THE President, Mrs Robinson, said in a radio interview at the end of her official visit to Britain that she was convinced the "years of terrorism" in Northern Ireland were over.
She said she believed there could be "no going back" because of the peace process. She said people in Northern Ireland have had an opportunity to live in a framework that is normal.
"One of the most awful things in those 25 years was people began to talk about an acceptable level of political violence, an acceptable level of terrorism and killing, an acceptable level of young people being constantly stopped because they came from Catholic backgrounds, put up against the side of a police car, searched, undermined in themselves simply because of their religion and their background and where they lived.
"People have moved on now to a context of a pence process that is not yet fully secure but has given an opportunity for a normal decent life. I think that we're very, very determined to maintain that", she said.
Mrs Robinson also suggested that Irish people in Britain were "probably happier in their Irishness than the nationalist community in Northern Ireland because the Northerners believed they were second class citizens. "They feel overshadowed by that. What I try to say about this open idea of Irishness is [that] because of the Irish diaspora round the world, it's no longer territorial as a concept."