Mr. Bertie Ahern:

I thank the Cathaoirleach and all the Senators for their kind remarks. It is most pleasing that people appreciate that we put the whole thing together. It was one morning in the heart of the winter when I discussed this first with the Cathaoirleach. I had put the full text of what I wanted to say to the Seanad staff and I told them it would take about an hour and a half, we decided that was not a good idea and we managed to get it back to 40 minutes. I thank everyone for their comments on that.

I will make just a few points as I only have a few minutes. I had the opportunity of attending the Joint Committee on the Implementation of the Good Friday Agreement and want to thank everyone for the work put into that. That committee did a tremendous job getting so many people together. During the year, some of its members were also were kind enough to come and meet a think-tank I am involved with in the North. I could not get the think-tank to meet the committee because some people have a fear of coming into Leinster House for some unknown reason. I will not mention any names but we managed to get a meeting across the road. I thank people for doing that. That day surprised me and it showed some of the difficulties. We had been having a two-day session in Buswells Hotel and on one of the mornings, we were all to come across here. At breakfast, everybody was coming, bar one who had not appeared, but as soon as that one person decided they could not come across the road, we lost the whole audience. We ended up just with the nationalist brigade coming across. That was only February. It is not so easy to get people to come along, believe me, and that was a friendly meeting.

In my long list, I had all the names that I could think of. The list is very long and I would have liked to have included everyone. There was a whole group that came before me. Dick Spring did a huge amount of work in the previous period. I have acknowledged that on other occasions. An enormous number of people contributed in different ways and in different organisations. I want to say that we are remembering them all collectively and there are many of them.I honestly think that getting the institutions up and running is a priority now. Senators heard what I said about the constitutional position - it is not the Act of Union. I have explained at great length to members of the DUP that we cannot just rewrite sections of the Good Friday Agreement at several meetings over the past number of months. That is not possible because people voted on it and it passed. If there is some other way the British Government can help them out, and I hope there is, it cannot be done at the expense of what is there. I re-emphasise that today and I have done this face to face with the DUP in recent months. Let us hope we can get the institutions up. As Senator Black just said, there are a whole lot of issues about funding the community groups that require the money to get these things going, and we need to get them going.

I thank Senator Chambers for her remarks. As we move forward, the key thing is to try to keep ticking off the lessons. Senator Chambers mentioned the legacy issues, as did Senator Blaney. My view on the legislation is that is it bizarre. The only thing that every party in Northern Ireland agrees on is that the legislation is the wrong thing. That says something about it. The Stormont House Agreement was about the only thing that everyone agreed on. We have a position where it is the Stormont House Agreement versus the present legacy Bill. All the parties agree with the Stormont House Agreement but Mr. Rishi Sunak's Government will not implement it; all the parties are against the legacy legislation and the Tory Government wants to implement it. It is hard to believe. I had the pleasure of being able to say this when we were up in Hillsborough and I said to the Prime Minister if he had time to just think about that, he could only come to one conclusion, that the present legislation is wrong. It is just divisive and will not help anything. I could go on for a long time but I have made all my points.

We have all welcomed the Windsor Framework. Wen we get into all the intricacies of trade we have spent years on this. The last time I was here when Senator McDowell invited me to appear before the Brexit committee, which is now years ago. We discussed the trade issues and we have understood the trade issues for a long time. If there are still difficulties, we are all up for trying to resolve those difficulties. Sorting out trade issues is not about trying to in some way legislate to explain to people that the Union is stronger. If we were trying to move bananas and oranges around the place safely and to deal with the business end of that, I am not too sure what that has to do with strengthening the Union. I am all on for moving oranges and apples around safely but the Good Friday Agreement is the unity bit. We have to keep making that point. I am hopeful and I wish that these things would happen in the next few weeks but maybe we will have to wait a bit longer to do that.

In thanking every Senator, I want to thank Senator McDowell in particular. He soldiered on this with me for eight years from 1999 to 2007. There are really big advantages to having somebody who is physically tall and who is very strong. When tough things need to be said, he can say them with such ferocity that it is really helpful. I will not go into what meetings they were but he will recall them very well himself. There were many meetings where we had to cross fire and, by God, there was fire. Sometimes people would say to me that all of those Good Friday Agreement meetings seemed to be very sweet and honey. That was not my memory but we will not go into that. I do appreciate Senator McDowell's huge support during those years and for his words today. There were lengthy and very divisive meetings.It depended on who you were dealing with. I always remember that famous day when we were having difficulty with Secretary of State Mandelson. Some of my officials were very upset with him. I encouraged the man I mentioned in my speech as being a straight talking Kerryman, Paddy Teahon, to tell this to Tony Blair in order that he would understand it. I said there was no point in me saying it as the Prime Minister was tired of listening to me. I said to Paddy that he should say it and I set up the call. Paddy Teahon and I were in Malahide and Tony Blair was in No. 10 Downing Street. The call was to discuss what we would do. Paddy gave it straight down the line to Tony Blair what he thought of Mandelson. Tony Blair rang me an hour later to say, "By the way, Mandelson was listening to that call." I spent the next month digging myself out of that hole. There were good occasions and some other ones I would love to tell Senators about.

I thank the Cathaoirleach for his comments and support. I hope there will be many more occasions on which people will have an opportunity of looking at the ongoing progress the Good Friday Agreement will make in the years to come.