Dervla Kirwan Quotes

Quite simply, I maintained contact with Sinn Fein and believed that there had to be a political, not a military, solution to the situation in Northern Ireland.

Northern Ireland still suffers from its past, and it will take generations to escape sectarianism and for violence to end totally. Nonetheless, it is in a different place now than during the Troubles, and it will not go back to the old days.

It's an extraordinary thing, this tiny little province of Northern Ireland, where carnage happened. And I was part of it. I grew up in it.

The basis on which the Good Friday agreement was constructed was in addressing those problems in the history of Northern Ireland, the social and constitutional problems as well as the military problems that have been unaddressed for centuries.

As they say, one thing led to another, and, ultimately, the British and Irish governments asked me to serve as chairman of the peace negotiations, which ironically began six years ago this week.

I think I'm one of the people who brought about peace in Ireland.

I believe we've spent many years trying to bring about talks which have all the Parties in Northern Ireland involved so that there'd be inclusive talks.

Well I think it has always been a mistake to reduce the peace process in Ireland to a decommissioning process.

For a startling period of my life, I reported the Troubles in Ireland for the BBC. I lived in Dublin and was called out to all sorts of incidents that, if taken together, add up to a war - bombings, assassinations, riots, shootings, robberies, jailbreaks, kidnappings, and sieges.

Tony Blair has made a good contribution to the cause of peace in Ireland. He has made a great effort to understand it. He has great empathy with the need to resolve the conflict.

The people of Northern Ireland have sorted out my whole life.

The picture of Prince Charles meeting Gerry Adams is inexpressibly sad.

I grew up in Derry, of course, and it was - Derry was the worst example of Northern Ireland's discrimination.

We have to make sure the Good Friday Agreement works.

In coming to that agreement, my party had a clear philosophy throughout. In Northern Ireland, we should have institutions that respected the differences of the people and that gave no victory to either side.

The big missing part of the jig-saw is to get the assembly back up and running here in Northern Ireland, to get shared government back in business, that is my objective, and we await the IRA statement to see if this will trigger a new dawn.

My job now, as Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, is to take this process forward, and that I'm determined to do, whatever old clippings you dig out and whatever old quotes you put before me.

The reality of life in Northern Ireland is that if you were Protestant, you learned British history, and if you were Catholic, you learned Irish history in school.

I've never read anything set in Belfast that doesn't involve the Troubles or something senseless over a flag.

Men, once enemies, are now jointly governing in Northern Ireland. And although there have been several hitches, by and large it's working well.

We used to spend a lot of time as kids in Northern Ireland, on the border and in southern Ireland as well.

I think people from Northern Ireland have some kind of unspoken general feeling of what it is to be around segregation. You have an awareness of it because you know how much grief it's caused.

It... is the best opportunity we've had in the last 25 years to bring about a settlement in Northern Ireland, and I think we should leave no stone unturned to achieve that.

The British Government and the Irish Government have accepted very clearly the Mitchell Report.

Belfast during the Troubles looked like a different world.