Sinn Fein angrily complained that its political mandate could no longer be ignored because of its electoral gains - the party's best result since 1983.

A year later and responding to overtures from the new Labour government, the IRA reinstated its ceasefire. By the end of the years the Sinn Fein leadership was in Downing Street.

Sinn Fein's support for the eventual Good Friday Agreement of 10 April 1998 represented a momentous shift in republican thinking. Republicanism had recognised the legitimacy of new power-sharing institutions in Northern Ireland, the principle of consent and the place of arms in an overall settlement.

However, there was division among IRA members. Its first statement stated emphatically that no arms would be decommissioned. Dissidents claimed republicans had been tricked into cementing partition and broke away to form the "Real IRA". Months later it was responsible for the Omagh bomb, the worst atrocity of the Troubles which killed 29 people.