Editorial: This is a time to remember the successes of the 1998 Belfast Agreement

The Belfast or Good Friday Agreement was signed 25 years ago. ​The anniversary was yesterday if you date the quarter century to the nearest Good Friday or is on Monday if you date it to the actual signing date of April 10.

It was a huge milestone in the history of Northern Ireland. A wide swathe of the Province reached an accommodation on key political principles. Such broad agreement was without precedent in Ulster since the Plantation of the 1600s. This newspaper backed the deal and published a front page on the day of the subsequent referendum with the headline: Say Yes and Say it Loud! The then Ulster Unionist leader David Trimble had secured the ‘principle of consent’, which meant there could be no change in the constitutional status of Northern Ireland without the consent of its people. That nationalist Ireland recognised such a principle is one of the most significant moments on this island since it was divided in 1921.

There have been profound political challenges since then, not least the damage done to the principle of consent by the Irish Sea border. But this is a time to remember the achievement of 1998 and the good that has flowed from it. NI is a prosperous society which is loved by tourists and known as a fine place to live. A tiny band of terrorists who seek to bring us back to the Troubles have little support.

We pay tribute to the key players of 1998, some of them dead. David Trimble, John Hume, George Mitchell, Reg Empey, Seamus Mallon, John Alderdice, Monica McWilliams, Bertie Ahern and Tony Blair. And while it is fair to observe that there would have been no need for a peace deal if not for the IRA, who killed more people than anyone else in the Troubles, Martin McGuinness did show a tact and political restraint in office that has eluded his triumphalist Sinn Fein successors.