During the 1970s and 1980s the IRA was a threat to the people of this part of Ireland, and at least as much to Britain. More than a dozen of our public servants - members of the Garda Síochána and Army - as well as one of our senators, were murdered by that organisation, and on at least two occasions - in 1972 and 1981 - public order in Dublin was threatened by an irruption of IRA supporters from the North, writes Garret Fitzgerald
During the 1970s and 1980s the IRA was a threat to the people of this part of Ireland, and at least as much to Britain. More than a dozen of our public servants - members of the Garda Síochána and Army - as well as one of our senators, were murdered by that organisation, and on at least two occasions - in 1972 and 1981 - public order in Dublin was threatened by an irruption of IRA supporters from the North.
On the first of those occasions gardaí proved unable to maintain order, as a result of which the British embassy in Merrion Square was burnt down. On the second it was with great difficulty that gardaí were able to hold their ground against a violent mob outside the new British embassy in Ballsbridge, many of them also from Northern Ireland.
Throughout that whole period a major concern of successive Irish governments was the maintenance of support among Northern nationalists for constitutional action.
For, if at any time during those years the IRA's political front, Sinn Féin, had secured the support of a majority of nationalist opinion in the North, the IRA might have been tempted by that support to increase its violence to a level provoking something approaching a civil war within Northern Ireland, which would inevitably have turned into a bitter sectarian conflict that could also have dangerously aroused passions in this State.
Following the hunger-strikes of 1980-1981 it was, indeed, that danger - together with the persistent intransigence of unionists on the issue of sharing government with constitutional nationalists - that caused me as Taoiseach to abandon my earlier commitment to seek a solution by agreement with unionists.
Instead, faced with the danger of nationalist support for the IRA growing to the point where violence might get out of all control, I chose to seek an agreement with the British government that might swing nationalist opinion back again to a constitutional path.
Such a setback to the progress of Sinn Féin/IRA might, I hoped, help to persuade Sinn Féin to abandon its "Armalite and ballot box" policy, and to turn instead to the democratic process, as in fact eventually happened.
An essential element of Irish government policy in the 1970s and 1980s was very close co-operation with the SDLP, as the primary voice of constitutional nationalism, without which the strategy I adopted in the 1980s would have failed, and the Irish State, as well as Northern Ireland, could have faced a problem of public order that would have been very difficult to cope with.
The scale of the debt that the people not just of Northern Ireland but of this State owe to the SDLP has never been fully recognised or sufficiently appreciated in either part of this island.
The courage and tenacity of members of that party, together with the exceptional political skill of their leaders, helped to bring us all successfully through this all-Ireland crisis.
We must not forget how important was the part played by John Hume in securing a reversal of the IRA policy of violence, both in arguing the case for such a policy reversal with Gerry Adams and also in persuading the Conservative government of the day to explain its Irish policy in terms that could assist this process, i.e. by acceptance of the principle of Irish self-determination by the two parts of the island separately.
It is, perhaps, understandable that in this part of the island a desire by politicians to claim credit for the initiation of the peace process has tended to obscure the key role played in all this by the SDLP. Of course, successive taoisigh - Charles Haughey first of all, then Albert Reynolds, John Bruton and Bertie Ahern - deserve credit for the way in which, once the IRA became willing to contemplate a move away from violence towards a peaceful and democratic approach, they skilfully engaged with Sinn Féin, carrying this process through to the point of concluding the Belfast Agreement 4½ years ago.
But all the credit for this breakthrough should not be hogged by Southern politicians, or their spokesmen, who know better than anyone how much this process owed to the generous and unselfish actions of the SDLP and its leader at that time, John Hume.
There were many people within the SDLP during this process - John Hume included - who realised fully that their efforts to bring Sinn Féin in from the cold, which were vital to the interests of all the people of this island, would be counterproductive for the SDLP itself.
For if, as turned out to be the case, that unselfish strategy succeeded, with Sinn Féin eventually becoming a normal democratic party, the SDLP would be certain to lose political ground to it.
I cannot offhand recall any instance elsewhere in Europe where a party has been willing to contemplate surrendering its position of political dominance within its own community in the interests of bringing peace to that community.
And it seems to me that the political leaders of this State - and, indeed, of Britain - now owe it to the SDLP to minimise as far as possible the damage that party has suffered by virtue of its heroic self-abnegation.
It is, of course, understandable and right that the two governments should currently be giving priority to helping the leaders of Sinn Féin bring their hardline members and supporters with them in an ultimate abandonment by the IRA of its paramilitary role.
And this is clearly going to entail a final "Big Bang" deal, of the kind outlined by Gerry Moriarty on this page on Thursday week. That deal is going to include undoing the damage done by Peter Mandelson's gutting of parts of the Patten report. This means implementing last year's Weston Park agreement with the SDLP so as to restore missing Patten provisions.
An understandable concern to placate Sinn Féin at this delicate stage of the peace process should not lead the two governments to deprive the SDLP of the credit for its role in negotiating that British climbdown.
It has to be accepted, however, that some further concessions to Sinn Féin will also be needed, for example in relation to membership of District Policing Partnerships by people who in the past may have had some paramilitary involvement.
But in all this process of bringing Sinn Féin in from the cold, the two governments should be conscious both of the debt they owe to the SDLP, without which we could scarcely have arrived at this point, and of the fact that the long-term interest of Northern Ireland also requires that party to continue to play a major role in the politics of Northern Ireland.