Niall Blaney (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Lord Empey is very welcome in joining us here today. I am delighted to see him with us as probably the last contributor to this series in relation to the architects of the Good Friday Agreement. At the outset, it is really important we put on record the contribution of Lord Empey, his then leader David Trimble, who sadly is no longer with us, and his party in what they did in achieving peace on this island and achieving that peace deal. As a matter of fact, they stuck their collective necks out through their leader and in a way, jeopardised their own party for the good of peace on the island. I do not think his contribution to peace on this island has been well enough remarked upon. It has not got enough acknowledgment over the years. He has done this island a great service and we thank him deeply for that. I first met Lord Empey in 2009 in Stormont with people like Michael Mates, Seymour Crawford and a number of others, in relation to unionist participation and the British-Irish Parliamentary Assembly. He was very forthright and very easy to deal with. Thankfully, the unionist members have been taking part in that body every since, as it moves from strength to strength. This piece of work was conceived in tandem with the many discussions now about how this island moves forward from a Government perspective on a shared basis, from all our perspectives, from border polls to citizens' assemblies. We in the Fianna Fáil party, and members of the Fine Gael party who will speak for themselves, were particularly keen on this piece of work because I believe we do not know enough of the past and what happened during those couple of decades when all these negotiations were taking place. They are really important because we lost so much ground since 1998. We have lost so much in relation to the relationships and the different strands and we need to learn what the personal relationships were, how strong they were and the meaning they had in achieving the agreement. Maybe before I go on to anything else, will Lord Empey give us his thoughts on the basis of the agreements he had with people in whom, prior to 1998 - prior to the 1990s even - trust would have been so low? Here he was, taking major new steps and having an international agreement under the auspices of George Mitchell.