US President Joe Biden in Belfast: 'Peace was not inevitable, we can't ever forget that'

The US President spoke of how peace had not been inevitable here as he contrasted a visit back in 1991 as a senator and where the north of Ireland is today.

Speaking at the Ulster University’s Belfast campus, he paid tribute to those he met in that visit 32 years ago including John Hume, David Trimble, Monica McWilliams and David Ervine.

“There were no guarantees the deal on paper would hold. There were no guarantees it would be able to deliver the progress we see today. It took long, hard years to get to this place. It took people coming together in good faith and to risk boldly for the future.

"It took people all across Northern Ireland who made the choice for a brighter and shared future.”

“I think sometimes, especially with the distance of history, we forget how hard-earned, how astounding that peace was at the moment. It shifted the political gravity in our world, literally.

“In 1998 it was the longest-running conflict in Europe since the end of World War Two. Thousands of families had been affected by the Troubles, losses are real, the pain was personal.

“Every person killed in the Troubles left an empty chair at the dining room table, a hole in the heart that was never filled for the ones they lost.

“Peace was not inevitable, we can’t ever forget that. There was nothing inevitable about it. As George Mitchell often said, ‘the negotiations had 700 days of failure, and one day of success’. But they kept going because George and all the many others never stopped believing that success was possible.”

He said that protecting that Agreement was something that united Democrats and Republicans in the US.

He said there were “scores” of American companies willing to invest in the north of Ireland as he advocated for the restoration of the power-sharing institutions, but said that that could only be done here in the north.

“It’s a decision for you to make,” he said.

"Peace and economic opportunity go together.”