Taoiseach Bertie Ahern has said he would support a process which would review events during the North's troubles similar to the truth commission that investigated crimes during the apartheid era in South Africa.
Speaking to the Council on Foreign Relations in New York today, the Taoiseach said he supported a system that end the suffering of the victims of violence.
"I think we have to find some mechanism. ... Otherwise it will never come to an end," he said.
One commission already exists. The Police Service of Northern Ireland has established the Historical Enquiries Team to re-examine deaths between 1968 and 1998.
Mr Ahern said the team had investigated some cases, but said survivors of the troubles may need some other system to end their trauma.
"A lot of these people want to know what happened. Why was our loved one killed? Who killed them? Was it investigated? So there's an enormous number of people who want to go back into it," he said.
"The difficulty is, you have try to end them somewhere. If you just go on and on and on and try to get to the truth about the past, it keeps up."