I thank the Chairman and Mr. Donoghue. I am glad to be here with members of the committee and others who are joining the meeting from afar. By way of background, I worked on Northern Ireland affairs in the Anglo-Irish division of the Department of the Taoiseach from 1993 to 2001. Therefore, I was very much involved in the preparations for the negotiations and during the negotiations themselves I did a lot of work on drafting around the constitutional and institutional issues in particular. Then I spent the three years after the negotiation of the agreement working on the North-South institutions and trying to find a basis for the institutions to go live. I then went off to other places, principally the EU, but my last few years in the public service were dominated and dogged by Brexit. I was the lead official on Brexit in the Taoiseach's Department for a couple of years and then in the Department of Foreign Affairs. I found myself reacquainted with Northern Ireland more than I might have expected to be when I worked in EU matters.
Since my retirement three years ago, I have developed a number of connections with Northern Ireland. In particular, I am an honorary professor at the Mitchell Institute at Queen's University Belfast and am also on the steering committee of a project being run by the Royal Irish Academy and the University of Notre Dame called Analysing and Researching Ireland North and South, ARINS. We have published around 20 or 25 academic articles on all sorts of aspects of the future of Ireland, some directly related to the question of constitutional change and others not.
On a personal note, my parents are both originally from Northern Ireland. They have lived in the Republic since they went to university here. They are both 90 years of age so they have lived here a long time but still have close connections with Northern Ireland. By coincidence, my son is now living in Belfast. He is married to a woman from Belfast and I have a little nine-month-old Northern Ireland grandson, whom I met this morning, so I have a strong sense of a stake in the place.
I submitted a longer paper to the committee containing some reflections on the negotiations. I also circulated the text of a lecture I gave at Queen's University last year which was specifically on the question of what the Good Friday Agreement does and does not say about a united Ireland. That, in turn, was based on an academic article I had published by the Royal Irish Academy. I knew coming in here of the approach that Mr. Donoghue was planning to take and Mr. O'Connor very kindly shared his paper with me so I decided not to go at things in a chronological way but to make some personal reflections which are entirely incomplete and not comprehensive. They benefit from hindsight, which makes us all wiser but I hope they will be useful.
The first point I would make is that talk of a peace process can often be misleading. It is a misnomer. There was no single or singular peace process. There were quite different streams which flowed together into the final Good Friday Agreement. Going right back to Sunningdale, through the Anglo-Irish Agreement and the Brooke-Mayhew talks in the early 1990s, there was a whole series of attempts to establish institutions within Northern Ireland and, to some degree, North-South institutions as well. In that context, we can see that what happened in the early 1990s was very important. There was an acceptance on all sides of the need for a three-strand approach. At the same time, the question of constitutional change in the Republic as part of a deal came very much to the fore. Of course, the unionist desire to see the Anglo-Irish Agreement superseded was also very important. That is one whole stream.
The second stream, of course, was a peace process more narrowly defined as the bringing to an end of violence. I refer to violence by paramilitaries in particular but also the various elements of State violence which were the consequence of that. Obviously, the maintenance of peace was hugely important but there were other issues such as the position of prisoners, the question of decommissioning, which Mr. Donoghue mentioned, the question of demilitarisation, the scaling back of military installations and so on. That was a separate stream of issues.
Third, in the 1990s in particular there had been substantial progress on areas of human rights and, in particular, fair employment. Northern Ireland was becoming a more equal and less discriminatory place through the 1990s. It was still a long way away from where it has got to since but certainly progress was made. Then we had strong voices in favour of policing reform, arguing that it was fundamentally essential. Above all, Mr. Seamus Mallon was the voice of that but prominent members of the Catholic Church and the Irish Government were also very strong on it. Finally, from the early 1990s onwards, the whole concept of the North-South economy or the all-island economy began to grow, led by business leaders such as the late Sir George Quigley as well as the Confederation of British Industry, CBI, and the Irish Business and Employers Confederation, IBEC.
There were five different streams and they all fed in together and contributed in different ways. I am not saying they can be distinguished clearly, one from the other, in the end. I am being a bit schematic but they all had different origins and roots and they came together in the end. An important point to make is that the different players had different priorities. Some were focused on certain aspects of the negotiations, while some focused on other aspects. The unionists for their part were primarily interested in the ending of the Anglo-Irish Agreement and, in particular, Mr. Donoghue's secretariat. They also wanted to see changes to Articles 2 and 3 of the Constitution, which had come back into focus because there was a judgment in the Supreme Court in a case taken by the McGimpsey brothers, who were unionists. They argued that the Anglo-Irish Agreement was a violation of the Irish Constitution because of what it said about consent. The Supreme Court, while rejecting their case, said nonetheless that unification was a "constitutional imperative". That became a major issue for the unionists. They realised that the price they would have to pay for this would be power-sharing arrangements within Northern Ireland and North-South institutions. They were open to that but it is fair to say that they were a lot less enthusiastic about either of those things than the SDLP. The SDLP was the great champion of strong power-sharing institutions and strong North-South institutions as a balance and it is fair to say that the Alliance was in the same space. It also had an interest in rights, policing and other such matters.
The third major party around the table at the end of the negotiations was Sinn Féin. The interesting thing was that for Sinn Féin, being present at the table was extraordinarily important. The recognition of its democratic mandate was hugely important. However, the fact that Sinn Féin could not accept, intellectually or politically, the premise that there would be a continuing entity called Northern Ireland meant that it did not engage in any meaningful way in negotiations either on strand one institutions or on the North-South institutions. This is an important point. Bit by bit, there was an acceptance in practice that these institutions would exist and had to exist but this was not Sinn Féin's focus. Its focus was, above all, on the second stream of issues, that is, the consequences of the end of violence. Above all, it was concerned about prisoner release and about avoiding explicit commitments and action on decommissioning.
Those were its principal interests. It was, of course, interested in equality issues and the question of a future united Ireland. It is important to make the point that most of the institutional discussions involving the parties included the UUP and the SDLP, other parties, to a lesser extent, and the two Governments.
As I was saying, the different elements of the agreement had very deep roots. Many people and organisations contributed over the years and decades. If you were to meet my friend Mr. Jonathan Powell, who is a member of the Mitchell Institute, as I am, you might believe it all began on the Tuesday of Holy Week when Tony Blair arrived in Northern Ireland or, at the earliest, when Tony Blair was elected in May 1997. In fact, as we know, the process took much longer. There was a slow process between June 1996 and March 1998. Senator Mitchell and his team did a fantastic job in holding the ring and making the public case for the effort. As Mr. Donoghue said, there was then a sprint at the end of the marathon. It is almost impossible to exaggerate the extent to which things were chaotic and confused for the reasons Mr. Donoghue mentioned. I have been involved in many negotiations since, including at EU level, and that is how deals get done. They are a combination of fatigue, confusion and adrenaline, and the sense that the time has come.
Discussions were largely unco-ordinated. Only the Governments had an overview of what was happening. Representatives of the UUP and the SDLP were in one room talking about strand one. The Irish Government was talking to the UUP about strand two. Sinn Féin was talking to the British and Irish Governments about prisoners and decommissioning, etc. This near chaos, this fog of war, is almost typical of negotiating endgames but it means issues can be left unclear. There can be creative ambiguity but at times there can also be uncreative ambiguity, if you like, and a lack of clarity. It is bizarre. To give a couple of examples, the broad constitutional principles, as Mr. Donoghue said, had largely been settled between the two Governments in advance. There were three different constitutional aspects of the settlement. There were changes to Articles 2 and 3 and the British constitutional legislation, including provision for a future referendum, and the constitutional section of the agreement itself. Those three elements were never looked at together in the round. It means there is a bizarre situation in that the Irish Government has no role whatsoever in a formal sense in calling a referendum. Many people, even in the South, appear to misunderstand that. Of course, for political reasons the South would have to have a role in that regard but it is a strange gap in the agreement, to take one example.
There is an idea that those involved knew what they were doing in every case. I remember when the unionists reacted furiously to Chris Patten's recommendations on policing. Patten asked what did they think they were signing up to, to which my reply would be that they did not know what they were signing up to. The focus was so heavily on some other matters that the policing texts were drafted between the two Governments and the unionists never read them clearly and did not know what they were signing up to.
It is also worth recognising that while it is a legal text, only the section on constitutional issues is written in legal language. Only that section would resemble, for example, an EU treaty. Much of the rest of the agreement includes broad parameters that would be fleshed out through further negotiation between North and South. Other aspects, such as policing, would require future investigation. There were also statements of aspiration on symbolism and so on. There was sometimes a lack of clear elements in the agreement. I am not saying that was avoidable because it could not have been otherwise but I make that point.
Looking back, it is interesting that some of the issues that have come to the fore in the intervening years got relatively little attention during the process. An enormous amount of attention was paid to North-South issues and structures. I was very much involved in those negotiations, as was Mr. Donoghue. I remember being in Downing Street for two or three days the week before the agreement, with Dermot Gallagher and Paddy Teahon of the Department of the Taoiseach and our British opposite numbers. We were working on texts to be given to the parties. That was taking a considerable amount of attention and was politically important for the SDLP and the Irish Government from, if you like, an offensive point of view, and very important for the unionists from a defensive point of view. Far more attention was paid to those structures than was paid to many of the finer details as to how the Assembly and Executive would work. Broad principles were certainly set out but how the developments might intersect was never thought through. I do not think an agreement of a different kind could have been reached but I make that point.
Little or nothing was said about legacy issues, reconciliation or anti-sectarianism, which is interesting. That was partly because not everything could be discussed but it was also because, as I have confirmed with some members of the Northern Ireland Women's Coalition, there was a sense that those issues would look after themselves if the political structures were in place. They were also considered soft issues, even women's issues possibly. They were to do with sentiment rather than hard constitutional language and so on. That is an interesting point. Many people would also feel that socioeconomic issues were not given the weight they might have been. Was that a realistic possibility? I do not know.
It is important to note that at the time, there was no need to say anything whatever about the places of Britain and Ireland within the European Union. The agreement states nothing, good or bad, about the Border. It states nothing about the place of Northern Ireland within the UK internal market. It was simply regarded as entirely unnecessary to include such references. Therefore, while either side can appeal to the spirit of the agreement, they cannot appeal to the letter of the agreement when it comes to Brexit.
This was an inclusive process in the sense that it included every party with an electoral mandate from the 1996 Northern Ireland Forum elections. Every party that had rejected violence and committed to the Mitchell principles was entitled to be present. However, at no point in the talks were all of the major parties represented at the same time. Sinn Féin was excluded from June 1996 to September 1997 in the wake of the bombing of Canary Wharf at the end of the IRA's first ceasefire. The two Governments found a basis on which to get Sinn Féin into the talks and when that happened, the DUP and the UK Unionist Party, led by Robert McCartney, walked out. Mr. McCartney was an eloquent and fluent figure albeit he represented a minority view. The consequence was that unionism was, in a way, under-represented in the final stages of the negotiations. One would have to say that the constant attacks of the DUP on the process and the outcome destroyed any prospect of broad unionist consensus in favour of the agreement. It is reasonable to ask if there would have been an agreement had the DUP been present and it is probable there would not have been. However, the absence of its representatives was destructive. There is no question about it. We must remember that while people talk about the 71% of Northern Irish voters who voted in favour of the agreement, only a bare majority of unionists, if that, voted for it. In the Assembly elections of June 1998, a majority of the MLAs returned were anti-agreement. That included a number of members of the UUP, principally Jeffrey Donaldson and Arlene Foster, who remained in the UUP for years but were constantly working against David Trimble.
As Mr. Donoghue said, we do not want to go over the long story of decommissioning. For good reason, dealing with the issue was repeatedly delayed. Many people forget that Senator Mitchell came back for two months in the autumn of 1999 to try to find a basis on which the institutions could go live. On the basis of his intensive discussions, he confirmed a firm expectation at the end of November 1999 that decommissioning would begin immediately after the institutions were put in place. It was on that basis that David Trimble jumped. That expectation was, of course, disappointed. One could argue as to whether that was inevitable or otherwise. Some things were done by the unionists which made it more difficult for the republicans to come through. I feel that it was a missed opportunity. It helped to utterly destroy unionist confidence in David Trimble and it meant that the institutions were not functioning for a long period of time which meant the opportunities to build mutual confidence in the institutions was damaged.
David Trimble, while politically not always an easy interlocutor, to put it mildly, showed extraordinary bravery as a leader. He brought his party through a series of knife-edge votes in favour of staying in the institutions in the agreement. I do not believe any other of the political leaders involved would have done so. If Bertie Ahern had been winning votes in the Dáil by one or two votes, would he have kept going? Would Tony Blair have done so if the same was the case in the House of Commons? I do not think so. The republican movement was obviously and understandably focused on maintaining its own unity. That was entirely understandable and minimising dissident activity was entirely right. I acknowledge the approach taken by David Trimble. When I think back on it, the politically savvy thing for him to have done would have been to break on the decommissioning issue on 10 April 1998 and not signed the agreement.
Who knows what would have happened then? He did not do it, however. His strategic insight was that it was better for unionism to engage. However, with all that happened thereafter, he effectively signed his own political death warrant in doing that. Things moved on. Of course, decommissioning was resolved. Mr. Ian Paisley, in the end, found it in himself to become the leader of the institutions. Mr. Peter Robinson was very important in this. The institutions have worked for most of the time from 2007, although not all the time. Interestingly, Mr. Jeffrey Donaldson is the only person who was a leading figure in 1998 who is still active in front-line politics. The consequences are real. The Executive, Assembly and the North–South institutions in those early years never really had a chance to deliver results and provide an arena for the building of confidence and understanding. As we have seen, unionism's uneasy accommodation of the agreement continues to have very negative and serious consequences. While there are many causes of this, I do not believe it can be understood fully without an understanding of what happened.
Let me make a final point. I do not want anything I say to be seen as detracting from the extraordinary, enormous and enduring importance of the agreement — absolutely not. I feel incredibly proud to have taken part in it and, of all the things I did in my career, it is the one I am proudest of. At times, however, I think the narrative of its creation can be a little simplistic. It came out of a very complex, imperfect and ultimately very rushed negotiation. Some elements were more developed than others. With hindsight, I believe the weights placed on the various elements might have been different. I do not think the agreement was ever intended to be the last word and it should not be seen as such. It is for current and future generations of politicians and officials, civil society and, ultimately, citizens to decide if, when and how it might be revised or utterly superseded by a change in Northern Ireland's constitutional status, which it provides for.
