I love our shared island our shared Ireland and its core decency. I love it for its imagination and its celebration of the endless possibilities for our people.

I hope that at the end of the seven years people will say that I have been of some inspirational value to them at home in terms of inclusiveness and abroad I look forward to representing Ireland.

Ireland was a place for the renewal of hope and I still see it like that.

I know there's some kind of history to mountain music-like it came from Ireland or England or Scotland and we kept up the tradition.

Love is never defeated and I could add the history of Ireland proves it.

There once was a demographic survey done to determine if money was connected to happiness and Ireland was the only place where this did not turn out to be true.

Out of Ireland have we come great hatred little room maimed us at the start. I carry from my mother's womb a fanatic heart.

For over 30 years the IRA showed that the British government could not rule Ireland on its own terms.

When I told the people of Northern Ireland that I was an atheist a woman in the audience stood up and said 'Yes but is it the God of the Catholics or the God of the Protestants in whom you don't believe?

What were once only hopes for the future have now come to pass it is almost exactly 13 years since the overwhelming majority of people in Ireland and Northern Ireland voted in favour of the agreement signed on Good Friday 1998 paving the way for Northern Ireland to become the exciting and inspirational place that it is today.