In January 1983, in consultation with key ministers, the attorney-general and senior civil servants, I embarked on a new Northern Ireland strategy, the object of which was to address the rapidly growing alienation of Northern nationalists, writes Garret FitzGerald.
To halt and reverse this process would, we believed, require a combination of three elements: a much less aggressive British security policy in nationalist areas; radical reforms to create genuine equality between nationalists and unionists; and, at least for a period, a role for our government in the governance of Northern Ireland that would reassure demoralised nationalist opinion.
This was an ambitious agenda, particularly given what eight years' political contacts with Margaret Thatcher had taught me about her attitudes to security issues and to the Northern Ireland political scene.
But such an approach seemed to offer the only hope of preventing what then seemed to have become an almost inexorable drift towards dominance by Sinn Féin within Northern nationalism at a time when its paramilitary arm, the IRA, remained actively engaged in a campaign of violence.
If that drift continued it could, the government believed, eventually threaten both the stability of Northern Ireland and the security of our own State.
Our hope was, of course, that a reversal of this drift of political support from the SDLP to Sinn Féin would force IRA/Sinn Féin to reconsider its "Armalite and ballot box" strategy, and eventually to abandon its campaign of violence in favour of an attempt to win support for its policies by purely democratic means.
The Anglo-Irish Agreement of November 1985 was the outcome of this new strategy. At the time of its signature it seemed to us likely, however, that some time would have to elapse after the signature of the agreement before nationalists would come to see practical benefits arising from it; such as the ending of sectarian discrimination through the enactment of new legislation in the form of a Northern Ireland Fair Employment Act.
But in the event, and despite problems with the implementation of agreed changes in British security policy, a very positive nationalist response to the agreement immediately emerged.
A major factor in the immediacy of this Northern nationalist reaction was, I have to say, the scale and intensity of the deeply hostile unionist reaction to the agreement, including in particular its hostility to the establishment of a joint British-Irish secretariat in Belfast.
This unionist reaction convinced nationalists, even in advance of practical benefits emerging, that the agreement must be good for them, with the result that a dramatic reversal of the earlier political drift from the SDLP to Sinn Féin immediately took place.
(I doubt if even today many unionists realise what a positive role in relation to our government's strategy was played by their misplaced outrage at an agreement which they failed to realise was in fact being directed against the IRA.)
But while the agreement marked a major setback for Sinn Féin/IRA, as we had intended should be the case, more than seven years were to elapse before that organisation finally drew from it the lesson we had intended the party to learn.
In fact I had almost given up hope of the agreement bearing what we had hoped would be its full fruit when in spring 1993 John Hume confided in me that his efforts at persuasion had finally led the IRA to agree to end its violence, and to accept de facto the principle of consent by a Northern majority being a precondition to Irish unity.
From that moment in early 1993 I backed what became known as the peace process. In the nature of things this had to involve many very uncomfortable concessions and compromises, including the premature release of many people guilty of appalling crimes.
But if it was going to bring about a permanent end to political violence on our island, and to convert the IRA into a harmless old boys' club, then I judged it worth supporting.
I think many people recognised that in the nature of things there could be no guarantee that every single IRA member would abandon criminal activity in the aftermath of a settlement.
So many of its members had been involved for so many years in brutality and protection rackets, robberies and smuggling, that some individuals would inevitably be unwilling to "go straight".
But like most people watching the negotiating process from outside, I naturally assumed that, with Sinn Féin due to become involved in government and in the organisation of policing in the North, the two governments would insist that the settlement include a "bankable" commitment that the IRA as an organisation would unambiguously forswear all post-settlement criminal activity in both parts of the island.
It came as a huge shock, therefore, to discover several weeks ago that, not only was Sinn Féin flatly rejecting the words that had been chosen by the two governments to give effect to the commitment by the IRA to abandon crime, but that despite this rejection the Taoiseach, the British Prime Minister and even, astonishingly, the DUP appeared to see as the only remaining obstacle to a settlement the emotive, but by comparison trivial, issue of the publication of photographs of the de-commissioning of IRA arms.
It was only when the Progressive Democrats abruptly called a halt to a charade that threatened to betray our democracy that the Taoiseach was finally pulled back from the brink, forcing the British Prime Minister, somewhat humiliatingly, to follow suit.
Where dealings with the IRA and Northern Ireland are concerned, our history has taught us not to rely on British governments. The recent publication of the 1974 archival records has reminded us of this, and of the vigilance of an earlier Irish government in the face of the secret dealings by the British government of that era.
But until now we had thought that we could at least trust our own governments in security matters of this kind.
After this near-debacle there will certainly be great reluctance within this State to accord such trust to an Irish government in future. Unless there is full private disclosure to the main opposition leaders of the government's future negotiating hand, those parties will I think have to reconsider their traditional willingness to operate a bipartisan Northern Ireland policy on the basis of trust.
There remains the enigma of the Belfast bank raid, the proceeds of which, I understand, are thought to be in this State, whence the lorry used in the robbery was driven to Belfast.
The Taoiseach has said he believes that Adams and McGuinness must have known of this raid in advance and had therefore been negotiating with him and Tony Blair in bad faith.
He could, of course, be wrong in this, but if Adams, McGuinness and Kelly did not know about the crime their IRA colleagues were planning, they clearly lose all credibility as negotiators of an end to violence - the role in which they have been presenting themselves for over a decade.