Albert Reynolds

Reynolds, Taoiseach from 1992 to 1994, took risks with republicans that his predecessors had avoided and built a working relationship with John Major. Together they issued the Downing Street Declaration of December 1993, in which Britain accepted that the people of Ireland, north and south, could decide on unity by consent, and Ireland accepted that unity required majority consent in the north. The IRA ceasefire followed in August 1994. His government fell in a domestic crisis that November.