UK election should aid peace process, says Ahern

Progress in Northern Ireland will be made "when people allow their political representatives to make deals and keep them", the Taoiseach has said.

At the publication of a book on the peace process by Irish Times journalist Deaglan de Breadun, Mr Ahern said the British elections should be "an opportunity to reinforce the peace process and create the confidence to achieve genuine accommodation between neighbours".

But he added: "I think people need to learn and understand the limitations of making, all the time, maximum political demands." He also said no one should even "dream" of a situation in which the political institutions were again suspended.

The Taoiseach praised Mr de Breadun's book, The Far Side of Revenge: Making Peace in Northern Ireland, as an invaluable account of "an extraordinary period in Irish history". It recorded in detail "the huge amount of painstaking deliberation" that went into agreeing and implementing the Belfast Agreement.

He added: "Deaglan is one of our most respected and authoritative journalists. He has never been afraid of research, and he makes a good contemporary historian, one who personally witnessed events as Northern Editor of the Irish Times."

His book deserved "a positive sequel", Mr Ahern added, "and I hope when the second edition is published, we will have moved definitively away from current difficulties and into a period of sustained, successful and full operation of the agreement".

Mr de Breadun said writing the book had given him a new respect for politicians. "It's a rule of the journalistic profession to be cynical, but you can't be cynical about a profession in which people go without sleep for 36 hours at a stretch in the attempt to end a conflict," he said.