Last week's visit to Belfast by former Taoiseach Albert Reynolds brought back memories of a day nine years ago when he, along with the then SDLP leader John Hume and Sinn Féin president Gerry Adams, stood on the steps of Government Buildings in Dublin and committed Irish nationalists to working together for a new future.
This was the public manifestation of what would become the Irish peace process and came after years of dialogue between Gerry Adams and John Hume, dialogue that also included the Irish government and Irish America.
In the years leading up to this historic day there were many who were quick to criticise and vilify those involved in these talks and the work that they were engaged in.
John Hume came in for particular and sustained criticism including from some within his own party who wanted to adhere to the failed policies of the past and to persist with exclusion and censorship. I think history has proved these naysayers well and truly wrong.
Those involved in these talks were doing so not for personal or party political gain but to try and build a process that would end conflict in our country.
The benefits of this approach for all of us on the island have been immense in terms of political advances, economic gains and bringing an end to a failed partitionist agenda.
If one thing linked the failed political efforts of the two governments and the other parties in the 1970s and 1980s it was their support for attempted solutions which would be both partit-ionist and would exclude Sinn Féin and our voters.
What the last decade has shown is that such a position could never have worked. The only way to deliver a lasting peace is on an all-Ireland basis and
that is the opportunity that was presented by the Irish peace process, the Good Friday Agreement and in every negotiation since.
We have now reached the position, despite the difficulties experienced in the peace process, whereby many parties are now discussing the real possibility of organising on an all-Ireland basis and where the issue of Irish unity is high on the agenda of all nationalist parties on the island.
That is something we should all be proud of. But we all live in the real world and of course all parties must and should advance their own political agendas and seek to have sufficient support to see their policies implemented. And Sinn Féin has successfully done this across the island.
The growth in support for Sinn Féin is not the result of clever PR or political manoeuvring. It is the result of an intelligent and thinking electorate making a decision to support Sinn Féin because they share our analysis and our political objectives and they recognise that we have plotted a way out of conflict, we have created a political alternative and we have delivered real change across the political agenda. And for nationalists it is because we have put the unity and independence of the Irish people at the centre of the political agenda.
There are times in every country's history when you have to step outside conventional politics, when you have to think beyond the predictable, to bring about real change. People like Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela led the way for real change in their countries through such an approach and I believe that the architects of the Irish peace process engaged in a similar endeavour and should be commended for it.
The opening up of all Ireland politics, as set out in the Good Friday Agreement, brings huge challenges for all of us but I believe that it is something that we should embrace and go forward with together.
