The Northern Secretary, Sir Patrick Mayhew, has said there are "sensible grounds" for believing there will be an IRA ceasefire.Osnabrueck,"and after all the things that have gone before" he had not heard one word from people saying "of course you can understand it, of course if it hadn't been for the British being insensitive, or whatever, not one word of that." In years gone by "we heard that", he said. "So there are very sensible grounds for being hopeful that the IRA will recognise that this is a road leading them nowhere," he concluded.