Interview

1. GS: You have stated how it is important to talk or communicate with your enemies. Are there moments when it is a good idea not to talk?

2. JP: It may not always be the right time to negotiate with your enemies, but it is always the right time to talk. On whether there are also moments when it is a good idea not to talk, I do not think so. I cannot think of any circumstances when you would not want to talk with your enemy, or have some way of communicating with them. There may be very little you can do, but it is always worth having that channel. If you look at the channel we had to the PIRA from 1972 on, it only really sprung into life for useful purposes in 1973–4, in 1980 over the hunger strike and then crucially with the John Major correspondence from 1991 to 1993. But having that channel there, having the ability to talk, was absolutely crucial because without it we would not have been able to get to the Downing Street Declaration and to the ceasefire.

3. GS: How do you gauge the relationship between the informal and the formal, and do you have to make the distinction between the dangers of possible overlap or do you see them as conjoined?

4. JP: I think that the chances of making progress across the table are not high. People rarely want to make concessions in a public setting, and by public setting I mean even twenty people around the table, because people hate to make concessions in those circumstances. They are far more likely to explore something when you are talking privately to them. I used to find that Gerry Adams was much more inclined to look very tentatively at the ways forward when I went for a walk with him round the garden at the Clonard Monastery than he would even in the room with his closest colleagues. The formal aspects are crucial, and the danger of overlap comes if you have lots and lots of negotiating channels because then things can get very muddled. In contrast, if you have one person that is handling negotiations, or one team that is handling negotiations on each side, that should not happen.