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Joint Committee on the Implementation of the Good Friday Agreement díospóireacht -
Thursday, 26 May 2022

Architects of the Good Friday Agreement: Mr. Tim O'Connor

Apologies have been received from Senator Black, who is speaking in the Seanad. Please note that to limit the spread of Covid-19, people are encouraged to wear masks. Everybody is aware of that.

We rotate the rota at every meeting so that every party gets an opportunity to contribute. Sinn Féin will have the first slot, followed by Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael, the SDLP, Alliance, the Green Party, Sinn Féin, the Labour Party, Independents, Aontú and so on. Each slot will last for 15 minutes. Committee members are free to comment on anything they wish.

Today we have the first meeting of our architects of the Good Friday Agreement project. We will be meeting a range of people involved in negotiations, including politicians and officials. On behalf of the committee, I warmly welcome Mr. Tim O'Connor to the meeting and thank him for attending. Mr. O'Connor is a former senior diplomat who was a part of the Irish Government delegation at the talks that led to the Good Friday Agreement in 1998. He was inaugural joint secretary of the North-South Ministerial Council in Armagh from 1999 to 2005. He was Consul General of Ireland in New York from 2005 to 2007. He was also Secretary General to the President from 2007 to 2010. I met Mr. O'Connor in a few of those capacities. I must say he is held in the highest esteem in Ireland and America.

I wish to explain some limitations to parliamentary privilege. The evidence of witnesses physically present or who give evidence from within the parliamentary precincts is protected pursuant to both the Constitution and statute by absolute privilege. However, witnesses and participants who are to give evidence from a location outside the parliamentary precincts are asked to note that they may not benefit from the same level of immunity from legal proceedings as a witness giving evidence from within the parliamentary precincts. Such witnesses may consider it appropriate to take legal advice on that matter.

Witnesses are also asked to note that only evidence connected with the subject matter of proceedings should be given and should respect directions given by the Chair and the parliamentary practice to the effect that, where possible, they should not criticise or make charges against any person, persons or entity by name or in such a way as to make him, her or it identifiable, or otherwise engage in speech that might be regarded as damaging to the good name of the person or entity.

Some committee members are attending online. They will appear on the screen.

Members are reminded of the long-standing parliamentary practice to the effect that they should not comment on, criticise or make charges against a person outside the Houses or an official either by name or in such a way as to make him or her identifiable. I remind members of the constitutional requirement that members must be physically present within the confines of Leinster House to participate in public meetings. Everybody knows the story there.

I now call Mr. O'Connor to make his opening statement.

Mr. Tim O'Connor

I thank the Cathaoirleach and the committee members. I am honoured to have been asked to address the committee. It is an important project the committee is undertaking and we are grateful for it.

I submitted a copy of my statement to the committee ahead of time.

I will go through its main points. I am a retired civil servant. I should say that I am from Killeedy, near Newcastle West, in west Limerick. I went to school in St. Munchin's in Limerick, then onto Maynooth, where I was a seminarian for a few years before leaving. I taught for a number of years and then joined the Civil Service in 1974. I was a civil servant from 1974 to 2010. I spent most of that time working in the Department of Foreign Affairs. In 1986, I started working directly on Northern Ireland when I was assigned to the Northern Ireland division for the first time. That was 36 years ago. In some kind of way, I have been privileged to continue working on it since then. As a public servant, there is no bigger issue to be involved with than the peace process in one's own country.

As the Chairman will understand, I should make clear that I am speaking in a personal capacity today. The views that I express are very much my own. I am not speaking in any official capacity. I should also declare that even though I am retired, I was called back into field around five years ago, when the Government appointed me to be the Irish Government nominee on the four-member Independent Reporting Commission, IRC, on paramilitarism. It is a role that I still hold, so I have partial official capacity, but I am here today in a personal capacity.

I am happy to talk through my submission to the committee. There is lots to talk about. The subject the committee is undertaking is a profoundly important one and a rich one. To cut to the chase in respect of the Good Friday Agreement, my direct involvement restarted in the autumn of 1997, when the, now sadly, late Dermot Gallagher brought me back into the Northern Ireland division. I do not know how many of the members here knew Dermot Gallagher but he was a tremendous public servant. He died prematurely in 2017. In 1997 and 1998, he was the second Secretary General in the Department of Foreign Affairs, overseeing Northern Ireland. He was my boss and my mentor. I want to take a moment to state how profound his contribution was to all of this.

On the picture I was trying to paint of where we were in the autumn of 1997, some major developments had happened in the course of the previous few months. Chronologically, Tony Blair was appointed Prime Minister in London in May 1997, in June 1997 a new Government was formed in Dublin, with former Deputy Bertie Ahern being appointed Taoiseach, and in July 1997, the IRA ceasefire was restored. Talks had been taking place in Belfast since the previous summer but Sinn Féin was not part of them because of the breakdown of the ceasefire. With the restoration of the ceasefire and two new Governments in place, there was a sense of a new momentum. In September 1997 what proved to the final stages of the talks process got under way, chaired by US Senator George Mitchell, with all the parties involved.

Next, I wish to highlight the centrality of the role of the two Governments in the process. The key point is that the two Governments, led by the principals, Tony Blair and Bertie Ahern, worked together. In my submission, I have listed the various key people involved in the process. The process was driven at the level of the two Governments, with the principals being supported by their Ministers and officials, with both sides working together. If I am feeding into the work of the committee, I would say that the lesson and the key point is the centrality of the two Governments working together. This was physically manifested, during the negotiations, when the Prime Minister and the Taoiseach would arrive and would immediately go to the same room and sit beside each other. I often used the analogy that they were like brothers. For me, as a civil servant watching it, it was fascinating. If we were doing a workshop on negotiation, that would be a key requirement. Of course, on both sides, as civil servants of the British and Irish Governments, we took our cue from that and worked very closely together.

On the strategic approach of the two Governments, everybody knew in the autumn of 1997 that we were in a serious process. I must be clear that there was no great consensus that we were on the march to an agreement. Many of the members probably know the old joke about the new journalist joining the Northern Ireland press pool. The old hands, with the cigarettes, would say to the new journalist: "My friend, be pessimistic and you will not be far wrong." Pessimism ruled, among ourselves as well, but we could not afford to have that dictate things. I will put it like this: there was no history of agreement. The Sunningdale agreement had collapsed after a few months. In fairness, the Anglo-Irish Agreement of 1985 was a very important agreement but it engendered enormous opposition from unionism. We had never had a situation where all the parties were around the table with a chance of agreement. The stakes were very high and the likelihood of success was small. However, there was a view that we had a once-in-a-generation chance. The old hands remembered back to when everybody was around the table in the Sunningdale negotiations, but that had been 24 years prior to 1997. That is how long it took to get back around the table. The stakes were high and we felt that we had to deliver.

I like the word "architecture" that is being used by the committee. The architecture of the Good Friday Agreement was a bit different. At one level, it was building on previous work, which was an important piece of the architecture. We were not starting from a blank sheet. We were building on what had been developed in Sunningdale and in the Anglo-Irish Agreement. Some of the concepts were there. We were also doing some things that were different. One thing that was different was the level of inclusion. Every major dimension of society was reflected in the approach. It is true that the DUP did not attend negotiations, and that was a gap, but unionism was strongly represented. Of course, the parties representing the constituencies of the combatants, as it were, were around the table in a way that had never happened before. The process was inclusive. The agenda that was on the table, which was being driven by George Mitchell and the two Governments, was comprehensive. I will return to the point shortly when we are discussing themes. The idea was that most people were around the table and most issues were on the table. That was a key part of the architecture of the agreement.

I note that Ms Claire Hanna MP is in attendance. I must give credit to the SDLP input from John Hume on the idea of a joint referendum, North and South, which was a critical piece. It was very novel and powerful. It meant that there would be a validation of the work, at the end of the negotiations, by the people North and South. It was a profound idea. Of course, John Hume's contribution to the architecture was priceless. I had the privilege of just being around him and seeing him operate and think, as well as keeping out of his way. If we are talking about architecture, he was undoubtedly a key designer in terms of the concepts that he developed over many years. I have also taken the liberty to include a note in my submission about Seamus Mallon. I had the privilege, as a civil servant, to work very closely with Seamus Mallon and John Hume, but with Seamus in particular, because I happened to be the person from the Department of Foreign Affairs who was liaising with him over many years. Even after we both retired and were no longer soldiers, as it were, we stayed in close contact. I had the privilege of being with him for the writing of his book and sadly, of attending his funeral in January 2020, and indeed, of giving the eulogy at the service. Members can imagine what that relationship was like. I had the privilege of just being around and seeing the contributions made in the process.

My point is it took a village. People ask me who was the most important person in the Good Friday Agreement process and I gently say that is the wrong question, because this took a village. If we are trying to find one person responsible for it, we are on the wrong track. It took a range of people and at any given time, there were moments where certain people were fundamental and critical to getting through it. Without that, we would have had no agreement.

I have listed people all the way through. They include George Mitchell, Bertie Ahern and Tony Blair, clearly, as well as their Ministers. There was David Trimble, John Hume, Seamus Mallon, Gerry Adams, Martin McGuinness, John Alderdice, Monica McWilliams, David Ervine, David McAdams and Gary McMichael. I saw these people at different moments and there were others as well. It would be like reciting a decade of the rosary to go through their names. There were people behind the scenes, and I am not talking about myself. There is a bunch of people. The point is there was much input. What was shared was that this was a big opportunity and we could not let it pass. That was the sense.

I also suggest in my note that there was an outer circle of support beyond the village. The Cathaoirleach's brother, Niall, comes into this and Irish America played a major part in the build-up to all of this and creating the conditions. I mention Senator Ted Kennedy, Ms Jean Kennedy Smith and Congressman Bruce Morrison, Niall O'Dowd and Bill Flynn, among others. The danger when we start mentioning names is that people will say they were not named and I appreciate that is a problem. The role of the community of Irish America, as well as those in Congress, was important. There is a congressional delegation here now led by Congressman Richard Neal and although he may have been too young then, he has played a subsequent role. There was also the White House and having Bill Clinton there was critical. He gave us George Mitchell. The point is it would be wrong in describing the architecture not to mention this outer circle.

I should also mention the EU. John Hume was huge in promoting the idea that the EU is the greatest example of conflict resolution in human history, which is right. We drew on the EU model both as an inspiration for conflict resolution and as a model for its institutions, with the PEACE programme and the financial support we got from member states and the Commission. The EU was a very big part of the outer circle of support around us.

I am very happy to speak to the key issues, although I do not wish to overindulge. This is what I mean when I speak of the comprehensive nature of issues. We shied away from nothing when we had key issues on the table. They included constitutional questions and the three sets of relationships. It was something that was developed by John Hume, namely, the concept that the heart, there were three sets of relationships that needed to be resolved and reflected institutionally. There was a key range of issues arising from the conflict, including reform of policing and justice, rights issues and equality safeguards and validation and review. We built in the idea that there should be an opportunity for review of the agreement if difficulties arose. I have just mentioned validation.

There were a number of architectural issues we could not crack and on which we could not get agreement around the table. Two of these in particular were the detail on North-South co-operation and policing. They were so radioactive and difficult at the time, it bested us. The strategy agreed was that we would devise principles around both. There would be principles around North-South co-operation with the detail being done in a further process down the road with a six-month backstop, if I can use that word. It was to happen by 31 October so the process would not be open-ended. People would agree to something without knowing the detail in an open-ended process otherwise. As we could not get agreement on the detail of policing, it was agreed that a commission would be established, which subsequently became the Patten commission. The agreement has terms of reference for that commission.

In architecture terms, it is interesting that sometimes if you cannot crack a very difficult issue, there is the possibility of doing what we did. We got agreement on the principles involved but, in a way, we made a bet that having agreed the principles, people would not break on the detail. That is a big risk in signing off but it is what we did.

I mention in my conclusion the technical fact that there were two agreements on Good Friday. There was the multi-party agreement, of which I have a dog-eared copy, that involved multi-party negotiations. It was between the parties and the Governments. At the back is a second agreement called "Agreement Between the Government of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and the Government of Ireland". Incidentally, this was the first time this language was used as well and we agreed on how we would refer to each other. Previously it was the "British Government" and the "Republic of Ireland". We could not find agreement on words but we agreed to do it like that. The agreement signed by Bertie Ahern and Tony Blair essentially comprised the commitments made by the two Governments in the overall agreement, particularly around constitutional issues.

I thank the Cathaoirleach for indulging me. The main goal of the Good Friday Agreement was to stop the violence and at least give peace a chance. We wanted to build peace and promote reconciliation. Any fair-minded verdict would be that it has succeeded so far in stopping the violence. It has given an honourable and inclusive pathway forward for everybody. I live in the real world, however, and I know the difficulties that clearly remain. I call this a work in progress.

I use an analogy of human health with conflict. If conflict is a disease, the agreement or deal is a surgical intervention. There is surgery to deal with the disease. As we all know in major surgery, it is not just done with the next day and there is a long process of rehabilitation and recuperation. There can be setbacks and the committee might know where I am going with the analogy. Sometimes after five, ten or 15 years, surgeons may have to intervene again. This is what a real and living peace process looks like in all its messy complexity.

Our generation was lucky to finally find the means and ways to get agreement and I am very happy to speak about the mechanics of the process, including the days and weeks around it, including Good Friday itself. We came very close to not having agreement. The difference between having an agreement and not having one is night and day. I feel very lucky that we were there, having been able to observe it at close quarters and play whatever part I could. The committee's work is very important and it bothers me a little that we forget what we did. Just like with human health, if we ignore what we should be doing with recovery and well-being, we will pay a price.

I thank Mr. O'Connor. It has been very enlightening. His integrity and hard work is outstanding, as was the work of his Department. He acknowledged all his peers in the Department.

What struck me most in those comments is the relationship between the two Prime Ministers of the time, Tony Blair and Bertie Ahern. It was critical and once it gelled, peace flowed from it. There is something we can learn from that.

On a personal note, Mr. O'Connor mentioned my brother, Niall. My contribution to the peace process was driving him to meet Ms Jean Kennedy Smith at midnight at the American Embassy on some occasions.

Mr. Tim O'Connor

Fantastic. I love it.

I drove him to Belfast as well. I cannot leave out my brother-in-law, Mr. Ciaran Staunton, either, who was involved in a different capacity.

Mr. Tim O'Connor

It was very important. It is a tapestry.

It is fantastic. The architecture, the tapestry-----

It all worked. I agree with the emphasis Mr. O'Connor placed on Mr. George Mitchell and on how it all gelled. Everybody got together. It worked and it is still working, although like the patient, it is beginning to show issues that need to be addressed, but surgery is not necessarily required.

Mr. Tim O'Connor

Fundamentally, we are on the right track.

Yes, we are on the right track. We have the right formula. We agreed earlier that the rotation for speakers would be Sinn Féin, Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael, SDLP, Alliance, the Green Party, Sinn Féin, the Labour Party and then Independents. Each party nominates a speaker. Ms Gildernew is first.

Ms Michelle Gildernew

Cuirim fáilte roimh Tim. It is great to see you again. You are looking brilliant.

Mr. Tim O'Connor

It is great to see you too, Michelle.

Ms Michelle Gildernew

I wanted to go first today. I wanted to say that it is good to see Mr. O'Connor. I remember fondly the times we had during those long evenings and nights. I still remember our chat in Tullysaran graveyard a good wee while ago too. It is always great to see Tim. I apologise but I had a dental appointment earlier so I am talking a wee bit funny. I had a filling in between two meetings today-----

Mr. Tim O'Connor

Good wishes there.

Ms Michelle Gildernew

Mr. O'Connor described North-South relationships and policing as "radioactive", which is a very good choice of words. In policing, we have moved on now and things have got so much better. It is still imperfect but it is a lot better than it had been previously. Unfortunately, North-South relationships are still extremely difficult. I am sure Mr. O'Connor is still following politics in the North and knows that the North-South Ministerial Council has not been able to meet because the DUP has vetoed those arrangements. He will also be aware of the difficulties we are having around maintaining the North-South bodies.

This committee met Waterways Ireland in Enniskillen a couple of weeks ago. We were talking to the CEO, Mr. John McDonagh, who spoke about the cap on numbers and about the fact the organisation is not able to grow. He was able to show us statistics on the work that Waterways Ireland is doing in Ireland in comparison with work being done in Spain, Scotland, Portugal or England, which clearly shows the organisation is very under-resourced, both financially and in terms of staffing.

I would have imagined 25 years ago, when we were talking about all of this stuff, that by now there would be a much wider range of areas of co-operation, more North-South bodies, a lot less duplication of service on the island of Ireland and that we would have moved on considerably. What is Mr. O'Connor's view on that? How does he see us overcoming the current difficulties?

Mr. Tim O'Connor

I thank Ms Gildernew for her questions and offer her my good wishes. It was very good of her to come along in the circumstances. I thank her for her kind comments. I also have very good memories.

In terms of the Good Friday Agreement, as everyone here is aware, in politics there is always the next thing. Straight away, one is on to the next thing. Even after Good Friday itself, on the Easter weekend we got a couple of night's sleep but then it was straight into the referendum. A campaign had to be run and there was a huge body of work to be done for the referendum on 22 May. Then we were straight into dealing with the North-South issues. As I said earlier, there was only agreement in principle. We just had a shell of what North-South would look like.

I was appointed by Mr. Dermot Gallagher - Lord have mercy on him - to be the foreign affairs person to drive the North-South negotiations on what these cross-Border bodies would be, working with Mr. Wally Kirwan. I thank the Chairman for his kind words about the Department and about other colleagues. I am the one sitting here today but there was a whole village of civil servants involved. A huge amount of work was done by so many of my colleagues. We had to set off on the road to getting agreement. Mr. Kirwan, Mr. Rory Montgomery, Mr. James McIntyre and I went off on what we called a "caravan" whereby we went to all of the Departments in the summer of 1998 to gather up ideas for these cross-Border bodies that would make sense and would work out. In September we began negotiations with the British. We had to work out what North-South was going to look like and what the bodies would be. A whole process had to be gone through and that ended up in agreement in March 1999. Legislation then had to be put through the Dáil and Seanad to bring these bodies into being. They were then parked for eight or nine months until the difficulties in the implementation of the agreement were resolved. I am sure Ms Gildernew will recall the sound bite, "No guns, no Government". In December, Ms Gildernew and her colleagues were about to become Ministers. Everything came into being on 2 December 1999 - the assembly, the Executive, the North-South Ministerial Council and the cross-Border bodies. I was sent to Armagh. I had to take ownership of what we had designed and go from wholesale to retail, so to speak, by actually setting up the bodies, including Waterways Ireland and Tourism Ireland. I did that for five and a half years in Armagh.

I was there at the very beginning of setting up all of the things Ms Gildernew is talking about now. I said at the time that the architecture was really important. In fact, Mr. David Trimble used that phrase. History shows, and it is largely agreed, that Sunningdale came down because of the Council of Ireland and the fact there was no agreement on that. There may have been other issues too but that was certainly a big one. We got the North-South Ministerial Council and the cross-Border bodies up and running under the Good Friday Agreement. Mr. Trimble was asked once why we were able to get cross-Border co-operation going this time and not previously. He said that in the Good Friday Agreement we got the architecture right. What he meant by that was the checks and balances. As Ms Gildernew knows, we have accompanying Ministers, all decisions by agreement and so on.

That architecture has broadly worked. As to whether the glass is half full or half empty, what we got going and what has been established in cross-Border co-operation over the past 20 years has been very important and valuable. Tremendous work is being done by Tourism Ireland and Waterways Ireland. For the first time, the island of Ireland is being marketed by a single body. Tourism has had a very positive impact. Obviously Covid has affected it but, broadly speaking, tourism is regarded as a major sector. I am sure all members of this committee can see that in their respective constituencies. That has been driven for the past 20 years by a cross-Border body, Tourism Ireland.

We used to say there is only one thing worse than not getting what you wish for and that is getting what you wish for. When the first chief executive of Tourism Ireland, Mr. Paul O'Toole, was appointed by the North-South Ministerial Council, I congratulated him and said, "No pressure now." In the negotiations we used tourism all of the time as a clear example of an area where it just made no sense to be doing things separately and where it made perfect sense to be doing things together. I told Mr. O'Toole he had better prove us right, and that has happened.

Ms Gildernew's question is fair. Have we achieved what we set out to achieve? Absolutely not. The difficulties that have arisen, to which Ms Gildernew refers, are not actually difficulties of cross-Border co-operation however. North-South co-operation has proven itself. The difficulties Ms Gildernew is talking about are difficulties of wider political architecture because of the Northern Ireland protocol and so on. The DUP is withholding its MLAs and all of that. What is blocking cross-Border co-operation is not actually to do with the substance of that co-operation but with wider politics. I hope that what at least has been established definitively, with data, over the past 20 years is that cross-Border co-operation makes sense and delivers. I am afraid I will have to kick it back to the politicians because they are going to have to try to resolve the wider political issues. We know cross-Border co-operation makes sense.

Deputy Brendan Smith is from the Border region and he knows the value of being able to get at cross-Border co-operation. The potential was there for 100 years but we had never been able to get at it until the early 2000s.

That is my long-winded answer. It is not just about the potential and it has been proven by the bodies and by other things like the all-Ireland electricity market, which is actually outside the North-South Ministerial Council. The case is made that cross-Border co-operation works and just makes sense, although we still have to get the politics right.

Ms Michelle Gildernew

I thank Mr O'Connor.

Mr. Chris Hazzard

It is great to hear Mr. O'Connor's reflections. Ms Gildernew has touched on a lot of the stuff around the North-South issues that I was reflecting on over the past while and we have talked about some of that this morning. I am interested in Mr. O'Connor's idea of the checks and balances in the architecture, which is important. How do we apply the lessons of that to today? We face very different problems now, when we think about climate breakdown, biodiversity issues, coastal erosion, cybersecurity and all the financial services and data sharing issues after Brexit. There are huge areas of growth we need to take on North-South, but it appears the architecture is not fit to help us do that. Whenever a political problem raises its head, it collapses in on itself. Are there lessons from the architecture that was built 25 years ago as to how we reassess and review that today?

The second point, which I think is very important, is the centrality and the importance of a productive and collegiate relationship between Dublin and London. We have seen the impact in recent years whenever that is not there, how difficult it then becomes to keep good relations across these islands and what flows from that. I certainly view that 2007 to 2016 period of roughly a decade as a period when things seemed to go into cold storage. There was nearly a complacency in London and Dublin that things were okay in the North. They were getting on, so the governments could sit back and let them get on with it. I think that was a lost opportunity in that decade or so, and we can see post 2016 the difficulty in reconnecting the relationships and getting that started again. I take on board much of what Mr. O'Connor had to say about that. On the back of that, I want to reflect on how we kick-start it in 2022 because, at the minute, relations are strained probably as much as they have ever been strained. I again thank Mr. O'Connor for his contribution.

Mr. Tim O'Connor

They are very fair questions. With regard to the architecture and checks and balances, we knew in the negotiations that we had no history of co-operation between the two states on the island since 1922. We had never cracked it. Here we are, 70 years later, and that is a long time of back to back. That is a long time of nothing. Therefore, in design terms, there was a real issue as to how we were going to find a way to crack that and get through. We kind of knew, and we certainly hoped very strongly, that North-South co-operation and cross-Border co-operation makes sense and will bring the benefits, but we had no way of actually demonstrating that because we had no data and no evidence. We were saying, “Give us a chance.” That is why the checks and the balances were important. Let us be blunt. Unionism would always have seen cross-Border co-operation as a Trojan horse for a united Ireland, or that is the cliché. Even in the negotiations, David Trimble's position, which is on the record, was, “We don't want any institutions. The Executive in Belfast and the Irish Government will co-operate ad hoc and we do not want any institutional expression of cross-Border co-operation.” That was not acceptable. In the back-and-forth and in the negotiations, there was agreement and that got cracked by saying we will have a North-South Ministerial Council, there will be an institutional expression of the relationship between North and South and there will be a framework for that.

It was then agreed there would be at least 12 areas of co-operation, six through existing mechanisms and at least six through new bodies. Why six and six? It is because that is what the market would bear and because that is what the deal required. Those checks and balances were then built in. As a Minister, Ms Gildernew would have been through that and will know the checks and balances. A unionist Minister is always accompanied by a nationalist Minister and vice versa. All of those checks and balances were built in.

As somebody who was the civil servant then, I remember executing the first three or four years of it. Unfortunately, we had the suspension from late 2002 onwards but, between 1999 and 2002, we had 65 meetings of the North-South Ministerial Council, from a place of nothing for 70 years. I am a witness to that and I saw what it was like. Once we got the architecture going, people just came and it got working. We had some nice meetings in Enniskillen in Fermanagh. I can remember a meeting around environmental issues with the environment Ministers, Sam Foster and Noel Dempsey, on beautiful Belle Isle. I can remember the mood. People felt comfortable and we could get on with the issues.

There is no debate about Mr. Quinn’s point that this could be done better. What is encouraging for me, as a Southerner who is a nerd in all of this, is the way organisations like IBEC, the CBI and the ESRI are very heavily involved now and are saying in the mainstream that "the island" makes sense. We are going to have to find a way. Unfortunately, the architecture has got jumbled, so I am afraid that is back to the politicians, but what we are bringing to the table is that this works.

On the lost opportunity of Dublin and London, in my opening statement I talked about the centrality of the approach of the two Governments. There is one counter-intuitive point about what happened from 2008, 2009 and 2010 and then onwards to 2012. There was a view that now that there was an Executive and Assembly in Northern Ireland and Ministers had their own mandates, there was a way in which a maturing was taking place. If we take this as involving Belfast, Dublin and London, then Belfast had to be given the freedom to get on with it. We can understand that. We cannot be thinking of London and Dublin as the parents. It was time to step back and give it a chance to breathe. There was a bit of that. Of course, what happened then is that life intervened. We had the recession and the crash and people dealing with other issues, but there was a benign reason one could say the eye was taken off the ball. There was a benign kind of rationale there.

Where I completely agree with Mr. Quinn, and I am speaking personally now, is that when the problems arise, as they are arising right now, it has to be the two Governments back together again. I regret that that is not the case at the moment because when difficulties arise of the nature we have now, they can only be resolved with the starting point of the two Governments.

That is a very important contribution and I am learning a lot from what Mr. O'Connor is saying. There is much we can learn and apply now, and we agree fundamentally it is up to the two Governments to get together. If Boris Johnson wants to go down in history, he could embrace a new relationship with the Irish Government on the North.

I welcome Mr O'Connor. I heard him say he is a bit of a nerd. I think that on this topic he is joined by a lot of nerds around the table.

Mr. Tim O'Connor

That is great. I can feel the vibe.

This is a great session. I welcome the Chairman not intervening when Mr. O'Connor was coming towards his final words, even though it was over the time. It is welcome because what he is contributing here is fantastic stuff.

Mr. Tim O'Connor

Thank you.

There are a number of us on the committee who are very interested in this work leading up to the 25-year anniversary. It is very important this committee does a report, and many of us feel that way. It is very important we get that insight that many people do not know or understand. This is the start of that journey. Mr. O'Connor still has a great insight and it is great to get the insight he has given so far today. I am talking about his colleagues, as well as those politicians from the different political parties who were there and who made major contributions at different stages.

What Mr. O’Connor said about the village was a great analogy for how the work was done at the time, and he referred to the relationship between the two Governments, east and west. I would like to know more detail, if Mr. O’Connor has it, on the political parties and about how trust was gained with them. There has to be trust in the room-----

Mr. Tim O'Connor

Yes, there was.

For me, that is a vital element. Today, different things are going on behind the scenes, such as the protocol, Brexit, the shared island unit and creating shared spaces as we all move forward. For me, this is vitally important. We need to know from the one period of time on this island when they did all agree what was the architecture, what was happening in the room, how trust was gained, and how was it the case that unionism was now coming forward and saying “Yes” when before that was never possible.

It has not been mentioned today, but I will mention it, that we used to refer to Ian Paisley and Martin McGuinness as "the chuckle brothers". That key relationship helped to carry the Stormont Executive for many years after the Good Friday Agreement. How key was that and how has that been lost?

Some would even say today that the Good Friday Agreement is out of date. I certainly would not say that, but I have heard it said. What is Mr. O’Connor’s view in relation to that?

I would also like to know Mr. O'Connor's view of the current situation and what is going on in the shared island unit. If we are to have a shared future, what is his opinion of how that could best move forward? What relations are needed, even outside of the two Governments? I know they are a key part of it. If we are to move on and create something concrete into the future, what form does Mr. O’Connor think that should take?

Mr. Tim O'Connor

The Senator has given me some easy questions.

Yes. Mr. O'Connor mentioned some of the politicians, such as John Hume, Seamus Mallon and David Trimble. Would he agree they paid a price for peace? Would he agree that, by extension, they did that knowingly?

I welcome the opportunity to have Mr. O’Connor before the committee today. If needs be, I would love to see him before the committee again. I say this because people like him, who carry the knowledge he does, are vital for us, as politicians across the board, to move on in current-day difficulties.

Mr. Tim O'Connor

That is very kind of Senator Blaney. I appreciate his kind remarks. We are wandering around out there with a lot of stuff in our heads, so it is good to be asked to come back. Otherwise, this information is just rattling around in my head. It is great to be with people who care as much as the committee members do. I very much appreciate that.

The Senator has asked me an important question about the parties. I will focus on the parties and the politicians. I am not just saying this because I am in front of a group of politicians, but I chose to be a civil servant who was around politicians for my whole career. I did 36 years in the Civil Service. I knew the difference between us. The politicians have to go out and put themselves before the people every few years, whereas I did not. Politicians ultimately make the decisions, and our job is to support them in that. However, there was always an opportunity to challenge them as well and to come up with other ways of thinking. My point is that the ultimate decisions were not made by the civil servants. The ultimate calls were by the politicians. That is where the hard stuff had to be done.

Regarding was happening in Castle Buildings and afterwards, I will tell a story that is not often told. When you hear the name George Mitchell, everybody thinks of the Good Friday Agreement and negotiation. Actually, I think George Mitchell’s biggest contribution was possibly not during the Good Friday Agreement negotiation, although he was vital to it. While the committee members will remember this, what is less remembered in the public space is that George Mitchell was called back approximately 15 months later in the summer of 1999. This was a long 15 months after the agreement, when we were still no further in implementing it. We were still stuck at “no guns, no Government”. Like in "Ghostbusters", “Who you gonna call?” - George Mitchell.

The two Governments reached out to George Mitchell in the summer of 1999 - this was a full 14 or 15 months after the agreement - to say, “George, we need you back”. He came back in early September 1999. He spent about two and a half months working there, but this was different. When he was chair of the talks, he had a big team around him, including Martha Pope and a whole bunch of people and staffers who were working with him. He came this time on his own. A number of officials of the Irish and British Governments were assigned to him, such as Dermot Gallagher, the Lord have mercy on him, Rory Montgomery and I were assigned as the three officials from the Irish Government. There was also Bill Jeffrey and Jonathan Stephens from the British Government.

What George Mitchell did over the next two and a half months, which I saw up close, was work directly with the politicians and with the party leaderships. This was on his own in conversations to force them together. At one point, he brought them all for a weekend to Winfield House in London, which is the residence of the American ambassador, who was a friend of his. I was not there. We were in London and I was nearby, but we were not in the house. Apparently, over the dinner, he would not allow them to talk politics. They had to talk about themselves. This notion was completely unheard of. Things were still very difficult. The unionists were not talking to Sinn Féin politicians at any time. They would not speak to them in the corridor. At this stage, things were still very tense at a political level. However, George Mitchell found a way to start building up some beginnings of trust at human level. In fairness to all the politicians in the building, everybody knew, as I was saying earlier, that this was their one opportunity. If it broke down, not only would we be back to where we were, we would be worse off because politics would have been seen to have been tried and to have failed. There would have been a greater sense of despair. George Mitchell played a very big role.

Regarding the negotiations, the format was that much of it was done bilaterally between the two Governments, between Tony Blair and Bertie Ahern working together, and with the party leaders and party delegations coming in for one-on-one meetings. We, as civil servants, might have been running with a draft trying this piece of language or that piece of language. I saw with my own eyes that that is how the trust was being built. Everybody had the sense of responsibility.

All the committee members will know what happened at the end, on Good Friday itself. There was a four-hour crisis inside the Ulster Unionist Party and their delegation. That was the longest day. We thought at 11 o'clock in the morning on Good Friday that we had an agreement. The understanding was that all parties had signed off on all parts of the agreement. George Mitchell and his team pulled together the final draft, which was circulated to all delegations. Bear in mind we were all in delegation rooms in Castle Buildings and that we were scattered over three floors. The understanding was that all the parts had been agreed. If all the parts had been agreed, then there should not have been a difficulty with the totality. At about 11 o'clock, we all had copies of the agreement and looking through it.

The next thing, word spread that the Ulster Unionists were in trouble and that downstairs on the ground floor a revolt was taking place. The view was that it was too much. There was a bilateral negotiation over the next four hours between David Trimble and Tony Blair, who was on the third floor. My only contribution to peace at that time was to be on the corridor to see who was going up and down on the lifts. We had all gone back to pessimism. We felt it was finished, that we were gone, that we were done for, that we were so close and now it was gone. At about 4.30 p.m., there was an exchange of a private letter from Tony Blair to David Trimble, which resolved it. David Trimble had to make a big move. That is what I understand, although I was not in the room, obviously.

He read out the letter and he said to his colleagues who were gathered that this was enough and that he would tell George Mitchell to convene the plenary. He told them that those who wanted to follow him should do so and those who did not want to do so should not. That is what happened and moments later the plenary was convened, agreement was reached and so it happened.

Everybody is taking the risk and the chance. Without that, there will be no agreement if people are not prepared to come into the room and, despite all the difficulties separating people in their fundamental positions, compromise must be reached. We are in danger of "compromise" becoming a dirty word. No agreement will be possible if people are not prepared to compromise because the absolute and fundamental positions of both sides are fundamentally contradictory. We only get agreement if both sides are prepared to compromise in some kind of way and that is what the Good Friday Agreement was.

I was asked if the Good Friday Agreement is out of date and I go back to the operation. This is the fundamental piece of surgery. People say they are unhappy with the Good Friday Agreement so I ask them what their alternative is. The alternative cannot be just about delivering on the absolute position of one side. It has to pass the test of the Good Friday Agreement, which is that it was something everybody could sign up to. I ask those people to come up with an alternative that will get agreement by everybody. After trying other alternatives, you will end up back with the Good Friday Agreement. There are issues around it, it has a review clause and there is challenging territory around it in the future, which is for the committee and its members as politicians. As a citizen, I say the answer will lie in agreement and I am agnostic about it. We have to find agreement. I do not start out from an ideological position one way or the other. Did the people pay a price for peace? Yes and there are risks involved for the politicians. Every move they make, especially big moves, have risks involved which could involve a price and you do not know that in advance. I am full of admiration for the courageous decisions that were taken by people. It would have been easier and safer to walk away, which is what had happened most of the other times in the past. The risk was there for everybody to pay a huge price on the day.

We will do a second round so that everybody can get the benefit of Mr. O'Connor's knowledge.

It is great to have Mr. O'Connor. His recollections obviously are accurate and I hope he puts them on paper for the future because far too often, we read so-called history books and we can see the inaccuracies in them ourselves. It would be important that a person like Mr. O'Connor, who has no agenda and who only wants to recall the facts, would do so. He made such a contribution and he was generous in his mention of so many other people. Mr. O'Connor's list of people was not exhaustive and he emphasised that.

Mr. Tim O'Connor

Yes. It is important to say that.

I am glad that Mr. O'Connor mentioned Dermot Gallagher. After Dermot left the public service I used to meet him the odd time at football matches in Cavan.

Mr. Tim O'Connor

Of course. Was he still holding the candle for Leitrim?

Yes. In Páirc Seán Mac Diarmada, Breffni Park and elsewhere. Mr. O'Connor also mentioned the ceasefire in July 1997 and I remember where I was that day. I was at the Ulster final in Clones, which Cavan won of course, which was important. We do not win enough of them but Mr. O'Connor's county is on a high with hurling at the moment and it is great to see such athleticism, quality and skill in hurling.

Mr. O'Connor mentioned that centrality of the two Governments having a good and close working relationship and that they are understanding of each other's problems. If that generosity, understanding and synergy from working together is not there, then we are in difficulty. My colleague, Senator Blaney, touched on how people have mentioned that it is time for a review of the Good Friday Agreement or whatever. We should never forget the fact that it was a hard-won agreement and that it was endorsed by 94.4% of the people in our State and by 71.1% of the people in Northern Ireland. That was at a time when the DUP was opposing it. It won overwhelming endorsement from the people of this country and the mandate that all of us on this island have in politics is to implement the Good Friday Agreement. It was the only day since 1918 that we voted on the same question on the same day throughout our island.

Mr. Tim O'Connor

Correct.

So those of us who are privileged to be in public life and to be in elected office have to treasure and always hold uppermost in our minds that we have a mandate to implement that agreement. We know there are difficulties and unfortunately there are aspects of the Good Friday Agreement that are not working. We can rehash why that is happening but that is not the purpose of our exercise today. One thing we are missing in the narrative at present and which concerns me is that we do not include in our commentary the huge positives for all of this island from the workings of the Good Friday Agreement to date. I think of the all-Ireland economy, which is evolving and growing without any electioneering, political sloganeering or flags being waved. Mr. O'Connor mentioned that business groups have talked down the context of all-Ireland development but the people who create the jobs and enterprises have gone on and created the jobs North and South and on an all-Ireland basis.

It is great that we have such a movement of people, North-South and South-North, working and accessing services. The fact that the United Kingdom has introduced the Nationality and Borders Act 2022 is of concern to us because we do not want a restriction on the movement of people on this island. In my constituency of the southern Ulster counties I see the movement of people North-South on a daily basis and I see so many people who do not have Irish or British citizenship travelling across the Border and working in key jobs, be it healthcare, hospitality or whatever. That is a mark of the success of the Good Friday Agreement, in that we have the economic development that has benefited every parish throughout our island. At times we need to reflect on the huge benefits we derive on a daily basis from the Good Friday Agreement.

I hear what Mr. O'Connor says on the role of George Mitchell. It was inspirational that he was chosen as chair. He had huge access to the Administration in America and he was one of the senior political figures there. I am sure that was useful when calls had to be made to President Clinton, Senator Ted Kennedy and others. I sincerely hope that Mr. O'Connor and colleagues like him put on record their recollections of how the Good Friday Agreement came about, its modus operandi and the many benefits that all of us enjoy from that great work undertaken by Governments and political parties at that time.

I have a time problem. I want to be generous to everybody but I stopped the Sinn Féin group after its 15 minutes and I have let the Fianna Fáil group go on. I do not mean that in a rude sense. I have predicted what will be said so I will make sure to balance that later.

I thank Mr. O'Connor for coming in. I could ask him questions for two days and not get all my questions in. I was prompted by what Mr. O'Connor said to Senator Blaney about the last day of negotiations and the things that came up, particularly with the unionists and the UUP going into conference. There is a series of interviews that Professor Jennifer Todd and Professor John Coakley did on the negotiated settlement. One interview was done with Jeffrey Donaldson in 1998 which was interesting and which speaks to some of that. The reason I am asking about this is the perspectives that people had on that day, the things they were focused and not focused on and how that has informed our experience beyond that. Can Mr. O'Connor speak to some of those tension points that day? For example, Jeffrey Donaldson was clear - and you could pick anyone - that there were key objectives like the removal of the Republic's territorial claim over Northern Ireland and decommissioning. He said they could never really pin the Irish Government on Articles 2 and 3 and that its representatives kept talking in generalities. He said they were not really engaged in the equality agenda and that they should have had their negotiators in. He said it was essentially happening without them being involved because they did not push themselves into that agenda. He said he did not have a problem against equality but that they just did not give attention to it and he gives a sense of it happening around him.

On concluding the agreement in the final hours, he said that in the early hours of Good Friday morning, Adams and McGuinness walked into a room, held crisis meetings with Blair, Mitchell and Ahern and said they were packing and leaving unless they were given an undertaking that all prisoners would be released within two years and the linkage would be removed between decommissioning, the release of prisoners and the holding of ministerial office. That created the pressure. Mr. O'Connor said in his opening comments that he would be happy to speak to some of those questions around the final day and that is my question. He knows what happened after that.

Mr. Tim O'Connor

I thank the Deputy. Concerning the final days, the Deputy is also referring to the way the different issues were handled and the negotiating process. It was a mix. It was not the Harvard conflict school of perfect negotiation, where everything took place in plenary. There were break-outs and private discussions going on. Parties were different in their approaches. Some had particular things they were trying to get advanced, covered and protected. The two Governments and we officials, with George Mitchell, did the overall frame of the document and built up the pieces. I can understand what Jeffrey was saying there about more input.

On the issues on the day, I was not party to that. Some of this was at a high political level in terms of the precise nature of the final compromises on the issues the Deputy referred to. There were huge tensions in the last 24 hours. President Clinton was involved, as well, in phone calls from Washington, working the phones all through the night, I think. In the end, whatever was going to come out would be a compromise and nobody would get everything they wished for. It was not that people would agree to everything but that people could live with everything. That is where we were getting to

It is on public record what Bertie Ahern had to do in the course of that week. We are all human beings and live our lives. In the middle of all of that, his mother died on the Monday. George Mitchell called us all together on 25 March for a pep talk for the delegates. All of us crowded into a room bigger than this and what he said went something like this: "I have been with you now for three years. It's been marvellous. I have listened to your stories. They are wonderful stories and I'm sure you have more of them, as well." He said: "In the meantime, a son has been born to me in New York and I would like to see him before he goes to college, so I am declaring a deadline by which our discussions must draw to an end and decisions be reached." There was a sharp collective intake of breath. That began the process with the intensity that was referred to. We knew then that George's deadline was 9 April, which was the Thursday of that week. We actually missed it by a day.

On Monday, 6 April, Bertie Ahern's mother died. He had three days and was trying to cope with managing all of that. George Mitchell gave a first draft of the agreement to all delegations on the Monday night. We called it "Mitchell One". That had an elaborate cross-Border section, which one of the unionist negotiators said they would not touch with a 40 ft bargepole. We were in immediate crisis. This was Monday or Tuesday. Bertie Ahern, in the course of funeral arrangements for his mother in Dublin, was thinking about this and knew that on the basis of the reaction of the unionist party to the North-South piece, we would not get agreement unless there is a compromise. He made a decision to scale back the level of ambition for the cross-Border, take a risk and get agreement on that, though it would be less than we would ideally have liked. We had drafted much more. That was a big risk. To do that, we are still in the agreement and are going to change Articles 2 and 3 without knowing the details. All we got in the Good Friday Agreement on the North-South strand is the frame. The detail would be later. We had to make the move on constitutional issues without knowing the detail. That is one example. I was heavily involved in that.

The issues Jeffrey was talking about there are hugely sensitive. At a high political level, those compromises were agreed in terms of arrangements with regard to prisoners and decommissioning and the role of parties in decommissioning. We understood there was broad agreement in principle from everybody by Thursday night or Friday morning on that. On that basis, we all thought when it was put together in a single document by George Mitchell, we should be okay. We were not, because when all that came together, Jeffrey and others looked through it and said they would be destroyed, given what they were being asked to sign up to. From his perspective, they were giving away A, B, C and D and look what they were getting in return. He felt it would not wash. He left and others with him, but David Trimble believed there was enough there. The Deputy asked a fair question. It is for politicians to decide if this is something they can go with because, as Deputy Brendan Smith said, they will pay a price.

I was the deputy secretary of the Forum for Peace and Reconciliation, which sat from 1994 to 1996, and we had distinguished international visitors come and talk to us. There was a big meeting of the board and we had F.W de Klerk. I cannot really do the Afrikaans accent but will try. In his speech, he said: "In negotiations, the most difficult discussions are not with your adversary across the table. They are with your own side." The discussions going on in the Good Friday negotiations were also in the rooms of the parties. That is an example of the difficult internal discussion Jeffrey was talking about. There were difficult internal discussions taking place in all the rooms. That is a key part of it. People not in the front line of the negotiations, when the delegates come back to the room and say what they will agree, say "What? Are you kidding me?" It is about judgment calls, what you can live with and wear and Jeffrey is on the record as saying it was too much from his perspective.

It is nice to meet Mr. O'Connor.

Mr. Tim O'Connor

I have great respect for Senator Currie's family.

I thank Mr. O'Connor very much. Looking back, what would he change? Given where we are with victims and legacy proposals, would victims be top of the list or are there others? Looking back with your insight-----

Mr. Tim O'Connor

With 25 years' hindsight.

Yes. What would you change? It is not just what we should change, but what you would change.

Mr. Tim O'Connor

It is a good question and I have an answer. Deputy Brendan Smith mentioned the people. The Senator's father, Austin, Lord have mercy on him, was not there on Good Friday but was a key player. I had the privilege of working with the Senator's uncle, Vincent, who was a councillor and was very helpful to me.

Mr. Tim O'Connor

If I have only one thing, I will tell the Senator what we did not understand on Good Friday.

We thought that the key thing was to get agreement, get it over the line and get the deal. We were right that this was really important. As I said earlier, the difference between getting agreement and not doing so is the same as the difference between night and day. However, the journey was only starting because implementation is also a negotiation. We have been negotiating it ever since. In a way, we are still negotiating it. I had a bit of a joke with George Mitchell. It was slightly smart-alecky but I told him that the Good Friday Agreement was an Irish agreement, in that we signed it first and then negotiated it. That is kind of what has been going on. If I was to do it all over again, I would have much more respect and appreciation for the fact that we were only beginning a journey of negotiation. To go back to architecture, while it would not solve everything because structure is not a substitute for substance, it would be wise to put in place a proper structure to oversee implementation because what happened is that, the minute we got agreement, we all scattered to the hills. Ultimately, we got the Executive up and running and the MLAs and Ministers went off to do their piece in the Executive and the Assembly. I had gone off to Armagh where I was working on the cross-Border bodies. There was also a British-Irish body. Nobody was watching over the totality of this, however. It is a great question and one answer is that you have to appreciate that you are just beginning a new process of negotiation and that you need to put a formal framework in place to oversee implementation just as you have for the negotiations themselves. We did not understand that at all.

As Mr. O'Connor has said throughout, relationships are absolutely key within that. What are the differences and the similarities between relationships back then in the 1990s and relationships now?

Mr. Tim O'Connor

Back in the 1990s, it was a big novelty for many people to actually be talking to one another. There was very little of that beforehand. We got through the negotiations. That is what I meant about signing it first and then negotiating it. There were parties to that agreement who did not speak to each other even up to Good Friday. Many people found talking to their enemies very difficult. Paradoxically, it seems that, at many levels, relationships are much better today. People talk to each other a lot more now than they used to. While I am out of it and no longer directly involved, my sense is that, even though we still have major challenges, 24 years of this has enabled people to get together. Deputy Brendan Smith spoke about the successes. I absolutely agree. We have been able to get access to get things happening and moving that just were not possible before. I find myself on this paramilitary commission now. I have a colleague on it from the DUP and we work very closely together. We are very good colleagues and trust each other. There are things that are possible today that just were not then. I will tell you the truth. When I was starting off, I had been working on Northern Ireland work for 12 years before I met a unionist who I could actually speak to. They just would not speak to us because we were the Dublin Government. We were finally able to get in and build trust and relationships. Once you build relationships, you can have trust. When I was the joint secretary of the North-South Ministerial Council, I had two fellow joint secretaries in the secretariat in Armagh over the course of the five and a half years. Both were from Protestant unionist backgrounds. Their office was on one side and mine on another but we became really close friends and colleagues so I knew that, if I had an issue, I could go across to Dick Mackenzie and later Peter Smyth and put the issue on the table. They would not wonder where I was coming from with it and neither would I if they said something to me. That is what is changing but it does not alter the fundamental issue that we have two competing political philosophies that we have not managed to accommodate.

Will Mr. O'Connor comment on east-west relationships?

Mr. Tim O'Connor

The east-west relationship is a game of two halves, is it not? I refer to the period up to 2016 and the period afterwards, which are not exactly halves. Things are very difficult now. I worked as a general diplomat as well and I worked very closely with my British colleagues. I was the Africa director during Ireland's EU Presidency in 1996 so for six months, I was the leader of the European Union's Africa group in Brussels. My British colleagues were a key support for me. We worked very closely together. The sundering of the European relationship has been very difficult, as we all know. That east-west relationship is in a difficult space at the moment. I hope we can get back to where we were and where we want to be. I greatly value that relationship. I worked with my British colleagues through all of this with the absolute sense that we had each other's back. In negotiating the Good Friday Agreement, working with British colleagues was fundamental to everything and, as I have said, we worked closely together in Europe as well. I am hopeful that we will find a way to get back to that close relationship. It is fundamental to progress.

Will Mr. O'Connor reflect on victims?

Mr. Tim O'Connor

The victims are the human piece of it. I mentioned in my opening statement that there is a piece on victims in the agreement but it did not dominate. What was dominating the discourse was the high politics of North-South co-operation and what was to be done about decommissioning and prisoners. I am just being honest with the Senator. They were the-----

I should have said victims and legacy.

Mr. Tim O'Connor

The word "legacy" cannot be found in the Good Friday Agreement. It is not in there. We did not deal with it. If the Senator is asking me personally why there is no reference to legacy in the Good Friday Agreement, my own totally personal view is that it is because we were not sure this was actually a final agreement. Legacy comes into play when a conflict is over and when it is being looked back on. The Good Friday Agreement was negotiated in the context of a desire to get a deal and an agreement. Discussing how we were going to deal with the past would almost have been a luxury. We did not have the capacity to deal with it. When did legacy start to become a political issue? The answer is in about 2012. That is 17 years after the agreement. You could say it is a positive that there is now a general view that the conflict is over and that we now have to start dealing with its legacy.

Ms Claire Hanna

I thank Mr. O'Connor. It has been a real pleasure to listen to him for the last hour or so and to hear all his recollections, all the colour and much of the backstory that explains where certain parts of the architecture came from and how some of the stops and starts came about. In retrospect, we remember the big dates and the big moments but we often do not remember what caused them or how different problems were resolved. It is also really important to celebrate the role of civil servants, particularly those from the Department of Foreign Affairs who were there throughout the process. I know Mr. O'Connor's involvement long predates the Good Friday Agreement and in addition to the political layer, there was a generation of real problem-solvers, who are not so in fashion politically now. It is now more about how to duck and dive around problems rather than how to solve them structurally. I heard someone saying that we had architects for years and now have decorators. Mr. O'Connor talked about an approach of not getting everything you want in the Good Friday Agreement. That is hard for us to take sometimes.

It is important to remember that it is also about how we consent to the things that we do not want. For example, those of us who want a new Ireland have consented to a different constitutional configuration for the time being because that is what the majority of people want at the moment.

I wish to talk about some of the solutions that the Good Friday Agreement might provide at the moment for some of the Brexit challenges, in particular. In the SDLP, we like to say it is not an ornament but a toolkit. Within the strands of the agreement, there are solutions to many of the different problems we face. I know that one of the concerns that is raised post Brexit about the protocol is the issue of the democratic deficit. I will leave aside the irony of people bringing down the whole of Government in protest at a supposed democratic deficit on some very small aspects of EU regulation. I understand that in the years immediately after 1998, there was discussion at the North-South Ministerial Council about how that body could be better used to feed into the European structures. That fell away during the suspension that happened in approximately 2001. Perhaps Mr. O'Connor could comment on that.

Senator Currie has a real gift for asking questions that you wish you had thought of yourself. She asked about changes. Mr. O'Connor is correct that it is ultimately a matter of approach and ethos. I have a bit of a hobby horse in this committee about the functioning of strand one. Does Mr. O'Connor have any suggestions about how best to approach a reappraisal or recalibration of strand one and how the structures could be improved?

Mr. Tim O'Connor

I thank Ms Hanna. As is the case with Senator Currie, the nobility of Ms Hanna's family contributes to what she is doing so powerfully herself. I had the honour of working with her mother. I acknowledge that. We worked closely with all Ms Hanna's colleagues in the SDLP, including in the back room. People such as Mr. Mark Durkan, Mr. Sean Farren and Mr. Denis Haughey made contributions. I must mention the back room during those negotiations. Of course, Mr. Durkan subsequently became a front-room person, deputy First Minister and later an MP. At the time, he was in the back room. We were together in the engine room and he did a lot of valuable work around the drafting and the development of the concepts that eventually made it into the agreement. I thank Ms Hanna for her kind words about the civil servants. A range of us were involved and we all tried to bring our bit to the table.

I recognise the Durkanite influence in the reference Ms Hanna made to the agreement as a toolkit. She made an interesting point about the EU section of the Good Friday Agreement in strand two. To remind everybody, we included the following in the agreement:

The [North-South Ministerial] Council to consider the European Union dimension of relevant matters, including the implementation of EU policies, programmes and proposals under consideration in the EU framework. Arrangements to be made to ensure that the views of the Council are taken into account and represented appropriately at relevant EU meetings.

As that is included in the Good Friday Agreement, I understand why Ms Hanna mentioned it. That is not talked about very much. People might ask what happened to it. It was a classic example of creative drafting and trying to have something in the text which can be returned to and developed. People consented, as Ms Hanna said, to that. I am sure some people were not happy with it, some did not want it at all and others did want it. The North-South Ministerial Council met in approximately 2002 to try to put some flesh on the bones of what that might look like but, unfortunately, it never went anywhere because the Executive and Assembly were suspended in October 2002 and did not return until 2007. Ms Hanna referred to the beginnings of considerations to try to flesh out that paragraph. What would representation from the North-South Ministerial Council look like in the EU framework? I am giving personal recollections of the situation because nothing was actually formalised but we were starting to kick around ideas. For instance, a proposition from the North-South Ministerial Council could have been agreed by the two parties around the table, that is, the Northern Ireland Executive and the Irish Government, as a position which could have been taken away to Brussels through twin representations, with the British delegation and perhaps the EU advancing it through their channels and the Irish permanent representation also doing so. Perhaps the two representations together could have sought to advance something in a common way. That was the kind of thinking that was going on but as I say, it never went anywhere. I understand why Ms Hanna is pointing to that issue. It is a formal part of the agreement.

To return to Deputy Brendan Smith's point, we should remind ourselves that this was the will of the people. It is not only a piece of paper. Perhaps we could have spent more money on the document itself but we were being very cost conscious back in 1998. The agreement is the will of the people. It was approved in referendums both North and South. I hear people making comments that they never signed up to it and I am sorry but if they want the agreement changed, they have to go out and get agreement from the people in a new referendum to supplant it. Until that happens, the agreement is the sovereign will of the people of the island of Ireland. Ms Hanna is right that linking in with the EU is a part of the agreement and is available for exploration. It is true that we did not get very far with it but that was the kind of thinking we were doing.

The strand one discussions only took off very late in the negotiations, as the committee probably knows. Ms Hanna's colleagues were very heavily involved, along with the Ulster Unionist Party. There was a theology piece that we in the Irish Government delegation had to be careful about to ensure we were not interfering in the internal affairs of Northern Ireland. Part of the theology of negotiations, including back in the Brooke talks of the early 1990s and the Mayhew talks thereafter, was that the Irish Government could not formally be involved in strand one negotiations. That was a bit of theology that had to be observed. Much of the main negotiations on the detail of what emerged in strand one was done between the SDLP and the Ulster Unionist Party. The rest of us, including Sinn Féin, Alliance and the Irish Government, signed off on it. It was a matter of checks and balances. There is a lot of ingenuity in that regard within strand one. It is like anything else. To return to my human health analogy, things need refreshing. Things that might have made sense in 1998 do not necessarily hold up 25 years later, although some do. That is why we built into the structure, to return to the architectural analogy, the review clause in the agreement which states in the event that difficulties arise, operations can be reviewed with a view to resolving those issues. The review clause does allow for that within the terms of the agreement itself without breaching the agreement.

The next speaker will be Dr. Stephen Farry, who was here earlier this morning. I do not know if he is online. He is not; that is no problem. The next slot is for the Green Party but there is no representative present.

We will now move on to Sinn Féin slot, which will be 20 minutes.

I will not take them all. Like other colleagues, I thank Mr. O’Connor in the first instance for his authentic and valuable insights into that period. I am lucky in the sense that Jim Gibney is working in my office. He gives me quite the insight into the talks both around Good Friday and previous-----

Mr. Tim O'Connor

Give him my regards.

I will of course.

One of the key issues for us is absorbing Mr. O’Connor’s contributions today, as well as hopefully the contributions of others who will come back before the committee to give us that retrospective view. As a committee, we review and we research. We are certainly not the committee on changing the Good Friday Agreement. We are the committee on implementing the Good Friday Agreement. The information that we absorb over the course of this exercise has to be through the prism of how we move forward with implementation.

I agree with Mr. O’Connor that the architecture and the solutions are there. The obligation that is on us all who are lifting up the mantle in terms of political work across this island is to realise the full promise of the Good Friday Agreement.

Mr. O’Connor made fair comments about political decisions that have to be made, that are currently being made and that are currently not being made in relation to implementing the agreement. We can see that in the continued opposition to the Good Friday Agreement from elements of political unionism. We can also see the jeopardy that the Good Friday Agreement has been put in as a result of Brexit and as a result of the legacy proposals to which Senator Currie referred. Also, crucially, aspects of the Nationality and Borders Act will impact on life here in Ireland.

While Mr. O’Connor has made fair comments on political choice, how important does he consider the loss of institutional memory at official level to be? How that has impacted on the implementation of the agreement? If there had been officials working on the British side, for example, during the Brexit process and during the moving of the legacy proposals around the Nationality and Borders Act, would there have been the same acute form of impact on the agreement, as we have seen? How important is that? I may not be using the right term but what is the impact of that loss of institutional memory at an official level, which is separate and distinct from the regressive political approaches that are being taken?

Mr. Tim O'Connor

I thank the Senator for his comments. I worked very closely with Jim Gibney in the Forum for Peace and Reconciliation. This goes back a long way.

The Senator poses a challenging question about the loss of institutional memory. A few points come to mind, one of which is the interaction between political leadership and officials. What is that relationship? It changes at different times. It can vary depending on the personalities involved. From 37 or 38 years of experience in the public service, I would say that ultimately, the big-picture directions of travel are decided on by the politicians. I say this with all due respect to us civil servants, who have a very important role to play.

I recall, for instance, the build up to the Anglo-Irish Agreement in 1985. Some British civil servants played a critical role in bringing Margaret Thatcher to the signing of the agreement at Hillsborough on 15 November 1985. I am speaking in particular of people like her Cabinet Secretary, Robert Armstrong, as well as David Goodall who was also in the British Cabinet Office and in the British Foreign Office. They had institutional memory. They were key. Yet, in my experience, the decisive moves always come at political level. There are clearly big ideological battles going on. In the current British Government, and they are entitled to this in democratic terms, there is a particular ideological direction of travel being driven. That is being driven at a political level, in my observation. I know from my experience, and God bless the Civil Service and anybody who is trying to intervene there. That is what I would say about that.

For me, as a citizen, that raises the question about the agreements that have been reached in the past. What do we make of these, as opposed to the high politics of today, where people have given a mandate to politicians to do what they say they want to do? I see a conflict of mandates and referendums at play. I say this because there was a referendum in 1998 for the people in Northern Ireland, the people in the South and for the whole island. They validated and approved this. Then there was a referendum in 2016, which was absolutely valid as well. The implications of the two referendums are in some degrees in conflict with each other in respect of Northern Ireland. However, they are two valid expressions of the will of the people. That is my view of what is going on. I am choosing my words carefully here because I want to be respectful to everybody. There is a view that is now being expressed and implemented. It partially calls into question what exactly we agreed to in regard to certain matters in 1998.

I return to the issue of architecture. I believe we are coming up against the difficulties and complexities of creative ambiguity. We drafted certain issues on the basis to find an agreement between irreconcilables. Language has been put together here which, in some instances, is ambiguous. However, it had to be ambiguous with the constructive view to get agreements.

Mr. Tim O'Connor

Later on, then, people are saying, “Hold on a second, that is not what we agreed”. I see that difficulty playing out. To a certain extent, that is where the politicians must say, “This is where we are at”. The loss of institutional memory is a fair point but on screen, I think it is trumped by the direction of travel at high politics.

I suppose it is a bit of double dunter.

Mr. Tim O'Connor

I think the Senator is right. There is the issue of civil servants and the power of that. I will say a word for the Civil Service and say they are all doing their best. The ultimate trumping is done, correctly, by the politicians. These are the people who have been given the mandate.

In terms of the issue we just spoke about, as well as in terms of Mr. O’Connor’s reference to the loss of the person-to-person relationship at a European Union level, how important does he consider the British-Irish Intergovernmental Conference?

Mr. Tim O'Connor

It is hugely important. Historically, we had been apart until around the 1970s. In the early 1970s there was still a view from London that Northern Ireland was none of the business of Dublin but by 1972, that began to change. A Green Paper had been produced by Downing Street that talked for the first time about the Irish dimension. That was the beginning of more joined-up thinking and of accepting that there was a role for Dublin in some form in Northern Ireland.

Deputy Brendan Smith and Senator Blaney raised the points of the personal relationships at political level. They are so fundamental. They do not ultimately resolve the substance, but they give it the best possible chance. I say this because the politicians will know that they are now talking straight. They will no longer be thinking, “What are they saying?”. This is because the relationship of trust has been built. In order for trust to be built, people have to find ways to come together. I am a great believer in the power of institutions to enable people to come together. It is quite difficult for people who have been historically conflicted to just say that they will pick up the phone, because they will not do so.

If an institution is created which has the checks and balances and can allow you to be comfortable, and you have to participate in that institution, that is what enables the relationships to build. That is why - back to architecture - the institutions which have enabled enemies to come together have been an important part of it that would not be available if it was ad hoc where picking up the phone to each other is not going to happen. That is why I say I saw it myself with my own eyes. What did the North-South Ministerial Council look like between 1999 and 2002? There were 65 meetings. What did it look like when unionists and Sinn Féin Ministers were coming together on the Northern side, which was often the case, of a table and the then Fianna Fáil Minister or a Progressive Democrats, PD, Minister on the Southern side? I was an official watching this. The answer is it looked very good, because, going back to what David Trimble said, we got the architecture right.

I myself had a principle in Armagh with my team. There were approximately 30 of us and I said to them that our job every week from Monday to Friday was to manage complexity. There was a key principle that we operated, metaphorically, up on the wall, which is the principle of no surprises, that we would say what we would do, we would do what we said we would do and then we would tell people we did what we said we would do. That was a really important way in which we prepared all the meetings and that then enabled relationships to develop because people gradually began to feel confidence that when they were around this table and in this space there would not be surprises. For example, flags was a very difficult issue for ministerial meetings. A North-South Ministerial Council meeting would take place in a hotel somewhere in Dublin, around the country, in Fermanagh or wherever, and the thing was if a unionist Minister was photographed under a tricolour: it was bang, got you. In making the preparations, I remember going to a hotel and talking to the manager beforehand about the meeting come up and saying that it was very sensitive. I told him we had got to be careful that there are no flags. He said not to worry as they did not even have a flagpole. The committee will see what I mean about no surprises because if that happened - I know I am laughing here - if that photograph happened with politicians around, I would be in trouble and I would not have a meeting.

The names of places is another example. How were we to call a meeting taking place in Derry - Londonderry? There were all these kinds of sensitivities. That is why I refer to the institutions. That has been the European experience as well. The institutions have created the framework and spaces with which people have to come together. Then once they are together, things will happen.

Is there a role in terms of the current stalemate around the institutions in the North? For us as a committee, we should certainly be advocating that the Irish Government would reconvene the British-Irish Intergovernmental Conference. Would that be of assistance in the current climate?

Mr. Tim O'Connor

It has been meeting reasonably regularly. I think there was a meeting a number of weeks ago. The officials are trying to do their best. Certainly the Irish Government officials are trying very hard and I am sure the same is true of their British colleagues but, and I am not trying to kick the ball back to the politicians, it is still ultimately their call. We as civil servants can push so far but the call is ultimately at the ministerial level. Senator Ó Donnghaile triggered an interesting point, namely, that the institutional framework is really important because when people are not talking to each other organically an institutional framework which they have to be part of allows that cover.

I will finish on this. The key - it was probably one of the points Mr. O'Connor made that struck me the most, and Deputy Brendan Smith also made it - was that the agreement and its institutions and its arrangements be in the will of the people. I suppose the main outcome that we all want to see politically is the re-establishment of the Good Friday Agreement's institutions and that they would be functioning and delivering well for people.

Mr. Tim O'Connor

Without question.

I thank Mr. O'Connor. I appreciate his input.

Is there anybody else from Sinn Féin who wishes to speak? The party has a few minutes left.

That is fine.

On the photograph, I was a Minister of State and I was at a North-South meeting in my constituency of the Loughs Agency. It was during the Carlingford festival. There was a Democratic Unionist Party, DUP, Minister there who was great. Everything went grand but unfortunately - to spare him the blushes I will not name him - he would not stand in for a photograph with a plate of oysters and some local people. That was what happened there. I found it very hard to understand but it goes to the heart of what Mr. O'Connor was saying.

Mr. Tim O'Connor

Absolutely.

I suppose we should have cleared that with him beforehand.

Mr. Tim O'Connor

That is back to the principle of no surprise. That was a surprise.

That was it.

Mr. Tim O'Connor

The big deal about the principle is that a surprise discombobulates. It is not just about that particular issue that one has caused. It is now a crisis of confidence as to what else are they hiding from him or her, or what else will they land him or her in.

What else are they worried about. I agree.

Mr. Tim O'Connor

That is why the principle of no surprises - it is back to architecture - is a guiding principle. Even then, one will not get everything. I used say, "Michael, be neurotic and you will not be too far wrong." I was a terrible employer. One of my team told me that he woke up at 3 a.m. worrying about that, and I said, "Good."

The only thing about those meeting - former Minister, Deputy Brendan Smith, would have been in the same position - is that the pre-meeting official briefing was very clear. Everything was laid out, you went into the meeting and it was done. As Mr. O'Connor says, everything was clear before going in. There was the consent of all parties.

Mr. Tim O'Connor

That was what built the confidence that we could do our business.

That was definitely there.

Mr. Tim O'Connor

That was the key operating principle. Again, it is back to architecture.

Who has not spoken? There is no Labour Party spokesperson - I do not mean that rudely - online. As we have nobody else online, we will go back to the Carlingford area. I call Senator McGreehan.

It is a real pleasure to have Mr. O'Connor here and to listen to him. As Deputy Brendan Smith said, I hope this is being written down. I am from north Louth and I never thought that the Good Friday Agreement would happen. I remember sitting in my history class in Bush Post Primary School discussing this. There were only four of us in our history class and we had a little liberty.

Mr. Tim O'Connor

That is fascinating.

We used discuss this and see how was it we were to make an agreement and was it possible. I was a stanch Fianna Fáiler but I did not think it would be possible. I remember sitting, talking to Mr. McGoey, thinking that we were not doing it. Then it did-----

Mr. Tim O'Connor

Yes.

-----and politics worked.

Mr. Tim O'Connor

Yes.

From that day on, I wanted to work in politics.

Mr. Tim O'Connor

Very good.

I am an optimist when it comes to the Good Friday Agreement and wanted to see what the possibilities of that brought. I thank Mr. O'Connor for his part in that.

Mr. Tim O'Connor

I thank Senator McGreehan.

For me, I sat around the kitchen table talking about this. I did not have a vote on it but my family did. The removal of Articles 2 and 3 was a big issue.

Mr. Tim O'Connor

Precisely.

There was anger. There was fury. There was hope. Hope won out then in the end because we had to do this, we could not go on anymore and we had to make that compromise.

For us sitting at the kitchen table in the Cooley Mountains, the Good Friday Agreement was a starting point and not the end point. It was the starting point to what we would have in Ireland and a re-unification. It put into that democracy that Northern Ireland did not have beforehand and we were guaranteed that democracy with the assembly and shared power. That democracy was coming. We knew we did not have that beforehand.

Mr. O'Connor mentioned earlier, as I was coming in, the need for maturity. As someone sitting down here in a privileged position, one is looking and one tries to detach emotion from it. Does Northern Ireland need to mature that little bit and have a little more independence?

Our independence in the Twenty-six Counties brought a great level of maturity. We are a drastically different country than we were 100 years ago or even 15 or 20 years ago. It is too easy for a party to pull down the assembly. We cannot do that in the Republic and it cannot be done in Westminster. Does Mr. O’Connor think that there is a level of immaturity or a need for a bit of growth to happen so that is not the case anymore? We have had nearly 30 years now. We see problems even in Kosovo with that shared power. Shared power has limits on it. There is a review mechanism in the Good Friday Agreement. I am very curious that if more responsibility was put on the Northern Ireland Assembly, would it grow and would we see a different Northern Ireland that could bring us towards a more pragmatic and better island? As a Border woman, I do not see a Border. I see a community and my neighbourhood. A strong Northern Ireland is a strong Ireland.

Mr. Tim O'Connor

That is very interesting. It was fascinating how the Senator was observing it and commenting on the impact it had on her. I thank her for that.

I apologise for interrupting. There is a vote in the Seanad, so some of us will have to go.

Mr. Tim O'Connor

Absolutely. Will Senator McGreehan have to go as well?

Yes, I will have to leave. I apologise for that.

Mr. Tim O'Connor

I am very happy to talk to the Senator.

I will listen back.

Mr. Tim O'Connor

I will put it in. We can chat as well.

I would love to. We are clearing out. Deputy Brendan Smith has the floor.

Mr. Tim O'Connor

I will take those questions because they are very good. Those are very good points.

They are very interesting. It was very interesting to hear Senator McGreehan.

Mr. Tim O'Connor

Very much so. It is a point that I have been making out. I am just praising Senator McGreehan because it is a point that I have been making out in conversations. I was in London a couple of weeks ago at a meeting and I was just making that very point that this was a big deal. This is the will of the people. This is a referendum. Big changes were made formally that we cannot actually pull back, and we made them. As I said, Articles 2 and 3 were a fundamental doctrinal change by the South. It changed our Constitution. Senator McGreehan is just after articulating that. When I hear people today saying that they have moved on and do not support the Good Friday Agreement, I say this is a formal sovereign will of the people. That was a very important point the Senator made that I appreciated.

The maturity question is a more difficult one. There are checks and balances built into the architecture of the Good Friday Agreement on a basis that those are the safeguards that are given to both sides in a conflicted, contested situation. Safeguards have to be given to both sides in terms of how implementation is going to proceed. A safeguard is ultimately a protection, but also, therefore, a safeguard ultimately also potentially becomes a veto. I am not sure how you can construct a fundamental safeguard without it also becoming a veto. It is built into the architecture we have. If I am speaking as a citizen and an optimist, I would always hope and believe that a way can be found to work through the issues, whatever they are, and a way can be found with the institutions.

This goes back to why Brexit has been such an issue. Our ambassador in London, Adrian O’Neill, came up with a concept of a disturbance in the force, which is a Star Wars reference. Brexit has been a huge disturbance in the positive force of the Good Friday Agreement. It has brought back into play the whole question of the sovereignty of Northern Ireland and if it is British or Irish. All of those questions are back in play when we had kind of calmed them down and put them into a very careful, delicate space. We put a ribbon on them, as it were, and just left them there, and it was fine then. Everybody could get on then. Now, however, Brexit has come along and has torn all that up. The debate is back on.

I was going to ask Mr. O’Connor on the origin of the Good Friday Agreement, the question of the Border poll and the reserve function of whomever the British administrator of the North is-----

Mr. Tim O'Connor

The Secretary of State.

It seems to me, and if Mr. O'Connor does not want to comment, that is fine-----

Mr. Tim O'Connor

No, I will.

It seems to be a weakness in the agreement that there is no consensual consent other than his decision. It seems to me, and I know Mr. O'Connor is not a political person and I am not trying to put a political point in his head-----

Mr. Tim O'Connor

Go on, Chair.

-----but I am trying to work this out. Mr. O’Connor is absolutely right. It is top of the agenda now and we have to deal it. However, we have to deal with it in a way that is proportionate. My biggest concern is that if there were a poll and it were to be lost, that is one awful thing that might happen. If there were a poll and it were to be won and there was not an appropriate structure in place, that would be awful as well. The whole debate is on a new level now. I believe what we need to do is define, if we can get consensus, how such a poll might be called, given the demographic change that is clearly happening. I do not know if that is a fair question to Mr. O’Connor.

Mr. Tim O'Connor

Again, as one of the people involved, the Good Friday Agreement is not a perfect document.

No, it is not.

Mr. Tim O'Connor

It is an exercise in the possible. What we have in terms of that instrument the Chair described about the Secretary of State is quite vague. It might be asked why we were not more crisp and comprehensive. For any of us that are country people, I would say that it is back to the marketplace. That is the price you could get on the day. That is what the market would bear on that day. That is as far as we could get it and as far as we could go.

Fair enough.

Mr. Tim O'Connor

I often talk about Article 1 of the Good Friday Agreement. It is Article 1 in the agreement between the two Governments. It is worth looking at. Article 1 deals with what are called constitutional issues.

Tá sé agam anseo.

Mr. Tim O'Connor

Very impressive. That is a very careful, delicate construct of checks and balances. For every check that is put in, there is a balance. For every concept, there is a countervailing concept. It is the cumulative and collective impact of it that actually then reflects it. All the pieces have to be taken together. What is happening now of course is that elements are taken and consent is used all over the place in different means. This was our best attempt. In the opening sentence of Article 1 it recognises the “legitimacy of whatever choice is freely exercised by a majority of the people of Northern Ireland with regard to its status”. Even an amateur such as myself can look at the first paragraph and see it is about the status of Northern Ireland. That is a key thing we are addressing here. The Chair was quite right that those questions are now back in play. There is now a dispute about what that means. What did we do in the Good Friday Agreement in regard to the status of Northern Ireland? Anytime you hear the phrase “Northern Ireland is an integral part of the United Kingdom”, what does that mean? Could we not have adjusted that in some kind of a way in 1998? That is in dispute as well. We have this very complex - you could even say convoluted – set-up.

There is Article 1(v) which states that whichever Government is exercising sovereignty, whether it is continuation of the union, in which case it is the British Government, or the Irish Government in a future united Ireland, that Government has to exercise its sovereignty with rigorous impartiality as between both traditions in terms of ethos, identities and aspirations. What does that mean?

That is the language we agreed and put in, however. If there was to be equal legitimacy in the context of the aspiration in respect of whether it remains part of the UK or becomes part of a sovereign united Ireland, there would have to be reference to a mechanism by which one could trigger that. The Secretary of State-----

That is the reference, yes.

Mr. Tim O'Connor

I am putting up my hands. It should be more elaborate.

Some of the people to whom I have spoken believe there was an implicit understanding that it would be discussed by the Northern secretary with his or her counterpart in the South-----

Mr. Tim O'Connor

Yes, absolutely.

-----and that they would then move forward on that issue, rather than the Northern secretary just looking into his or her heart and that being it.

Mr. Tim O'Connor

That is right. That was not part of the agreement, however.

It is believed that people in different parts-----

Mr. Tim O'Connor

There was an understanding but that understanding was not worth the paper it was not written on.

I hear what Mr. O'Connor is saying.

It is wonderful to have had Mr. O'Connor with us for more than two hours. I refer to preparation. He mentioned Articles 2 and 3. It comes back to the point raised by Senator McGreehan. I remember that my party in particular was very much attached------

Mr. Tim O'Connor

It was.

The Fianna Fáil Party in government in 1937 put the Constitution before the people to be enacted by the electorate. If Bertie Ahern were to appear before the committee, he would be able to go into it in detail, but I remember that during the negotiations he met several of us back bench Deputies and Senators. He broached the subject of changing Articles 2 and 3. We said, "What?" To my recollection, the preparatory work was done by the then Attorney General, David Byrne, along with Martin Mansergh and possibly some other officials. They went through in detail why it was necessary. One could then bring in a mechanism to unite the country on the basis of the free consent of the people - North and South.

Mr. Tim O'Connor

That is correct.

Again, that showed the necessity of doing the preparatory work. We were significant------

Mr. Tim O'Connor

Yes. It goes back to my point regarding the internal discussions within the Deputy's party in respect of such an important problem.

Fianna Fáil probably had 80 Deputies and 20 Senators at the time. We were a big parliamentary party and we were all surprised when the issue was broached first. The preparatory work was done, however, and there was then no dissent whatsoever within the Fianna Fáil Party in that regard because we saw the importance of it. It was not sprung on people as a surprise. The homework was done in preparation, which was-----

Mr. Tim O'Connor

That is an important point.

I remember being told this in Ballyconnell at 7 a.m. on a Monday by the Taoiseach at the time. The Chairman has heard me mention on several occasions that there is a lack of respect nowadays in this country, and possibly elsewhere as well, for experience and corporate knowledge, particularly in governance. In political life at least, there is a lack of respect for the experience and corporate knowledge that may be out there. That may be an issue in the public service, from speaking to people who were at senior level in it. It goes back to the point some would make in respect of Brexit and the associated danger. Two people who warned about the political consequences of Brexit for Northern Ireland were two former British Prime Ministers, Mr. Blair and Mr. Major, who campaigned in Derry together against Brexit. They put out a clear message in respect of the political difficulties that could arise in Northern Ireland if the referendum were passed. They had a very good track record in the context of this country. Mr. Major issued the Downing Street Declaration and-----

Mr. Tim O'Connor

That is right. They were saying that because they understood.

Yes. It is a pity that more people did not listen to them. Those who were there, such as Mr. O'Connor, saw the reality and the difficulties of reaching an agreement as well as the huge amount of work and preparation that goes into it. Several members have expressed the hope that Mr. O'Connor will put down in writing his recollections so that they can be accessed and inform the history of our country. I hope that universities and other research institutes are using his knowledge and that of his colleagues to ensure research is not based on newspaper reports or whatever but, rather, drawn from people who were at the coalface. His contribution today has been marvellous.

On that point, Mr. O'Connor's contribution is being recorded on video and in digital format. Everything he has said will be available to print tomorrow.

Mr. Tim O'Connor

Deputy Smith made an important point. Things can get forgotten, such as from where this came and how profound the decisions he and his colleagues had to make were at the time. They were painful and difficult but they were done in the wider cause of peace. One could get the impression that the Good Friday Agreement was a piece of rhetoric but that is not the case.

It was well fought for and won on all sides. People paid a significant price post the event as well, as we know.

Mr. Tim O'Connor

Yes, indeed.

If this issue has been covered, my apologies. Mr. O'Connor referred to Seamus Mallon and the shared home place. Much of what Seamus Mallon was trying to do was to try to create the conditions. Indeed, the agreement leads with that, although I recognise what Mr. O'Connor was saying about the intention of simply stopping the trouble, as it were, and creating the conditions to move into the next phase. Much of what Seamus Mallon was saying, however, was about creating a new environment place where people could live together. In many respects, that has been achieved by many people in Northern Ireland, although that may not be reflected in its politics. What is Mr. O'Connor's perspective on reconciliation? He mentioned it towards the end of his opening statement. I refer to the further steps that can be taken towards reconciliation and building the genuinely shared home place, as set out clearly by Seamus Mallon in his book.

Mr. Tim O'Connor

I thank the Deputy. I am delighted she is drawing the conversation back to Seamus Mallon and his book. I had the privilege of working with him. He took on the task of writing that book at the age of 80. Andy Pollak was commissioned to write it with him but he did much of the writing himself. It was a privilege to walk with him on the journey because one had the feeling it was probably a last will and testament, as it turned out to be. The book was published six or seven months before he died. He did a book tour in the summer of 2019.

Part of the reason I mention that is that this was the sum outcome of a lifetime working on these issues. The view to which he had come towards the end of his life was this concept of the shared home place. I keep going back to the point that at the heart of our conflict or challenge, whichever way one wishes to describe it, are two fundamentally opposing political philosophies that, in absolute terms, cannot be reconciled. That is the truth that operates every day. They are two fundamentally opposing and contested philosophies. Within Northern Ireland in particular, it is expressed, therefore, on a piece of territory. In political and philosophical terms, Northern Ireland wakes up every morning utterly contested. Seamus was trying to grapple directly with that. The answer at which he arrived is that it is not a victory for one philosophy and a defeat for the other. It is actually finding a way we can all genuinely call this place home. The idea of the shared home place is very powerful. What does it mean? It is a challenging concept for everybody. In his book, he wrote that at that late stage in his life he was not sure that 50% plus one would give the kind of agreed Ireland we need. That is a very difficult and challenging concept.

That is the profound question.

Mr. Tim O'Connor

It is a big question. I can understand if people here might ask if that is not moving the goalposts. There is no easy answer to that but I am simply saying it. I am not speaking for Mr. Mallon but my understanding is that his absolute ideal is a united Ireland in the classic sense, but he wants an agreed Ireland even more. These are the very challenging questions ahead for the next generations. I am an old guy at this stage, but these are the questions that will be coming now.

On that point, Mr. O'Connor, the biggest difficulty the committee has is engaging with that other tradition, the unionist tradition. The fact is that of the 18 Members of Parliament elected in the North, ten of them attend our meetings, but the eight who do not are the people we need to talk to most. It is to engage in a manner with which they are comfortable or to find a formula with which they are comfortable and do not feel under threat. We want to share the island with them.

Mr. Tim O'Connor

That goes back to your story, Chairman, about the photograph and the surprises. There is a view there, and I am not speaking for unionism, whereby some people say they do not want even to be part of the conversation because why would they participate in a conversation about their demise politically?

Yes, they have lost their clothes, as it were.

Mr. Tim O'Connor

Yes, exactly. It is very challenging, and I do not have the answer. I have chosen to spend my career trying to work in conflict resolution and trying to find accommodations between the contradictory, and it is very challenging because it is also the case that both aspirations are absolutely valid. It is Article 1, the equal legitimacy of the aspirations. That is a fundamental principle.

It is the engagement.

Mr. Tim O'Connor

Yes.

As demographic change happens and as the views are changing North and South, and there is a new middle ground in the North anyway, it is how we all can engage in a peaceful productive way for everybody. That is our challenge.

Mr. Tim O'Connor

Absolutely. I am very pleased the Deputy brought it up. That is what Seamus Mallon was grappling with then. He came up against what I acknowledge are very difficult issues that get put on the table. What does a shared home place mean? What does it mean in constitutional terms, in institutional terms and so forth?

Everybody has made their contribution to the meeting. Some of the members have left but I suggest we have a photograph taken outside.

Mr. Tim O'Connor

Yes. I thank all the members for this opportunity and for their interest.

It is a great honour to have you here. I learned a great deal. I have amazing respect for the work you and your colleagues have done. Your lifetime in public service is not finished yet. To be a civil servant is a difficult career, as well as to work where you have worked with such success. It is very helpful to us that people like you are dedicated every day of the week to making our country a better place, so well done.

Mr. Tim O'Connor

Thank you, Chairman, and I thank all the members. I really appreciate it.

May I ask one more question?

Of course.

I went back over the records regarding when the Good Friday Agreement was delivered and signed. I looked at what my father said, which was, "This is the first day of the rest of our lives, the first day of the rest of our history". One could really feel the hope. It reminded me as well of the last episode of "Derry Girls". How do we keep that alive? Senator Ó Donnghaile talked about the institutional memory, but how do we keep that hope, to which we must return, to keep people completely invested in the Good Friday Agreement? How do we keep that alive 25 years later?

Mr. Tim O'Connor

That is a great question. It was a beautiful line from the Senator's father. I am an old guy; I will be 70 years old this year. It is up to the Senator's generation. We have to find the way. At least my generation found a way. For one moment hope and history rhymed. We found that moment, as the Senator's father said. Therefore, that means it is possible and can be done. Seamus Mallon also said it is for each generation to write its own history. That means the Senator's generation is going to be, and the Chairman can stop smiling-----

Thank you for those comments. Deputy Smith is smiling as well.

Mr. Tim O'Connor

I suppose it is if the cap fits. We have to find ways. What is really important, if we are wise, is that we must create the structures. It is back to Senator Ó Donnghaile's point about the institutions. It is very important to find the structures to be able to bring people together to have those conversations as well. When people have lived apart, crossing the divide is very difficult. Most people will not do it. That is why convening is a very important thing. Senator McGreehan talked about being a secondary school student listening to and watching everything happening, but it had a big influence on her.

This generation has to find ways to act now. One can say that is politics, and that is true. However, in addition to representative politics, and only a very small number of this generation make it through to the high offices the members of the committee hold, we must have a wider range of people involved in the discourse. I am the optimist and see the glass half full. I think enough people care about this place. At the end of the day, we know it is going to be about finding a way to share it. That is why I believe that victory on one side or the other is not going to be the future for us. We have to find a way. Part of the answer to the Senator's question is that we are going to have to find more ways of giving people the chance to come together to be able to talk about it. Just intervene and create the structure. Leaving it to be organic is probably not going to cut it.

It is structures and implementation, to echo what Mr. O'Connor said earlier about lessons.

We will adjourn.

Mr. Tim O'Connor

Thank you, Chairman, for your courtesy and kindness. I thank everybody for this opportunity, and I offer the members my good wishes. They are the torchbearers now and have to pass it on.

The joint committee adjourned at 3.58 p.m. until 1.30 p.m. on Thursday, 2 June 2022.
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