A lot has been said in this campaign about Mrs. Clinton's conduct in foreign affairs. In my experience, she has worked hard to support those most in need, especially in conflict situations. One instance with which I am most familiar involves her role in helping to bring peace to Northern Ireland.

In 1995, I learned that the President and Mrs. Clinton were going to travel to Ireland. I decided to write the First Lady in the hopes that during their busy schedules she might have the opportunity to meet women who were the backbone of efforts to hold their communities together during the "Troubles" in Northern Ireland. I listed some of the women I had been lucky enough to meet in the previous years, both as a State Department officer and with my father, Speaker O'Neill. Amongst the political and community activists I suggested, Mrs. Clinton expressed an interest in meeting Joyce McCartan. Joyce, a so-called "family feminist" and community activist, was the most humble of all the women I had mentioned.

A Protestant, Joyce had married a Catholic and lived in an apartment above the Lamplighter Fish and Chips Shop on the Lower Ormeau Road, one of the more violent thoroughfares in Belfast. Her son, Gary, the youngest of eight children, had been killed several years earlier by Loyalist paramilitaries. Her response was to expand her work with other women, both Catholics and Protestants, who had lost husbands, fathers, sons and brothers to the violence. She organized the Women's Information Drop-In Center where women could lend moral support to one another and engage in small economic projects to help each other financially, now that their breadwinners had been killed.

Mrs. Clinton's decision to meet with Joyce could not have been more supportive of the peace process. During the trip, Mrs. Clinton joined Joyce and four other women, two Catholic and two Protestant, who had lost loved ones in the Troubles. They drank a "cuppa." -- tea from an old battered kettle in Joyce's living room above the fish and chips shop. Mrs. Clinton listened carefully as the women told their stories, giving quiet support to their efforts to hold their families and communities together in some very tough neighborhoods. Joyce died of cancer several months after Mrs. Clinton's visit.

Hillary with Northern Ireland leaders from nationalist and loyalist communities

The meeting with Joyce and her friends was an introduction for Mrs. Clinton to the people of the island of Ireland. That meeting fostered in her an enduring commitment to promote peace and prosperity in Northern Ireland. As First Lady, U.S. Senator, U.S. Secretary of State and thereafter, she regularly met with men and women from all walks of life in Ireland – security officials, representatives of victims groups, politicians, business and community leaders, etc. – to encourage them to move the peace process forward. Whether speaking at the Joyce McCartan Memorial Lecture at the University of Ulster, at the Vital Voices Conference in Belfast before 400 women from all economic, political, and social sectors, addressing a session of the Northern Ireland Assembly, or at countless other events, Mrs. Clinton made clear her and the President's abiding support for the people of Northern Ireland on their path to peace. In doing so, Mrs. Clinton helped to create a climate in which political leaders could take the decisions necessary to end the conflict and build a more prosperous society.

Inez McCormack, an Irish labor leader, said Hillary Clinton played an important role building grass-roots support for the peace process. She said Clinton also was influential in making sure the peace accords included provisions guaranteeing equality based on gender, religion and sexual orientation.

Irish Person of the Year awarded by Irish America MagazineIrish Central

"She understood that you had to tackle inequality if you were going to make the peace," McCormack has said.

John Hume, the former leader of the Social Democratic and Labor Party who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize said, "she played a positive role for over a decade in helping to bring peace to Northern Ireland. ... She visited Northern Ireland, met with very many people and gave very decisive support to the peace. ... In private she made countless calls and contacts, speaking to leaders and opinion makers on all sides, urging them to keep moving forward."