years before we got it in but it was worth it.