On the SF negotiating team : Mr O Bradaigh, Sinn Fein vice-president Maire Drumm, Ulster organiser Seamus Loughran, and leading republicans Billy McKee, Daithi O Conaill, Seamus Twomey, Kevin Mallon and JB O’Hagan.

On the Clerical team : senior members of the Church of Ireland, Presbyterian Assembly, Methodist Church and other denominations.

" “A promising and developing encounter had been disrupted, perhaps with Dublin government sanction. We all knew that the Churchmen were in contact with the British government,” said Mr O Bradaigh, who left Sinn Fein in 1986. "

“Eventually it came down to defining the republican terms and the wording of the declaration of intent by Britain to leave Ireland,” Mr O Bradaigh said.

It will be interesting to see if his claims are substantiated when official British and Irish government documents from 1974 are released under the ‘30-year rule’. Were the British Government really that close to pulling out ? And did the government of the ROI compromise what might have spared us those murderous years ?