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Devolution (Northern Ireland)

I congratulate the Prime Minister, the Secretary of State and the Minister of State, and all who took part in the exceptionally protracted negotiations. Although there has been criticism of the length of time that those negotiations took, I do not think that the people who took part in them should be embarrassed. It is in the nature of things that the most difficult issues are left until the last bit of any negotiations, and these negotiations involved dealing with a couple of issues that no one had managed to address before. I think that the people involved deserve to be congratulated, and I think that the rest of us will wish them well in difficult circumstances. People in Northern Ireland still think of old, unhappy, far-off things, of battles long ago, and even of battles more recently. Everyone in the country must wish those who took part in the negotiations well, and wish the people of Northern Ireland well as a result of the product of those negotiations.