Prince Charles, who concluded his four-day tour of Ireland at peace center Corrymeela in County Antrim, said that Northern Ireland should “not be imprisoned by its history” and called for healing between the divided communities, the Irish Independent reports.

Earlier this week, Britain’s Prince of Wales visited Mullaghmore in County Sligo where his great-uncle Lord Mountbatten was killed by the IRA when a bomb detonated on his fishing boat in August 1979. His 14-year-old grandson, Nicholas Knatchbull, and his friend Paul Maxwell, 15-year-old local boy, were also killed. The Dowager Lady Brabourne, the mother-in-law of Mountbatten’s daughter, died the day after the attack.

"By our shared wounds and scars we can I hope, I pray, share healing and a friendship made all the stronger for the trials it has overcome,” he said.

"We have all suffered too much, too many people's loved ones have been killed or maimed.

"Surely it is time, as I said in Sligo two days ago, that we became the subjects of our history and not its prisoners."

The Corrymeela Centre, founded in 1965 by Ray Davey, has worked with victims throughout the Troubles. 

It sees around 11,000 people a year at its residential centre in Ballycastle, Co Antrim.

"Surely, too, in the roots of Corrymeela, we can discover lessons that can serve as a model to all who strive for peace and reconciliation."

Davey was a man whose experience of suffering as a prisoner of war inspired him to wrestle with the question of building community amid conflict, said Prince Charles.

"I was lucky enough to meet him when I came here all those years ago. It was this vision that led him to establish a place where people of different backgrounds, different political and religious beliefs and different identities could gather to break bread, to work together, to learn and, most of all, to talk about the hurts which are too deep to bear in silence.

"As I said earlier this week in Sligo, healing is possible even when the heartache continues - and the fruits of Corrymeela over the past 50 years bear testament to this."

He added: "One can only imagine that Ray Davey's heart would have been gladdened to see the administrations in Dublin and London today working together so closely; to see the warm welcomes afforded to the Queen and to the President of Ireland as they visited each others' countries; to see just how far the peace process has come and to see the sense of common purpose shared by the people of this island as they pursue the path of reconciliation."

He added that Northern Ireland was a shining example of what can be achieved when people commit themselves to ending conflict.

"But, of course, the story is not over; there is much more still to do."