Mr Speaker, Lord Speaker, Taoiseach, my lords and members of the Commons, your excellencies, distinguished guests, it is nearly 10 years since I had the great honour of being the first British prime minister to address the joint Houses of the Oireachtas in Dublin.
On that occasion I spoke of my hopes for the peace process and for the building of a new relationship between Britain and Ireland within a new Europe.
Ten years on, our greatest hopes for both have been exceeded.
There are many who deserve credit for helping to bring that about - not least our predecessors, including John Major and Albert Reynolds.
But the man we are honouring this afternoon has been at the very heart of the search for a political settlement in Northern Ireland for more than a decade.
He has never given up, whatever the frustrations and the pressures. One of my strongest memories of the days just before the Good Friday agreement was the sight of Bertie Ahern, returning from his mother's funeral and visibly upset, but determined to finish the job, to put the future of others first.
We know full well the history of the Troubles, and the path to reconciliation.
Less well-known and certainly less well-understood has been the part played in it all by the transformation of relations between Britain and Ireland.
For years, centuries in truth, Britain and Ireland had a relationship at best characterised as mutual suspicion, at times descending into mutual dislike, occasionally even into hatred.
In a curious way, Bertie and I symbolise it: him from a staunch Irish republican background; me, whose maternal grandfather was an Orangeman living in Donegal.
Yet today, friends, partners and allies.
Suddenly, in the course of a few short years, our countries have shuffled off all the old and disagreeable sentiments
and replaced them with affection founded on a modern and shared vision of these islands: one of peace and progress.
Bertie Ahern's role in this has been formidable. As finance minister, he helped transform Ireland's economy, today a byword for dynamism, energy and achievement.
Then, in the course of the peace process, his attitude set unionist minds at rest. There is no side to Bertie. He would absorb the harsh, occasionally insulting words. He would remain calm, when around him storms were raging. He would be firm when firmness was necessary, flexible when flexibility was essential, and at all times, in every situation, never let his eye stray from the big prize.
He was a man I could always trust with a vision of the future, not just for Ireland, but for these islands.
I often say to people I have met many big political leaders over my 10 years in office, but I have never met a bigger one than Bertie Ahern.
Through him and through the freshly-found confidence, even exuberance that is modern Ireland, these islands have at last escaped their history; or perhaps, more accurately, answered the call of that history's finer elements.
At long last, both nations, in the 21st century, seem to have found comfort in a shared future.
It would not have happened without Bertie Ahern.
Ladies and gentlemen, it is a great pleasure for me to introduce a personal friend, a true friend of the British people, a man who is changing the history of his own country and of these islands, a great Irishman, An Taoiseach, Bertie Ahern.