19 November 1984: The British Prime Minister made her infamous speech ‘Out, Out, Out’ at a news conference in London OTD. She had been asked a number of questions about the progress of Anglo-Irish talks in relation to the North of Ireland and the continuing Conflict there that seemed to be unresolvable. She had earlier that day met the Irish Taoiseach Dr Garret Fitzgerald at Chequers and they had according to her had  ‘the fullest, frankest, the most realistic bilateral meeting I have ever had with the Taoiseach. We have not, in fact, come to decisions.’ However the Taoiseach was holding a separate news conference that evening and was unaware of what Mrs Thatcher was about to say.

Towards the end of the conference in which she was reserved in her comments & gave nothing away she bluntly told an RTE reporter exactly what was NOT going to be on the table for discussion down the line:.

RTE: Prime Minister, you said that you want political stability within Northern Ireland, within the United Kingdom. Could I ask you, in your view, does Dr. FitzGerald  therefore accept that what you are both working towards is an internal solution within Northern Ireland, within the United Kingdom, and by implication, does that mean that the British Government has for the foreseeable future ruled out the three main options within the Forum Report?

Prime Minister: I have made it quite clear—and so did Mr. Prior when he was Secretary of State for Northern Ireland—that a unified Ireland was one solution that is out. A second solution was confederation of two states. That is out. A third solution was joint authority. That is out. That is a derogation from sovereignty. We made that quite clear when the Report was published.

Northern Ireland is part of the United Kingdom. She is part of the United Kingdom because that is the wish of the majority of her citizens. The majority wish to stay part of the United Kingdom.

The Forum Report indicated that they realized that any change in the status of Northern Ireland could only come about by the consent of the people of Northern Ireland, so we are dealing with a situation where Northern Ireland is part of the United Kingdom because the majority of her people wish to be part of the United Kingdom and we have a minority community.

That is the situation we are presented with.

https://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/105790

This was a humiliation for Dr Fitzgerald who did not seem to realise the import of what she has said until he returned to Dublin and it finally sunk in with the media that he had been made to look like a supplicant and not an equal in these talks between the two States. Indeed Mrs Thatcher’s blunt words are still the official position of Her Majesty’s Government to this day...