Good Friday Agreement: Maze could be 'retained for prison staff'

The early release of paramilitary prisoners as part of the Good Friday Agreement was one of the most controversial aspects of the deal signed 25 years ago.

The process has left many unanswered questions, not least what to do with the since closed Maze Prison.

At one point, there was a plan for some retained buildings to become a museum and a peace centre, but that conversation was poisoned by the argument that it would become a "shrine" to the dead of the republican hunger strike of 1981.

There are others who want to see the prison's remaining buildings bulldozed.

For former director general of the Northern Ireland Prison Service, Robin Masefield, there are other possibilities.

He said there was a case for proposals to "retain some working parts of the prison as a museum and a peace centre".

"And also as importantly for me - and, I felt, for the NI Prison Service and our memory - was to retain parts that would have been - not quite pilgrimage, that would be overstating it - but for prison staff and for our families and for the next generation, where we could have taken people and said that was our side of it."