Ahern envisages constitutional path

Beyond a certain point democratic self-determination can be achieved only by political and not violent means, Taoiseach Bertie Ahern said last night.

Violence was justified only when the vast majority of the Irish people voted for independence and it was denied them, he said in Dublin Castle at the publication of History's Daughter, the memoirs of Máire MacSwiney Brugha, daughter of Terence MacSwiney, the lord mayor of Cork who died in Brixton Prison in 1920 after 74 days on hunger strike.

Mrs MacSwiney Brugha (87) said her father's death, which made international headlines at the time, showed "how one man stood up against a mighty empire".

The author is married to Ruairí Brugha, son of Cathal Brugha, the 1916 insurgent and anti-Treaty leader killed early in the Civil War. She said people seemed to think it was an arranged marriage. "Nothing like that happened." Mr Ahern said over the past decades the couple had contributed greatly to reconciliation in the North.