For many, the pictures of Gerry Adams and Ian Paisley around the table in Stormont signalling their intentions of going into government together were a ‘telling and forceful image’ marking the end of the Troubles and the start of a new era in which ‘real politics can begin’ in Northern Ireland. This was just the latest in a line of what one Secretary of State for Northern Ireland called ‘it'll-never-happen moments’, which reinforced the sense of normalization that had been a central strand in the narratives of the peace process since the early 1990s.

If there was widespread agreement that these events were historic, there were contrasting views among the participants about their true meaning. For Gerry Adams they represented ‘a new start … with the potential to build a new, harmonious relationship between nationalists and Republicans and Unionists.’ Ian Paisley was characteristically more direct, claiming them as ‘a great victory for the Unionist people’ because ‘Gerry Adams will sit in our Assembly – a British institution of the British state … [and] will take an oath to … support the rule of law,’ which meant ‘the end of Republicanism’.

While the Provisionals claimed that they remained ‘unrepentant Republicans’, some within their political tradition agreed with the Democratic Unionists that it was they who were ‘writing the agenda … and forcing Republicans to adhere to their demands.’ To these other ‘unrepentant Republicans’, the historic compromise was a fundamental defeat for the Republican project, and marked a decisive shift in Northern Irish politics. Other commentators pointed to the contradictions within this ‘curious kind of peace’, which they defined as simply the continuation of war by other means. In these assessments, a political Rubicon had not been crossed in 2007; the essential political conflict ‘driven by invariant understandings of nationhood and political identity’ remained intact. So while the Provisional IRA had changed from being a revolutionary movement committed to overthrowing the state to a constitutional party prepared to govern it, many questions still remained unanswered about what exactly was ending and what was beginning as a result of this new departure.