Niall Blaney (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I welcome Ms O'Donnell. It is great to see her and get the insight she has. It is quite an insight, all 12 pages of it. It is a precise recollection of her memories of that time. Senator Currie and I were adamant in doing this piece of work. As Ms O’Donnell has outlined, given the difficulties that have arisen as a result of the Good Friday Agreement and the situation today, if we are to move forward in an purposeful manner, we must have a knowledge of what happened in the past and learn from the mistakes. People like her coming in and giving these insights is critical for us to know what happened and the difficulties and complexities. Northern Ireland is complex. The political parties are extremely complex. No doubt a person going in there without that knowledge could do more harm than good. I thank her for the insight.

I will tease through some questions. The 15 minutes goes quickly. I will put some questions and then hand over to my colleague. Ms O'Donnell mentioned Dessie O’Malley and Mary Harney and while I never served with Mr. O'Malley, I certainly was there with Ms Harney. She was one of the greatest politicians who ever walked through the doors of Leinster House. She had a great political head, one of the greatest political heads I thought, as a Minister for Health. She was a great Minister, so Ms O’Donnell certainly had good advice on her side.

Ms O’Donnell referenced the sending by Tony Blair of a letter to David Trimble in regard to holding out the promise of decisive action by the British Government and early progress on decommissioning. Will she expand on that further? What was the purpose of the letter, given that decommissioning became a major problem for David Trimble and given the risks he took in making the whole deal happen? He really put his head over the parapet. What was the make-up of that letter? Did it serve any purpose later on?

Ms O’Donnell referenced the agreement gradually eroded the trust of the UUP and eroded its electoral support over the years post agreement. We all have battles in here about how to move forward and all the rest of it. It is important that we realise the depth of the concerns of the unionists. Some come in here and express that unionism is ready to work with us and getting a united Ireland is fairly easily reached. It is actually quite complex, so it is important that people like Ms O’Donnell come in and paint the picture of how difficult it was back then to gain trust with unionism. That is something we need to learn because that mistrust is still there today. Not everyone would agree but the unionists with whom I speak express that. We need to learn from that to move forward.

Ms O’Donnell was mostly involved in strand two, namely, the North-South institutions, the difficult part.

What is her opinion of how strand two evolved and the lack of progress with the institutions? Can any lessons be learned today? Were Ms O'Donnell beginning today, would she do anything differently? Even with the whole agreement, would she do anything differently? Is there a different approach she would take?