Read an excerpt from Terry Prone's much-anticipated new political memoir

Meanwhile, Tom [Savage] would summon me, every now and then, for scriptwriting for the Taoiseach. The fact that I often knew little about the details of the policies reflected in the speeches didn’t seem to matter.

Or, rather, was an advantage. I didn’t get entangled in the weeds, and anything I got wrong, Tom would instantly capture and fix. Sometimes, the notice was astonishingly short, as happened the day I came out of a training session in the company to be told that the Taoiseach’s driver was in the lobby, ready to take me to Government Buildings, because Tom wanted something done.

I took a notebook and got into the car, wondering if I should ask the Taoiseach’s driver the reason for the summons. I decided against it, but while considering the possibility, met the driver’s smiling eyes in the rear-view mirror.

‘Great day,’ he said. It was lashing rain, so he clearly wasn’t talking about the weather, but the news bulletin on the radio playing in the car didn’t seem to suggest anything exceptional, so I nodded knowingly and shut up.

Tom and Diggy [Seán Duignan] met me at the door. Diggy always stood slightly behind Tom. Or maybe he stood slightly behind him when facing me because, I suspect, Diggy had a notion that I was dangerously volatile.

On this occasion, Diggy was smiling like he’d never stop. Tom, on the other hand, was all business. ‘Half an hour with the Taoiseach, then an hour, maybe an hour and a half, to write the piece to camera he’s going to deliver tonight after the announcement of the ceasefire. Start with qui bono.’

With that, he knocked on the door of the Taoiseach’s office, was shouted in, and there was Albert with the department secretary general and the minister for foreign affairs, all grinning like it was Christmas.

The others buzzed off and I was left with the Taoiseach, a cup of tea each, and not a clue, other than qui bono. ‘Okay, Taoiseach, you’ve practically no time, so let’s get on with it,’ I said, letting on to be in charge. ‘Who gains most from this ceasefire? The people who stand to gain most from it probably won’t even know about it and they won’t see the broadcast either.'

'They’re the children, north and south.’ he told me. ‘Our children. And grandchildren. They weren’t around for the last twenty-five years of grief and tragedy. They don’t know what a ceasefire can do. None of us does. But it will give them back their right to childhood.’

I was writing frantically, and when he stopped, glanced up to find the Taoiseach groping for a hanky to mop his tears.

‘It will. It really will,’ he told me. ‘Whether they’re on the Falls or the Shankill. Gives them the right that was stolen from generations.’

He went searching on his desk among the papers and produced a newspaper, flailing it at me to make me register the black and white photograph of a child of about six, perfectly groomed for the picture and his sibling, pop-eyed with babyhood. The two had been orphaned by a bomb.

He talked about other atrocities and, trying to get him to some theme other than horror, I asked him some dumb question about how proud he was of the ceasefire.

He lifted me out of it, telling me that nobody – neither individual nor group – ‘owned’ the ceasefire. But then he talked about something that had happened in his past that had changed him from being ‘someone willing to work for peace, to someone obsessed by peace’.

I asked him what that event was. It was an atrocity, was the answer, but he wasn’t going to say any more than that. This speech wasn’t about him. Well, to some degree it was, I said, asking what he wanted to say about Tánaiste Dick Spring, with whom Albert had the kind of chaotic and occasionally venomous relationship that characterises coalitions, especially when the leader of one of the two parties is as impulsive and obstinate as Albert.

He was generous about Spring and about John Hume. A knock on the door presaged Tom’s arrival with several senior civil servants. The audience was over.

Recording was in three hours, which meant the script had to be written, cleared, timed and put on to the then Neanderthal system of autocue within the next two hours. I was led into a secretarial office and pointed at a word processor.

"You didn’t record him?" Tom asked.

"Like I’d have the time to transcribe a recording!" Tom left and from my notes and my recent memory of the pattern of Albert’s thoughts and words, I crafted a lovely script. It was lovely because it was true.

True to what he had said and what he was. When the autocue was set up in front of him, he read it through once, with Diggy, Tom and me braced for dispute. No dispute. Not a word to be changed

He looked up impatiently, indicated he was ready to go, and did it flawlessly. It went out that night and I watched it at home with Tom, agreeing with the Taoiseach’s driver. It was a great, great day. One of the few days of unalloyed joy for Albert in the Taoiseach’s office.

Excerpt from I'm Glad You Asked Me That: The Political Years' by Terry Prone   

Read More: Interview with Terry Prone