But that citizen’s perception was also at one with the truth in recognizing that the very brutality of the means by which the IRA were pursuing change was destructive of the trust upon which new possibilities would have to be based.

In this sentence Heaney weighs the moral and political cost of revolutionary violence in Northern Ireland. He acknowledges a citizen’s clear-sightedness: even if one sympathizes with the desire for change, the “brutality of the means” corrodes the very social trust needed to build a workable future. The remark reflects Heaney’s recurring concern—across essays and public statements—with how language, art, and civic life are damaged when coercion becomes normal. It also implies a pragmatic insight: durable political transformation depends not only on ends but on methods that can sustain legitimacy and mutual confidence afterward.