Fermanagh man David Kerr was the Ulster Unionist Party’s Director of Communications at the time of the GFA signing, and later became a special advisor to UUP party leader Lord David Trimble, who was First Minister of Northern Ireland from 1998 to 2002. David now runs a planning and communications company and lives in Ballinamallard.

John Hume and Lord David Trimble are widely recognised for their role in securing peace in Northern Ireland, with one of the Lord Trimble’s closest aides during the time of peace talks a then young Fermanagh man, David Kerr.

“I had a ringside seat – well, not even a ringside seat, I was in the ring,” said David, when speaking to this newspaper about the negotiations around the GFA.

He continued: “I was brought in on the talks team to look after media. I was involved in the meetings as a note taker, and as an advisor and aide to David Trimble.

“It was new territory for everyone at that time. There had been talks processes in the past, but this one was different – we had the backdrop of ceasefires in 1994, albeit when we started in 1996, we didn’t have an IRA ceasefire because it had broken down in February of that year.

"It didn’t go very far in the first year, and then the IRA declared another ceasefire in the summer of 1997, and not long after that Sinn Féin joined the talks; the DUP and the UK Unionists walked out.

“We made the decision along with the two Loyalist parties to stay in the talks.”

David detailed how strand two of the agreement, which covered North-South institutions, had major changes which became unacceptable to Unionists in the final week of the talks, and it took until the early hours of Thursday morning to resolve them.

He said: “We fired through on the other strands [from Thursday] and got it resolved by Thursday night.

"But it had not been resolved what we were going to do about prisoner releases, policing and the decommissioning of weapons, and ultimately they were the issues that we couldn’t get satisfactory terms on to keep our Ulster Unionist team intact.”

Speaking about the policing recommendations that were brought forward as part of the deal, David said: “More than 90 per cent of the recommendations on policing reform came from the RUC and Ronnie Flanagan [the former RUC Chief Constable].

"The only thing the RUC didn’t recommend was a name change. With 25 years of hindsight, the name change was inevitable to get the SDLP and ultimately Republicans to support a new beginning to policing."

Looking to the future, David said: “I have said a number of times that this is a 50-year project, this is a two-generation project, and it is going to take another 25 years for us to work through and resolve these outstanding issues; legacy might even have to be part of that.

"But we will just have to do it. You have to realise the context we have come from, with all that happened in The Troubles, that it is going to take a long time for people to get over and society to move on from [The Troubles]."

Speaking on the legacy of the GFA, David said: “I grew up with The Troubles, but the experience, post-98, is totally different and no one can tell me that it’s not.

"Society here is totally transformed, and much more at ease with itself, and much more peaceful and organised.

"We still have issues with paramilitarism and organised criminality that we need to deal with.”