Northern Ireland approaching a 'a new dawn', says President

Northern Ireland is just a whisper away from devolution, a new government and a new dawn, President Mary McAleese said in Derry last night.

Mrs McAleese said pressure for peace from many constituencies had created a "hard-earned, miraculous chance" to accomplish a new culture of co-operation within Northern Ireland, between North and South, and between Britain and Ireland.

But the opportunity must be seized, she said in her Tip O'Neill memorial lecture, Lessons of the Peace Process, at the Magee Campus in the University of Ulster in Derry. "A wise man once said, if you are given the opportunity of a lifetime, make sure you take it in the lifetime of the opportunity," she told the invited audience, which included former SDLP leader and Nobel prizewinner John Hume.

"Let's hope the opportunity will be taken and that soon, very soon, Northern Ireland will become a byword for the triumph of politics. The latest lesson from these past fraught years of peace building is that there is a time for moving on and we are clearly well and truly there," she said.

She said it was welcome news that the DUP and Sinn Féin have indicated a willingness to make devolution happen. "It is no consolation, but hopefully there may be some kind of memorial of vindication for all those scandalously lost, wasted and broken lives [ of the Troubles]," she added.

"And there is another constituency watching to see if the politics of partnership and peace will make it across the line here," Mrs McAleese continued. "That constituency is in Darfur, Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon, Myanmar, Congo, Palestine, Israel and all the other places where there is only fear and hatred and violence and no end in sight despite a clamour for peace and stability.

"And then there is the constituency that is our children and our grandchildren. Recent events confirm to us that the peace process is still a work in progress. How could it be otherwise when you consider that the conflict it is attempting to resolve is more like 400 rather than 40 years old?" she said, adding: "But this is the most liberated and the best educated generation ever to inhabit this island."