Peace will come to Northern Ireland as soon as the Irish Republican Army disbands and changes into something resembling "an old soldiers' club", President Mary McAleese said during a visit to Seattle, Washington.
Mrs McAleese made the comment at a meeting with the editorial board of the Seattle Times where she was asked about the prospects for peace in the North.
"The IRA, they are now really, really in the way," Mrs McAleese said, according to the Seattle Times.
Mrs McAleese has generally avoided commenting on the situation in the North during her three-day visit as the head of a high-tech trade mission to Seattle, focusing instead on the economic progress of the Republic and the need for new immigrants to sustain growth.
In response to a student at Washington University, she said the lesson of the North was that violence was not the answer. "The peace process is slow and tedious," she said, "but you don't carry as many coffins at the end of it."
Mrs McAleese left Seattle yesterday for a two-day visit to Vancouver in Canada.
The last day of the trade mission focused on the aerospace sector with Michael Ahern, Minister of State for Enterprise, Trade and Employment, leading a delegation representing Irish aerospace and related companies to Boeing headquarters at Renton.
They were given a tour of the giant manufacturing hangar where Boeing produces 737 passenger planes. Boeing has an order from Ryanair, one of its biggest customers, for 140 of the firm's new 737-800 aircraft.
At a business lunch attended by US aerospace executives, Mrs McAleese said the development of a world-class aviation and aerospace services industry in Ireland had the fullest support of the Government as a key industrial development objective. The sector includes 160 Irish-owned and multinational companies based at Shannon and Dublin and employing more than 5,500 skilled personnel. "The industry is committed to making Ireland a European centre of excellence for aerospace companies," she said.
Introducing Mrs McAleese, the president of the Greater Seattle Trade Alliance, Bill Stafford, teased her for trying to entice high-tech workers to leave Seattle - set in spectacular scenery and known as the "emerald city" for its luxuriant vegetation - and return to Ireland.
"Why would anyone leave the emerald city for the emerald isle?" he asked, indicating the blue skies outside, "and live in a place like Sandyford? Better to go to Boston in January when it is 10 below and the wind is blowing and you will get people to come home."
Mrs McAleese responded that Mr Stafford had not taken into account "this mysterious thing called the 'craic'," which was hard to translate but was a unique Irish attraction.
Later, the President hosted a reception in Seattle for the Irish community in the northwest United States, including from as far away as Idaho and Montana.