The IRA’s first ceasefire, which occurred 30 years ago today, following years of secret negotiation, was “a day that many of us thought would never come”, former taoiseach, Bertie Ahern has said.
“For a whole generation today under the age of 30 it’s hard to imagine what Northern Ireland was like back then following 25 years of sustained conflict involving paramilitaries from the two communities along with the RUC, the British Army.
“It’s easy to forget now that the period immediately prior to the ceasefire, through 1993 and into 1994, saw a particularly heavy number of incidents and deaths, with the conflict seemingly getting worse rather than better,” said Mr Ahern, in a statement coinciding with the anniversary.
While the ceasefire of August 31st 1994 was a major breakthrough at the time, it did not hold and the IRA resumed its bombing campaign in February 1996 with the London Docklands bombing which killed two people and injured 40.
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In July 1997, the IRA announced the renewal of its 1994 ceasefire – paving the way for the Belfast Agreement.
In an interview with the Belfast Telegraph, Mr Ahern said the late IRA Army Council member Michael McKevitt had spent months travelling “the length and breadth of Ireland” trying to block the 1994 ceasefire.
McKevitt, who died of a cancer in a Co Louth hospital in January 2021, later formed the dissident republican Real IRA that was responsible for the 1998 Omagh bomb that killed 29 people, including children, and injured hundreds more.
“We knew McKevitt was going all over the country, he was very active and so there was no certainty around the ceasefire. The army council had made the decision, but it was a very uncertain period.
“Quite frankly I never stopped worrying that it [the ceasefire] would break down until about 2003,” said Mr Ahern, who has been called on to offer advice to participants in a number of peace efforts globally in the decades since.
Recalling the events of three decades ago, Mr Ahern said the prospects for breaking the cycle of violence and despair in 1994 looked bleaker by the month. The Shankill and Warrington bombings had happened the year before.
The Irish and British governments needed to create a political alternative and offer “a pathway for Sinn Féin under the leadership of Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness” to pursue objectives through peaceful and democratic means.
Paying tribute to his predecessor, Albert Reynolds, Mr Ahern said Mr Reynolds had done “more than anyone else to secure the ceasefire in the face of scepticism and criticism for even daring to believe that an end to violence”.
