KENNETH Branagh has admitted to fears for the future of peace in Northern Ireland. Speaking to The Herald Magazine about his new film Belfast, based on his own family’s experiences at the start of the Troubles, Branagh said that in the wake of Brexit and the ongoing controversy surrounding the Northern Ireland Protocol he worried that the progress made since the Good Friday Agreement might be lost.

“I think everybody does. I think everybody who lives there does” said Branagh. “The peace is imperfect, and it is inevitably fragile.”

Brexit and the Irish Sea border were live issues, he added, and needed to be debated, but cautioned that there is a danger that the current peace is being taken for granted

“All I would say is that, for me, the miracle – flawed and charged as it was – of the Good Friday Agreement cannot be underestimated in terms of the distance travelled in my lifetime.

“I was born in 1960 and you couldn’t have been in Belfast at any time during the Troubles and thought it was ever ending.

“So, all I can say is that, for all of the evidence of the possibility of constant and continual disruption, there is equal, and I would hope, overpowering evidence for a deep-seated desire for peace on the part of the majority of the people in the north of Ireland.”

To read The Herald Magazine interview with Kenneth Branagh click here

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