n the talks that led to the Good Friday Agreement and the foundation of 25 years of Tourism Ireland, David Trimble had only two interests, canals & opera.
That is according to former Taoiseach Bertie Ahern speaking to Dearbhail McDonald at the the Irish Tourism Industry Confederation conference in Athlone. Watch here:
Mr Ahern said: that Mr Trimble “was big into canals. He had two interests in life, apart from abusing me. He was huge into canals But the only one who had done anything about canals was Charles Haughey, and you could not mention that name. The other was opera. And I knew nothing about opera.”
“David Trimble felt that anything that would interfere or anything that seemed to dilute to the Britishness was a threat and but years later, in my last conversation with David Trimble, when when it was only weeks from his death, he admitted to me that you know he wasn’t really fearful about these things because he knew they would work for the island.”
“But he just could not get them past his his colleagues. The two things when we narrowed down the list and when we got back to the six implementation bodies he didn’t have a problem.”
