Mr. Chris Hazzard:

I commend Mr. Adams on his presentation. It was very constructive and useful. Today, like many other days when we have had these discussions, we think about the people who are not here. In the past we have thought about and discussed the roles of the likes of David Ervine, Mo Mowlam and the late John Hume. Today we are thinking about Martin McGuinness as well. I commend him on the role that he played alongside Mr. Adams and others.

I have a couple of short questions. I know others want to come in. Is it possible for Mr. Adams to identify a moment or moments when he thought the opportunity for a peace process existed? As he said in his commentary, nowadays our peace process is often held up as a template for Colombia, Sri Lanka and elsewhere in the world. The 1990s was a decade of huge international events, including the end of the Cold War, the collapse of the USSR, the end of apartheid, and the handshake between Arafat and Rabin on the White House lawn as part of what was happening in the Middle East. To what extent did the international context feed into the momentum for a peace process here in Ireland? Finally, Mr. Adams mentioned that one of the key objectives was to repeal the Government of Ireland Act. Can he outline why that was such an important objective? Go raibh maith agat.