I move:
That Seanad Éireann takes note of the British Government's White Paper: Northern Ireland — A Framework for Devolution.
I would be happier to begin my contribution if there was somebody representing the Government present. There are copies of the White Paper available which may be distributed at this point. I apologise for the fact that the Senators did not have an opportunity to consider fully the material in question. I hope that making it available at this point will at least provide some help.
The White Paper was published on 5 April, after a long gestation period, so that part of the contents of the paper was leaked well beforehand. The purpose of the leak I suppose was to prepare people for it and to get them accustomed to the contents. Strictly speaking, it is not the business of the Houses of the Oireachtas directly to discuss the text of the White Paper since it belongs to another jurisdiction. It is not my intention that there should be the same detailed perusal and analysis that we would give to a similar document which was to apply to the jurisdiction of this State.
The next best thing, so to speak, is that what may come about as a result of the White Paper will have a very direct bearing on the political security of the future not only of Northern Ireland but of the island as a whole. I do not think it is necessary for us to be acquainted with every detailed section of the White Paper. Most of us in the normal way will have absorbed the news and have been interested in it and will have taken in the general principles of it anyway.
I do not intend to be lengthy on this topic. I simply want to point out how important it is to suggest that the attitude of some of us is much more welcoming than would be inferred from the official Government response. Mr. Prior, the Northern Ireland Secretary of State, has had a herculean task in preparing this paper. A cartoon in The Irish Times of 13 April 1982 showed him trying to keep numerous heads in the air at the same time — various shades of Unionist opinion, the SDLP, southern or Dublin personalities, and of course his own Tory colleagues in Government and in the Parliament of Westminister.
My heart does not bleed for Mr. Prior or for the Mr. Priors of that kingdom because Britain carries the ultimate historical responsibility for the situation in Ireland. That is not to say that it is Britain which can now solve the problem in its entirety but the ultimate historical responsibility is there, and I do not weep for Mr. Prior's dilemma because it was his predecessors, it was English power in Ireland that generated the heat in the kitchen. He has to stay there and sweat it out until some solution is arrived at.
Though emphasing the historical responsibility of Britain, and therefore Britain's representative in Northern Ireland, at the same time I suggest that this has been a very difficult month for him and there is no need to stress that. For one thing, I suggest that his Prime Minister is a true blue Tory. In presenting the White Paper to the House of Commons he described himself as a Unionist by sentiment. If that is true of him, it is certainly much more true of the Prime Minister whom he serves. He has had to contend with Unionist sentiment in Government and in Parliament in London. Given the present jingoistic mood of Parliament in London it was unfortunate for Mr. Prior that his White Paper should be launched at a time when public opinion, or imperialist sentiment in Britain, has not been so strong since Suez in 1965. He has had to contend with Margaret Thatcher and with the high Tories in London. He has had to contend with various shades of Unionist opinion with the need to convince the minority that there was something in the White Paper for them and to convince the majority in Northern Ireland that he was not selling out to an Anglo-Irish governmental council. He also had to convince them that he was not selling out to the Dublin pressures for unity.
I have not put forward this motion in order to give an unqualified welcome to the White Paper, but I suggest that the onus is on the critics of the White Paper to suggest an alternative. Those who have dismissed the White Paper as unworkable, as not providing a proper framework, as lacking an Irish dimension, have a solemn duty to point out what their solution is. May I say that at this stage I regard the Government's response which was published on the following day, but obviously prepared long beforehand, as negative and dangerously irresponsible.
May I just make my own very brief resume of the White Paper? It sets out, first of all, that there is to be an election in Northern Ireland, and that in itself surely is a good thing. The fact that previous elections had no positive outcome should not deter us from trying again. There is no alternative to elections and assemblies in our democratic philosophy of life. The White Paper suggests that a Bill will be introduced in parliament providing for an elected assembly on proportional representation and the assembly will elect a speaker or chairman and the chairman will in turn appoint chairmen of committees, a very important feature of the plan, and that these committees will correspond to the various Departments of the Northern Ireland Government. The chairmen and deputy chairmen of these committees will be very important functionaries. They will be paid, they will have salaries and a status, so to speak. In the first instance their job will be scrutinising Westminister legislative proposals. I suggest that even at this stage it is a welcome feature that the vacuum which has been Northern Ireland since Sunningdale, one might say, will at least be filled by an elected representative assembly which will get down to looking at the content of proposed Westminister legislation.
The White Paper also proposes that these chairmen will liaise together in a semi-permanent way so that they could constitute the core of a future Executive. Beyond this point the paper goes into the realms of hope and aspiration rather than real practical proposals. The White Paper expresses the hope that that assembly will lead to a devolved Executive, a power-sharing Executive. That Executive cannot come about unless there is a strong majority in the assembly and cross-community agreement.
As far as we are concerned in the Republic and as far as we are concerned who profess to aspire to a united Ireland — I have my doubts about the depth of that aspiration — there are two very important features in the White Paper. They occupy between them a substantial two pages of the document. The first is that the White Paper recognises that there is an Irish identity in Northern Ireland, that there are people who want a united Ireland and who feel Irish and whose allegiance is Irish. The White Paper recognises that, and secondly it says that anyone who does not use violence is quite legitimate in aspiring to a united Ireland. It must be the first time that that Irish identity has been recognised. It is the first time that London has said firmly to the Northern Nationalists, "If you want a United Ireland that is a perfectly legitimate objective provided you do not use force".
It is a fundamental recognition really of the possibility at some stage of a united Ireland that the White Paper is prepared to say that the activities of the SDLP are not somehow suspect or criminal, they are perfectly legitimate and they are removed from the class of political suspects or political subversives. It has admittedly been asserted with a good deal of substance that the White Paper recognition of the Irish identity and the Irish aspiration is rather lame; and it is. We had hoped for more, I suppose. The attitude and expressed sentiments of Lord Gowrie, the Under-Secretary of State, had given us hope that there would be a more positive form of recognition of the Irishness of one third of the population of Northern Ireland. At least the two points I have mentioned are positive.
The response to the paper was predictably contradictory. In this state of affairs we have to distinguish between what parties feel they should say and what they really think. There were predictable ritualistic responses from certain shades of Unionist opinion. The SDLP, echoing the Dublin Government, has dismissed the proposals as unworkable. The Reverend Ian Paisley threatened to go in to wreck the attempt to have anything to do with an Anglo-Irish Parliamentary tier. So for the first day or two after the publication of the paper the response was not perhaps very encouraging.
We note as well, as Senator Robinson suggested earlier today, that the whole thing was shoved off the front pages. On the very day it was published in The Irish Times, for example, it occupied a place on the front page subordinate to the Gilbert and Sullivan shenanigans that were going on about the Falkland Islands. Nevertheless, within a couple of days, there was a more positive response and it was heartening and encouraging to find people like Mr. Paddy Devlin, who perhaps of all those in public life in Northern Ireland cannot be accused of being unrealistic and has his feet planted very firmly on the ground, pointing out that the great thing about the White Paper was that not alone was it a proposed substitute for the gun, that it proposed to set up an elected assembly — and that in itself is a good thing — but that from the viewpoint of the Northern Ireland economy it was far better to have people from Northern Ireland sitting down being directly concerned about the economy, because, even if they never got as far as the stage of devolved government, even if they only stayed for a while at the stage of scrutinising committees, the whole psychology of people's attitude to the economy and unemployment could not but be improved by the existence of such an assembly.
Therefore, whatever the defects of the White Paper or whatever future is in store for it, it deserved more than a negative and sterile and pre-emptive dismissal by the Government. The White Paper was no sooner published than it was dismissed forthwith by the Government. That, of course, stems from the Taoiseach's belief that Northern Ireland is a failed entity and therefore for him any proposal that has to do with Northern Ireland alone is unworkable. I suggest that that is irresponsible to the highest degree. The Government's short statement on the White Paper concluded with the assertion that the Government works towards a united Ireland by peaceful means. I think at this late stage of the day, to reiterate the cliché about working for a united Ireland by peaceful means is incredible, given the fact that that Government and the party from which it is drawn have no policy on Northern Ireland, have no Irish dimension. It ill behoves a Government to dismiss a proposal, no matter how defective it is, without making some suggestion other than reiterating a phrase about co-operation between London and Dublin to solve the problem of Northern Ireland.
I simply want to propose that we take note of the paper. I am not suggesting that the House should express an opinion one way or another. But my own opinion is that at least it is a proposal and that we should wish it well.