Bertie Ahern speech to UK Houses of Parliament

Bertie Ahern speech to UK Houses of Parliament; Bertie Ahern speech SOT - In 1998, in a groundbreaking act of recognition of our shared journey / President Mary McAleese and Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth jointly opened the Memorial Peace Park in Messines / a requiem to the 200,000 young men from across the island of Ireland, Catholic and Protestant, North and South, who fought in the First World War, side by side / Some 50,000 did not return / Last year we renewed this tribute in Dublin / and paid homage at home to the spirit of an imperishable heroism / through a national commemoration of the 90th anniversary of the battle of the Somme / In another shining example of how we can engage with difficult chapters of history without descending into spirals of accusation, I remember the brave and generous initiative of the Prime Minister in acknowledging the failures of those governing in London at the time of the Great Famine in Ireland / Mr Speaker, Lord Speaker, Of course, the subject of Ireland was not always welcome in this place / I recall the words of Gladstone, who in November, 1890, noted that 'Since the month of December, 1885, my whole political life has been governed by a supreme regard to the Irish question / For every day, I may say, of these five years, we have been engaged in laboriously rolling up-hill the stone of Sisyphus / Prime Minister Blair and I can certainly empathise with that / The so-called ‘Irish Question’ was for a long time shorthand in these halls for a nuisance, a problem, a danger / A recurring crisis that was debated here, but not where its effects were most felt / Today, I can stand here and say that the ‘Irish Question’ as understood then has been transformed / The Good Friday Agreement has delivered peace and promise to Ireland by accommodating the rights, the interests and the legitimate aspirations of all / It represents the triumph of common interests over inherited divisions / It is not an end of history / But it is a...