Hello and welcome to this special edition of Inside briefing marking 25 years. It's the landmark

Belfast Good Friday Agreement. I'm Jill Rutter, senior fellow at the Institute for Government.

The politicians behind the dealer well known from John Hume and David Trimble of the then two

main parties in Northern Ireland to Jerry Adams and Martin McGuinness of Sinn Féin, to Tony Blair,

UK Prime Minister and the Irish Tichuk, Brettie Ahern. But behind the scenes, much of the heavy lifting of history was being given a helping hand by officials, from the Northern Ireland Office and the UK government to the Irish government and also to the government of the US.

So today we're delighted to bring together three people who played a big role in preparing and implementing the deals that the politicians could ultimately sign to put an end to the troubles and restore devolved government to Northern Ireland.

I'm going to let my guests introduce themselves.

First, Quentin Thomas.

Hi. I joined the Northern Ireland office in the autumn of 1988 for two years, but ended up staying for about 10 and left almost immediately after the Good Friday Agreement was achieved.

And for most of that time, I was the so-called political director in the Northern Ireland office involved in the search for political development, the establishment of institutions, and for the achievement of peace and for relations, as respects Northern Ireland, with our colleagues in Dublin.

And speaking of colleagues in Dublin, Tim O'Connor.

Hello everybody.

So Tim O'Connor and I joined the Irish Civil Service in 1974

and the Department of Foreign Affairs as a junior diplomat in 1979.

And I was assigned then for the first time to the Northern Ireland

desk in the department in 1986 and I suppose like like like Quentin and Mary and everybody else

in this call once you get the bug that's it so I suppose I'm I'm actually still involved

almost 40 years later in in some form or other I you know in my I was posted abroad a few times, obviously, I worked in the Irish Embassy in Germany, in

Washington, and it was also a consular general in New York for a couple of years and ended up

being Secretary General to the President, Mary McAlees.

But I suppose the role here today is I was part of the build-up towards the Good Friday

agreement from about October 97 onwards. I had been involved at different times from 86 onwards,

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