John Gerard Hanafin (Fianna Fail)

Along with the conflicts in the Middle East and South Africa, the Northern Ireland conflict has long been considered as one of the most intractable. Centuries of sporadic violence and more recent troubles have convinced many in Northern Ireland that their future will always be trapped in the past.

The Good Friday Agreement has brought a fresh sense of optimism that the people of Northern Ireland can finally leave behind the deep rooted culture of internal conflict and hatred of the people of the South. We need to create a new and better society for this and future generations. The vision of a future based on teamwork, mutual respect and inclusiveness, set out in the Agreement, has received the overwhelming backing of the people on both sides of the Border. The voice of the people is clear. The old days of exhausted opportunities constitute a disgraceful history which has no place in the political scenery of the future. The task we face is to provide the practical support and encouragement to help people at local and neighbourhood level to keep nudging the peace process in the right direction, changing the language to one of respect and shifting the sectarian way of thinking to a new found respect for differences.

In its four and a half years of existence the Good Friday Agreement has sustained many blows, yet, somehow, this pact, which established a devolved Government in Northern Ireland and set a peace process in motion, has always been salvaged and maintained. Its resilience has owed much to the Taoiseach's determination not to let it fail. It survives also because of the lack of a viable alternative because peace of a kind, with all its attendant benefits for the people of the North of Ireland, has prevailed. At the height of the Troubles almost 500 people a year died from sectarian violence. Last year there were 19 deaths and this year the figure is expected to be still lower. This is why, despite the difficulties facing it, the Agreement and the institutions it established, the Assembly and Executive, matter so much.