Gerard Craughwell (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I had the pleasure of entertaining the Historical and Reconciliatory Police, HARP, Society in Leinster House and hosted them for lunch. It is a combined society of police officers from Northern Ireland and the Republic and includes the old Dublin Metropolitan Police and Royal Irish Constabulary. That could not have happened without the peace process and the Good Friday Agreement. As we had lunch, I recalled 1974 and being dragged out of public houses or wherever I happened to be to reassure my mother that I was alive because the IRA had sentenced me to death purely because of a career choice I made when I joined the British Army.Hundreds like me came under the same threat. One colleague from my battalion was taken from Derry into Donegal and shot. It was no joke.

It is important that we remember where we were then because I believe that history is being lost among the younger people in Ireland. We have had such wonderful peace for so long that people are inclined to forget what it was like; it was horrible. Many is the poor mother, widow or father who suffered badly. They are still suffering. With the Good Friday Agreement we got peace and the ability to reconcile among ourselves. I pay tribute to Sinn Féin, which has played its own part. The party members found it in their hearts to vote for me in the by-election that got me into the Seanad the first time. That cannot have been easy and I acknowledge that. Mind you, Fine Gael did too.