ON December 12 1956 – 18 months after I was born – the IRA issued a statement: “Spearheaded by Ireland’s freedom fighters, our people have carried our fight to the enemy… Out of this national liberation struggle a new Ireland will emerge, upright and free… We shall build a country fit for all our people to live in.“

On February 26 1962, the IRA ended the campaign: “Foremost among the factors motivating this course of action has been the attitude of the general public whose minds have been deliberately distracted from the supreme issue facing the Irish people – the unity and freedom of Ireland."

By July 1972, by which time I was nudging 17, the IRA was conducting talks with Secretary of State William Whitelaw in London and demanding the withdrawal of all British troops by January 1975 and a general amnesty of all political prisoners, internees and persons on the wanted list.

Yet, in July 1998, a couple of weeks before my 43rd birthday, Sinn Féin, including IRA veterans, were on the way past Carson and Craigavon’s statues and into the former home of the NI Parliament to negotiate an eventual arrangement which would see them sharing power with, first, the UUP, and then in a bespoke arrangement with Ian Paisley and Martin McGuinness as first and deputy first ministers.

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