Mr. Tim O'Connor:

Back in the 1990s, it was a big novelty for many people to actually be talking to one another. There was very little of that beforehand. We got through the negotiations. That is what I meant about signing it first and then negotiating it. There were parties to that agreement who did not speak to each other even up to Good Friday. Many people found talking to their enemies very difficult. Paradoxically, it seems that, at many levels, relationships are much better today. People talk to each other a lot more now than they used to. While I am out of it and no longer directly involved, my sense is that, even though we still have major challenges, 24 years of this has enabled people to get together. Deputy Brendan Smith spoke about the successes. I absolutely agree. We have been able to get access to get things happening and moving that just were not possible before. I find myself on this paramilitary commission now. I have a colleague on it from the DUP and we work very closely together. We are very good colleagues and trust each other. There are things that are possible today that just were not then. I will tell you the truth. When I was starting off, I had been working on Northern Ireland work for 12 years before I met a unionist who I could actually speak to. They just would not speak to us because we were the Dublin Government. We were finally able to get in and build trust and relationships. Once you build relationships, you can have trust. When I was the joint secretary of the North-South Ministerial Council, I had two fellow joint secretaries in the secretariat in Armagh over the course of the five and a half years. Both were from Protestant unionist backgrounds. Their office was on one side and mine on another but we became really close friends and colleagues so I knew that, if I had an issue, I could go across to Dick Mackenzie and later Peter Smyth and put the issue on the table. They would not wonder where I was coming from with it and neither would I if they said something to me. That is what is changing but it does not alter the fundamental issue that we have two competing political philosophies that we have not managed to accommodate.