For good or ill, I'm a person of leadership. I do my best. I don't dodge responsibility.

Making peace, I have found, is much harder than making war.

War some people glamorise war and glorify war. It's not nice, from whatever point of view you come from.

When others stood idly by, you and your families gave your all, in defence of a risen people and in pursuit of Irish freedom and unity.

For good or ill, I'm a person of leadership. I do my best. I don't dodge responsibility.

There can be no such things as an Irish nationalist accepting the loyalist veto and partition. You cannot claim to be an Irish nationalist if you consent to an internal six county settlement and if you are willing to negotiate the state of Irish society with a foreign government.

We can be revisionist, and that's a good thing to be at times, but we shouldn't airbrush our history, so we can only make judgments in the objective conditions of that time.