THE IRA ended the ceasefire, but as to who ended the peace process, that was far more complex, said Sinn Fein's national chairman, Mr Mitchell McLoughlin.
Speaking on RTE's Questions and Answers last night, he said it was necessary to examine what had and had not happened over the past 18 months. He said that Sinn Fein had said throughout the period that the only guarantee of permanent peace was to create a new political dispensation arrived at through discussion, dialogue and negotiation.
The IRA had fulfilled its end of the bargain, but there had been no move to all party talks by John Major, even accepting his political problems.
The arguments that brought about the "first ceasefire" were still valid. John Hume and Gerry Adams did deliver a complete cessation of military operations by the IRA. They did not say that the IRA would surrender their weapons, or that the IRA would disappear. If that was to be achieved then there would have to be a new political dispensation, resulting from negotiations.
When asked if they would come to the table with their arsenal intact, he answered, yes.
The Minister of State at the Department of Justice, Mr Austin Currie, spoke of the commitment to peaceful means shown by so many Northern nationalists over the past 25 years and warned against throwing that aside.
Those who planted the bombs were responsible for the end of the ceasefire, even though we were told that the cessation of violence would endure in all circumstances, said Mr Currie.
He spoke of betrayal of all the political parties and of the people "and how President Clinton was involved because he believed what was being said was being done.
It would require a considerable act of faith to build the process again, "but build the process again we must".
To do that the murder campaign had to end, this time for good. Then we must get Sinn Fein back into the political frame. We had to make sure the British doe not behave as they had in the past. They had to underpin political progress. We had to remember that an accommodation with the unionists had to be reached and that no progress was possible without the co operation of the British government.
Mr McLoughlin said he believed we could reconstruct the peace process, and if any agreement was reached Sinn Fein would sell it to the nationalist, population.