While I am very deeply committed to the people and the cause there, I have now been involved for nearly five years and I simply have to devote some time to my family and to my business. I have to work to earn a living.
- The former peace talks chairman and US senator, Mr George Mitchell, confirming he will not return to the North to resolve the impasse
My hope is that this is not the last word from the IRA.
- The UUP leader, Mr Trimble, of the second de Chastelain report, which contained more positive proposals on decommissioning, but which was withdrawn following the suspension of the institutions
The idea that the army and the forces of law and order would be placed on the same scales as the terrorists and their murder weapons is unacceptable.
- The DUP leader, the Rev Ian Paisley, referring to reports of a decommissioning-demilitarisation linkage. Subsequently the IRA denied any decommissioning trade-off
You can only mount that kind of exercise once.
- Mr Peter Mandelson, ruling out another review of the Belfast Agreement
We have a fair idea who did it . . . We are trying to work out their actual roles. The problem is producing a case that convicts them. It's one thing to know who did it and another to produce evidence to put them away.
- Mr Eric Anderson, the RUC officer heading the inquiry into the Omagh bombing
It's just like she vanished. But you don't just vanish into thin air. There's somebody out there who knows something. Somebody who has it on their conscience, if they have a conscience.
- Ms Caroline Sinnott, sister of Ms Fiona Sinnott (19), who disappeared from her home in Co Wexford more than two years ago
It is truly against nature to bury your child, for when we bury our parents we close the door on the past. When parents bury their children it closes the bridge to the future.
- Mgr John Crowley, at the funerals of Privates Declan Deere and Jonathan Murphy, who were killed in a road accident in Lebanon
We've had one win, and I'm very happy for today. And I know there's an awful lot of hard days ahead and I don't want to lose the run of myself. I'd hate to see the country lose the run of itself on the back of this one performance.
- Keith Wood, after his team defeated Scotland in the Six Nations Championship
I picked a team for the day. I've got no other comment to make. What we do is inside the club.
- Manchester United manager Sir Alex Ferguson, asked why he dropped David Beckham from last Sunday's Premiership game
Certainly, over the next four or five years, if we don't lose the run of ourselves, we're going to enjoy a level of prosperity that we once would only have dreamt about.
- Mr Charlie McCreevy
We weren't looking for the Holy Grail, we were only looking for fairness. It might have been easier if we had been looking for the Holy Grail.
- Ms Rhonda Donaghy, whose union, Mandate, has rejected the Programme for Prosperity and Fairness
God made the skies and the sunlight and the daylight for all of us to see, and I resent that that's going to be taken from me.
- Ms Minny Masterson, whose house at Upper Mayor Street, Dublin, would be put in the shade by the proposed Spencer Dock scheme