Ahern hails IRA statement as historic

“TONIGHT will be the first night since 1969 that we don’t go to our beds feeling that some threat lies over our heads,” Taoiseach Bertie Ahern told reporters yesterday.

Mr Ahern was speaking half-an-hour after the IRA’s armed struggle ceased at 4pm yesterday, following the long-awaited statement that the republican organisation would follow a democratic path, ending more than 30 years of violence.

On the day in which he declared “the war is over”, an upbeat Taoiseach said he believed the country could look to “a future of peace and prosperity based on mutual trust and reconciliation and a final end to violence”.