Mary Robinson Quotes

The last months, weeks and days have seen accelerating discussions, involving the DUP for the first time, about a comprehensive agreement which would see all outstanding matters dealt with and the Good Friday Agreement implemented in full.

We have to show the E.U. and show Ireland that our commitment to the Belfast Good Friday agreement is absolutely unconditional.

In Northern Ireland, people said there would never be a solution. But once people begin to have the political will and force their governments to sit down, it can happen.

The really big challenge is delivering the social justice agenda in the Belfast Agreement, which hasn't been delivered.

My actions to promote peace, the mediation missions which I carried out during many conflicts, which very often occurred between brothers of the same country, are not driven by any ulterior motives or any calculations based on personal ambitions.

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.

Ireland and its people have much to be proud of. Yet every land and its people have moments of shame. Dealing with the failures of our past, as a country, as a Church, or as an individual is never easy. Our struggle to heal the wounds of decades of violence, injury and painful memory in Northern Ireland are more than ample evidence of this.

It is the hope of the European Union that Ariel Sharon will keep the peace process alive and continue the dialogue according to the wishes of all the parties involved.

You know, the pessimism which exists now in the Middle East existed in Northern Ireland, but we stayed at it.

What were once only hopes for the future have now come to pass; it is almost exactly 13 years since the overwhelming majority of people in Ireland and Northern Ireland voted in favour of the agreement signed on Good Friday 1998, paving the way for Northern Ireland to become the exciting and inspirational place that it is today.

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.

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

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.

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.

That feeds anger, and I mean when we went and at last thank heavens got towards peace in Northern Ireland we went for justice within Northern Ireland as well as using security well, as well as a political settlement, but surely that is the lesson.

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.

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

There is not a single injustice in Northern Ireland that is worth the loss of a single British soldier or a single Irish citizen either.

In this context the British and Irish governments will have to promote a new, imaginative and dynamic alternative in which both governments will share power in the north.

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.

A diplomatic peace is not yet the real peace. It is an essential step in the peace process leading towards a real peace.

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.

John Irwin became one of the greatest peace workers in Northern Ireland.

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

Successfully pressuring armed militants to abandon violence and participate in democratic elections requires a favorable political climate. In Northern Ireland and South Africa, armed militants turned away from violence and entered mainstream politics only when the framework of an acceptable political deal was on the table, providing them with a product they could sell to their supporters. The sequence of events was of crucial importance.