Lord Empey:

It was a nightmare. We were under enormous pressure, which was understandable. The clear understandings were that things would move faster than they did and that allowed those opponents of the agreement to gain ground at our expense. Perhaps they have not made as use of the ground as they might have done but nevertheless it created enormous difficulties, tensions, and pressure. It is a shame things did not move more quickly. The Senator mentioned Omagh in particular. That was in the period when the First Minister and the deputy First Minister had been identified. The Omagh bombing was a few months later and turned out to be the worse incident of the whole Troubles in terms of the loss of life. Very sadly, that time and some of its wonderful people are back in the spotlight again, once again for the wrong reasons, which has re-traumatised many of the people who were recovering for what had happened in 1998. Many of them have been re-traumatised and that is a shame.