Mr. Gerry Adams:

Okay. The Senator may have a point. I am not trying to dodge the issue. I have addressed this issue publicly in a number of keynote addresses, including in the Dáil Chamber. It is not that I am oblivious to the hurt. I am very conscious of it and I particularly am very conscious of actions carried out by the IRA. I am conscious of all of that. I like to think that the real work is to ensure that conflict never happens again. We cannot rework the past but we can certainly take responsibility for the future and Sinn Féin has signed up on a number of occasions for mechanisms to deal with the issue the Senator is dealing with. I have no desire to dodge the issue.

I still live in west Belfast. If I walk the length of the Falls Road, every hundred yards is a place where someone was killed by the various combatants. When my sister was six months' pregnant, her husband, who was a young IRA volunteer, was shot to death. I am conscious. I am from Ballymurphy. I lived where the Ballymurphy massacre happened and I am conscious of things the IRA did, which the IRA should not have done. I have also made that clear.

The point I was making regarding the Senator's response is that the committee is dealing with the putting together of the Good Friday Agreement. In the course of my remarks I said two or three times that its biggest achievement, despite its imperfections, is that there are thousands of people alive today that would be dead without it. That is the single biggest achievement.