Lord Alderdice:

I am not sure my beard is as black as it was in those early days.

First, let me make clear that when I speak about the difference in the relations with the EU and US, I do not in any way suggest the British Government has not been responsible for the worsening of relationships because it clearly has. I am just making an observation that the relationships are different and they are not so evenly balanced.

The British Government has, in a way, made much the greatest contribution to that, although sometimes the EU, understandably, gets frustrated and digs its heels in. However understandable that is, it is probably not the best way of dealing with the problem. That is moving. Some Brussels leaders, and indeed, President Macron from France have been saying things both the content and the nuance of which have been extremely thoughtful and helpful. I hope we can move forward on that kind of basis.

The Senator mentioned the legacy of the past. The truth is, although it was mentioned in the talks, it was not as much of a focus as perhaps it ought to have been. In the Colombian peace agreement, for example, one of the first Bills passed in response to that was about the victims. That is not to say that it was very good legislation or that it resolved their problems, but at least it showed where it was in their priorities. In retrospect, the issues of the victims were mentioned, but they did not necessarily have the priority that they might have had. That is one element of legacy.

It is not just the people who were directly harmed who are part of the legacy; it is the political and cultural remnants of that. People look at their community, another community or other communities and they remember difficult and unpleasant things that happened for them in the past and they find it difficult to forget them. They find it very difficult to let go of them. When we had the Good Friday Agreement, there was at that time a degree of momentum that we felt was going to carry us forward beyond a lot of these bad, difficult feelings, because of these new relationships that were being developed. In truth, at that time, there was a good prospect of that. The more the momentum stalled, the more people began to feel that they were not being very well treated by each other at a political or public level and the more people went back to remembering all the difficult things that had happened. I could even see it in the talks process where, when things were going well, people were a bit more optimistic. When things got a bit more difficult, you could hear people say, "I knew it, they were never interested anyway", or "they were always agin us". Once you get the momentum up again, that ought to take people beyond it.

It is not so much that the legacy of the past is one of the enormous hurdles that has to be overcome. When you focus too much on it, it makes things worse. The lack of momentum and progress is a symptom of the problem in the relationships. I could see in dealing with individual people as a psychiatrist in clinical practice in the old days, or at a community level, that by focusing too much on the past, the hurt and the difficulties, you can get stuck in it. There is not always a way out that enables you to let go. It is a very difficult, sensitive issue. If we make more progress on the political front and provide the kind of counselling and care for individuals they need and deserve, that holds out some possibilities.

The other final warning is one I made many years ago. Some people say, "The generation that was damaged as victims will die and that will be it". It will not. One of the things we know in working with trauma is that it is a trans-generational problem. It gets passed on. The consequences get passed on, and the consequences that are passed on may become de-linked from what actually happened. Where somebody shows symptoms or difficulties and they remember what happened and can speak about is one thing. With the next generation, they sometimes do not realise why they are in the problems they are in, nor do those who are working with them. That can be even more problematic. We should remember, at an individual level at least, and at a community level to some extent, that there is a trans-generational component to this, which is not going to go away easily.