---

Northern Ireland

My Lords, the Statement that the noble Lord made is wonderfully welcome; I never thought that I would hear anything like it in my lifetime. In response, my noble friend made a point about drawing a line in the sand and not having more investigations such as the inquiry into—although he did not actually refer to it—Bloody Sunday. However, in responding, the Minister said that the investigation teams were all in place. I had a frisson of horror about that and thought, ““My goodness, how many more Bloody Sunday inquiries are we going to get?””. Would it not be better if, over the next few years, we worked to get agreement on all sides that the past is the past and that today is the first day of the rest of our lives? I say, advisedly, that not doing so has been the problem of Ireland since the 17th century, and we really do not want to carry on like that. I just hope that there is no implied agreement that there will be a lot more of these inquiries.