Hope and peace will be true legacy of an honourable man
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THE announcement by Dr Ian Paisley that he will step down from the post of First Minister is a watershed in the history of Ireland.
Ian Paisley was a familiar and yet mysterious figure to me for many decades.
His familiar broad figure and booming voice seemed to be ever-present as a dominant force in Ulster unionism. To be truthful, the image was not always a positive one -- certainly from the view point of the nationalist people of this island.
Going back to the 1960s, he was always a figure of controversy.
Dr Paisley opposed those unionist leaders who sought to reform the Northern state to accommodate the views and aspirations of the nationalist people. He later opposed power-sharing with nationalists, and played a key role in the events that brought down the power-sharing executive in 1974.
Perhaps his most famous moment, before May 8, 2007, was his rousing speech at a mass public meeting in Belfast when he opposed the Anglo-Irish Agreement of 1985.
As recently as 1998, he was outside the gates protesting, as inside we took the historic step of signing the Good Friday Agreement.
But for hundreds of thousands of unionists, Ian Paisley was, and is, an inspiration and an enormous source of strength and comfort. There is no denying his popularity among the unionist people or his mandate to lead them. His electoral record speaks for itself.
He is admired and indeed loved by his political supporters in the Democratic Unionist Party, the broader unionist community and by the members of the Free Presbyterian Church, both of which he founded and which he led for so many years.
I began to work more closely with Dr Paisley after he became the undisputed leader of unionism following the Assembly election of 2003.
Courageous
I found him from the outset to be an honourable and courteous person. He showed the sense of humour and the charm that helped make him the hugely popular politician he has become.
At one of our first meetings in the Irish Embassy in London, he famously insisted on having a boiled egg -- so that the Irish Government couldn't poison his food!
From 2003 onwards, Tony Blair and I tried to pick our way through all the outstanding issues with the Northern Ireland parties in the review of the Good Friday Agreement.
We came close to a resolution in late 2004, only to find the gap unbridgeable once more. We kept working at it, and in October 2006, after the historic developments of 2005, which included IRA decommissioning, we met again at St Andrews in Scotland.
Everyone in the room in the final session of those talks felt an enormous sense of history in the making when Dr Paisley spoke of a better future for all the people of Ireland.
In negotiations, he always set out clearly what he opposed, what he supported and what he needed to make a deal. He held to his principles. And he said that if he made a deal, he'd stick to it.
In the end, that is exactly what he did. In doing so, he demonstrated immense courage and leadership.
His has not been a career without controversy and many people will always have profound disagreements with things he has said and done.
In time, history will come to a fuller judgement of all of that.
But to the images of 1966, 1974, 1985 and 1998 can be added the historic images of 2007 and 2008 -- his installation as First Minister in Stormont; our meetings at Farmleigh, Ballymena and the site of the Battle of the Boyne that helped cement a new relationship with the South; and his recent visits abroad as Northern Ireland's First Minister.
There are challenges still to be faced, but Ian Paisley will leave behind a legacy of hope and peace. I wish him well in his retirement.
- Bertie Ahern an Taoiseach
