Welcome to a special edition of Red Lines featuring an extended interview with the former President of Ireland, Mary McAleese, whose memoir hears the story is about to be published by Penguin Sandy Cove.

Dr Macalise served two terms as president from 1997 to 2011, taking over at a critical time in the peace process and finishing with a flourish,

hosting the Queen's State visit to Ireland just six months before she left Arsenaustra.

We began our conversation by talking about the theme of her presidency building bridges.

First, I wanted to know if the challenge of bringing people together on this island and beyond

remains as much of an issue

today as it was 23 years ago. I think it is and more. There's a great phrase of John Hewitts

that we build to fill the centuries arrears. So we haven't got the job done. We haven't, we've

started. I think we've made a good start

with the peace process, the good Friday agreement and the years in between. I think good progress

has been made in relationships. But we've a long way to go, a very long way to go, to be sure

that you're going to waken up every day in circumstances where the old

contempts, the old hatreds are not still embers that somebody could, you know, could,

and they're all except that somebody in circumstance could bring back, could oxygenate again.

So the work is still to be done.

And I think, in fairness, I think it is being again. So the work is still to be done. And I think,

in fairness, I think it is being done. I think there is huge solidarity around the Good Friday agreement. And all, you know, at least certainly in Northern Ireland and certainly on the

island of Ireland, there's huge solidarity around it and protection of it and protection of it

from the European Union also.

So I'd be confident about the future in a way that I probably wasn't when I was elected to office,

which was, as you remember, just shortly, but we had it six months before, eight months before

the signing of the Good Friday Agreement. So I'm more confident now, but let's not kid ourselves that the work is over.

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