Letter: Survey on attitudes to Troubles is a real cause for hope so let's reset the clock and find a joint way forward

It is also a reminder that the Belfast Good Friday Agreement was not, as it is often portrayed, a ‘peace’ agreement but rather a truce that gave political leaders the space to seek alternatives that would lay the ghosts that still regularly foment conflict here, and across the Irish Sea.

One of the positive findings of the report, commissioned by Mr Andrew Sloan on behalf of the CVSNI, is that 80 per cent of respondents in Britain believe the conflict should be included in the curriculum for British secondary school students.

Indeed, we believe that there should be a joint curriculum agreed for all secondary school students on these islands.

Another positive finding to emerge from the survey is that respondents believe that the British, Irish and Northern Ireland governments should develop a joint strategy for addressing the long running sore that is the legacy wars.

With a new taoiseach in Dublin, the imminent election of a new prime minister in London who has pledged to repeal the Legacy Act, and a new team of first and deputy first ministers in Belfast, surely the time has arrived to reset the clock and find a joint way forward?

This is something that not only people in Britain clearly want, but ourselves as well.

We would urge everyone interested in solving our past differences and facilitating a better future to read this report.

Harry Donaghty, Northern chair, Belfast, John Green, Southern chair, Padraig Yeates, secretary, www.truthrecoveryprocess.ie, Dublin