Quotes About Northern Ireland

The basic policy of the British Government was that since the majority of people in Northern Ireland wished to remain in the United Kingdom, that was that. We asked what would happen if the majority wanted something else, if the majority wanted to see Irish unity.

While the E.U. Withdrawal Act ensures that Brexit will work for all the devolved nations and our U.K. devolution settlements, the special requirements of Northern Ireland, which uniquely shares a land border with another E.U. member state, present a more formidable challenge.

In Britain, politicians who openly discuss their spirituality are about as welcome as Jehovah' s Witnesses on the doorstep, and the British associate the mixture of politics and religion as a heady cocktail best reserved for the mass irrationality of Northern Ireland, Iran, Kashmir, and the Middle East.

I would say that something important for me and for my generation in Northern Ireland was the 1947 Education Act, which allowed students who won scholarships to go on to secondary schools and thence to university.

I'm going to be looking forward, asked to be judged on my record, not taken back as has been the - in a sense, the tendency throughout politics in Northern Ireland, is to always look back, always look at what was said a long time ago, instead of looking forward.

When I was growing up, Belfast City Hall was surrounded by security, and we had no access to it. But now, people come in and out of it all the time. On a nice day, office workers and students sit on the lawn outside and have lunch. It's great to see how Northern Ireland has changed. To be part of that is fantastic.

John Irwin became one of the greatest peace workers in Northern Ireland.

It's an extraordinary thing, this tiny little province of Northern Ireland, where carnage happened. And I was part of it. I grew up in it.

He also told me that I had no option but to forget all my relatives and friends in Northern Ireland, and that I had to realise that because of the IRA's international contacts, I would have to accept that my life would always be at risk.  He told me that once I had left the Province I would be on my own, and they would not be able to guarantee my life, nor the lives of Angie and the boys if they should join me.

I grew up in Derry, of course, and it was - Derry was the worst example of Northern Ireland's discrimination.

We'll be launching the new public prosecution service in Northern Ireland tomorrow. I'll be doing it in Belfast tomorrow. This is an entirely new era, in which criminal justice now exercised on an equal basis, not the old basis in which community division was a feature.

I believe that Northern Ireland has come to a time of peace, a time when hate will no longer rule.

I served 18 months in Northern Ireland and that was very scary. I remember when we were told do you want the good news or the bad news first. We wanted the good news - we're going to Cyprus. The bad news? We're going to Northern Ireland first. All the black blokes looked at each other and thought, 'that's really funny.'

For far too long, the people of Northern Ireland have been denied an equal voice and equal representation in government. It is time for the Assembly and Executive to be up and running and the people's business to be addressed.

If Northern Ireland is in one customs regime and the Republic of Ireland is in another, why won't a customs border be necessary, just as happens with every other land border of this type?

In my teens, I joined the Parachute Regiment. I jumped out of lots of airplanes, as much as the Government budget would allow us to. I did two active tours of duty: Northern Ireland, and then the Falklands war.

As a former pilot in World War I, Walter had always preferred flying as a means of travel, rather than going by sea. Whenever he was in the Dakota, flying over to Northern Ireland, he always asked for the front seat, joking that if it crashed then he wanted to die first.

My sights have always been on acting, on the creative process, never the lifestyle. Growing up in Northern Ireland when I did, everything was against you if you wanted to do something like that. But I was determined.

This is the great thing about Northern Ireland. I walk down the street and people stop me and say things like, 'I know you. You're that wee golfer, aren't you?' I say, 'Yeah, that's me.' They say, 'Keep it up, wee man.' It's very funny and that's why I want to stay here as long as possible.

My dad grew up in Banbridge, Northern Ireland, desperate to get to London. I grew up in London, so I don't know what it's like to yearn for the big city from a small town.

What were once only hopes for the future have now come to pass; it is almost exactly 13 years since the overwhelming majority of people in Ireland and Northern Ireland voted in favour of the agreement signed on Good Friday 1998, paving the way for Northern Ireland to become the exciting and inspirational place that it is today.

There are two traditions in Northern Ireland. There are two main religious denominations. But there is only one true moral denomination. And it wants peace.

I am opposed to abortion on demand, and I am opposed to the 1967 Act in Britain being transferred to the north.

We've had a very consistent position down the years. Sinn Fein is not in favour of abortion, and we resisted any attempt to bring the British 1967 Abortion Act to the north.