The last great symbolic moment as Queen Elizabeth meets Martin McGuinness

Thanks for putting me straight...here was I thinking they were fighting for UI, and all the time they just wanted to ge their a***es onto those cosy Stormont chairs...well who would have thunked that!!!

They were waiting outside Stormont to take part in peace talks and prevented from entering by your Orange Bigots and their bullyboys(RUC)and you have the temerity to talk about Neanderthals.

The real reason SF could not engage earlier was their need to get their own Neanderthals on board…The leaders deserve credit for eventually coming to the table…but to pretend they were there waiting for others is to distort recent history…even GA and MM don’t make that claim….

Only in your mind Dano. For people to sit down there has to be common ground.Every time Sinn Fein wanted to sit and talk the Brits wanted to make all the rules.How many lives would've been saved if they bit the bullet.In fact Dano the Brits had 70yrs. to "fix" the problem but they'd rather back your bigoted orange pals in Belfast and allow injustice to fester. Your high horse is on very slippery high moral(immoral) ground.

Seano continues to peddle the nonsense that his ‘heroes’ had to continue their attacks on fellow Irish citizens in order to force others to the negotiating table…if that’s true they would have immediately supported the Downing St declaration with an indefinite truce…now wouldn’t they?

You're full of crap bythebay we dragged you bigots kicking and screaming to the negotiating table with a the barrel of gun weep and learn you sad person.

There you go wrong again Ciara he also said "maidin maith agat". Your nephew is lucky living south of the border, tell that story on the falls road to the mothers of the children murdered by your British friends.The have moved on but they have not forgotten,you would consign them to the trash bin so as not to upset your sensibilities and your lack of respect for Irish history.Their will be no more fighting as the IRA campaign dragged the bigoted unionists and your British friends to negotiate,thereby giving the children of the Fall the peace of mind your nephew has. Your typical of some in your generation "it's all about me" and if any one else suffers you don't give a damn.

seanomelb, the 6 counties Northern Ireland UK Governmetn would most certainly have progressed substantially more if Sinn Fein hadn't brought the previous government down. Stormontgate involved the alleged Provo IRA spy-ring and intelligence gathering operation based in Stormont, the parliament building of Northern Ireland. No wonder the current Government hesitated on devolution of Peace and Justice! Sinn Fein is slowing the process, probably to generate more US funding for the so-called peace process which ended in 1998.

The peace process concluded with the Good Friday Agreement 14 years ago. Sinn Fein refused to meet the Queen last year when she was in Ireland. They have been avoiding it, not the Queen. She wore green in Ireland last year as well as for her meetings with Presidents Mary McAleese and Mary Robinson. Sinn Fein needs to fulfill the Good Friday Agreement.

Seano, he said 'Slán agus Beannacht' to her when she was leaving. Nothing more. I have no interest in the 6 counties, I just dont want to have anymore fighting. I have a 9 year old and 10 month old nephew and Im glad that they will never know of the violence in NI. It will be consigned to the history books and they wont be angry about NI unlike yourself. Nothing that happens on this Island concerns or affects you except the Queen is a figure head in the 6 counties and the head of your country, the one you chose to move to.

Autonomy isn't independence. Theorefore an 'independent' (sic) Ireland can't be said to have failed. The Government of Ireland Act, 1920 (ie partition), (like the Act of Union, 1800/'01 (annexation)) was designed by Great Britain (GB) to weaken a competitor by divide and conquer! allan07 is 48. Average life expectancy is 70. That leaves 22 years to a United Ireland (UI), if the birth of a nation is dependent on the impedence of one individual. (My wife is from an Ulster-Scot Protestant background. Every times she returns to home to Dublin from visiting her folks in the north, she tells me there's increasing resignation to the inevitability of a UI.) Is EIIR monarch to 500,000 northern Irish nationalists/republicans. (Was an ex-Ugandan dictator really the Last King of Scotland.) Common travel area between GB and Ireland is an imperial device to deny the independence of Ireland. There are as many Irish residents of GB as there are British residents in Ireland (c1.1m). Population of Ireland is c6m, (except to those with a partitionist education). Martin forgives Bloody Sunday as much as She forgives Mullaghmore. Is one royal life worth 14 Derry nationalists/republicans. Reactionary violence to neo-colonialism may never achieve a UI, any more than British State violence could have foisted a UK on unwilling Irish subjects.

Tell me Ciara who is the foreign minister for the six counties or how many embassies do they have overseas??BTW you were wrong again he did greet her in Irish/Gaelic how disappointing for you.

Pike, there are about 398,000 Irish in the UK in the last UK census and 4.5 million of us in Ireland so your point is kinda incorrect!

Graydon, the English government is not in Northern Ireland, NI has its own government.

ciaradexy, there is nothing wrong with England. It's simply that English government belongs in England and not in Ireland. England's presence in Ireland should be limited to commercial transaction, tourism, cultural exchanges and an embassy in Dublin (with maybe a consulate in Belfast).