A leading architect of the peace process, Dr Martin Mansergh, has appealed for people to have the courage to make a new start. Dr Mansergh, special adviser to the Taoiseach, said that what had so far been achieved was a difficult and, for the moment, precarious balance. Getting the agreement functioning and on its feet would be a major undertaking, he told the annual Liam Lynch commemoration at Newcastle, Co Tipperary, yesterday.
The agreement was signed on the 75th anniversary of the death of Gen Liam Lynch, chief-of-staff of the Irish Republican Army in the Knockmealdown mountains, he pointed out.
He appealed for it to be given "a fair wind" as the main alternatives on either side had been shown over and over again not to work.
"Helping to find and being part of a potentially viable and unprecedented way forward is the best means of coming to terms with past pain and sacrifices," he added.
Some people said continued force was justified without explaining or demonstrating how the misery that accompanied it would have more political effect in the future than it had had in the past.
He described the agreement as the most comprehensive political settlement since 1920-21, with far more direct engagement between unionists and the Government of the Republic than ever before.
"The historic nature of the talks and the agreement has been the acceptance by all the participants, though to varying extents, of the need to engage.
"Republicans of most shades have reluctantly come to accept as political reality that a united Ireland cannot or will not be imposed by either political or military means and that the only way to make progress is through a policy of peaceful engagement and political persuasion.
"Unionists have come equally reluctantly to accept that the only basis of stability is partnership, and parallel consent and structured links between the two parts of Ireland.
"What both traditions are being asked to give up are ideas of hegemony, the notion that one tradition can effectively dictate to the other the terms of engagement, in return for guarantees of rigorous equality."
The first step, he said, was to seek the people's approval.
The criteria by which the agreement should be judged were: "Is it capable of securing peace now and peaceful evolution in the future, can it improve in a number of material respects the position and prospects of Northern nationalists, and will it bring for the first time since partition unionists into a close working relationship with nationalists, North and South, on a basis of mutual interdependence?"
Dr Mansergh said he would like to think that most members of the wider republican family could reach positive conclusions in answer to all those questions without broader prejudice to the democratic pursuit of national aims in the longer term.
"Where we previously failed, we must have the courage to make a new start," added Dr Mansergh.