Former President Mary McAleese has said people on the island of Ireland do not want a truce but a permanent peace.
Speaking as she gave an address in Dublin marking 100 years since the Christmas Truce of 1914, she said during that truce for the thousands of men, who were strewn across the western front: the human in them not the soldier took over.
She said in that moment there was a spontaneous outbreak of goodwill to all men.
Her comments were made at the Department of Foreign Affairs before she gave a commemorative lecture.
Professor McAleese said she believed that many of those men who came out of the trenches in to no man's land, would have given anything not to have to go back into those bunkers, and not to have to face the act of killing each other, within hours
She said people on this island were very fortunate in that there was a peace process and a Good Friday Agreement.
She said on the back of the Good Friday Agreement there was the will and the power that was expressed in referendums.
She said they want peace and perpetuity. They do not want a truce; they do not want a lull in conflict.
They want what is being built to be a permanent peace.
She said it was great that the parties are still around the table and they are still talking to one another and that they had that knowledge that people are willing them on to success.
Mary McAleese said that the island's future does not lie in repeating historic conflicts, in staying inside trenches.
However, she said the future of the people on the island of Ireland lies in getting out of the trenches, befriending one another, becoming good neighbours and working together for the common future: which, she said, is the common future of the nation's children.
