Martin Mansergh (Fianna Fail)

I welcome the Minister of State and warmly congratulate the Taoiseach, the Minister for Foreign Affairs and the team of officials on finally bringing about the successful conclusion of the peace process. It has lasted 20 years and I have vivid memories near the beginning of this process of meeting Gerry Adams and two of his colleagues with Deputy Dermot Ahern in the Redemptorist monastery in Dundalk in 1988.

An enormous amount of effort and determination, along with endless patience, has been required to keep the process moving forward, especially during quite long periods when it has been stalled. Today is a source of great satisfaction, with a little bit of history being made by the Taoiseach shaking hands publicly with Ian Paisley. We are witnessing the transformation of the totality of relationships in Northern Ireland, between North and South, and for a number of years past, between Britain and Ireland. It has become very visible that in many ways, we are in the process of casting off the chains of history. I hope there will be organic development from here on in.

I pay tribute to the broadly bipartisan spirit, or what I have always termed critical bipartisanship, which we exercised also when on the Opposition benches, from all the main parties in the Oireachtas. Senator Brian Hayes may be interested to know with regard to the phrase which he used in his speech — new dispensation — that I would claim the modest credit of having discovered it and putting it in speeches, etc. I found it in a footnote of John M. Kelly's The Irish Constitution.