Gerry Adams Quotes

We have to make sure the Good Friday Agreement works.

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.

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.

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.

I think we have a political and moral duty to do everything within our power to maintain the Good Friday Agreement.

The Good Friday Agreement was an incredible breakthrough. But it's my view that the Hillsborough Agreement could see politics in the north come of age, and see us all move forwards on the basis of equality and partnership.

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

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.

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.

I think that what is happening now in terms of the Brexit vote does represent a serious undermining of the Good Friday Agreement.

The Good Friday/Belfast Agreement was a bilateral one between ourselves and Ireland and did not involve the E.U. at all. It just presupposed common E.U. membership as a facilitator of its successful operation.

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

It is neither my intention to depart from the route of John Garang nor to change the Comprehensive Peace Agreement.

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

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.

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.

If the British government is prepared to say that the Unionists will not have a veto over British government policy and that guns, vetoes and injustices will all be left outside the door, then there is no good reason why talks cannot take place in an appropriate atmosphere.

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.

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

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.

That Sinn Fein, as I've already indicated, their leaders have already indicated that's what they want to achieve - once we get that credible statement, then we can get around the table and start to move forward, and I'm confident we can do so.

The Republican movement have not behaved properly over the years. They have not themselves implemented the Agreement. If they had implemented the Agreement then they would have disarmed completely in May 2000, that is what they undertook to do, that is what they failed to do.

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

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.

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.