Tag Archives: Good Friday Agreement

January 20, 2023 · 10:09 pm

Oireachtas Committee on the Implementation of the Good Friday Agreement

19 January, 2023

Statement by Eamonn McKee

Anglo-Irish Division 1986-89

I joined the Department of Foreign Affairs in October 1986 and was assigned to the Political Section of Anglo-Irish Division. The Division had increased its staff numbers to implement the Anglo-Irish Agreement of 1985, notably:

The establishment of the Secretariat of the British Irish Intergovernmental Conference (BIIGC) at Palace Barracks, Belfast. The Secretariat serviced the regular meetings of the Conference and was manned 24-7 by Irish and British officials and staff members.

An expanded team of travelers based out of Iveagh House with specific areas of responsibility derived from the objectives of the Anglo-Irish Agreement. Their reports were vital to the briefings and discussions at the Secretariat and the summit meetings of the BIIGC.

  1. The weekly pattern in the Division entailed the dispatch of travelers early in the week to meet with contacts and to report back. Their reports were compiled on Friday morning along with other reports of contacts and meetings from the embassies in London, Washington, and elsewhere into the weekly brief, known as the ‘Box.’ The Box was copied and circulated to the Government and senior officials on Friday afternoon. That day also saw the return of the team from the Secretariat and the departure of the weekend team to Belfast, under high security.
  1. The background of the Ulster Says No campaign led by the DUP, loyalist protests outside the Secretariat, ongoing paramilitary violence, and allegations of security force collusion and human rights abuses created a sense of purpose and consequence in the Division. Writing speeches and briefing notes, responding to a high level of PQs, attending meetings with official counterparts, NGOs, and groups and party representatives from NI, and responding to acts of violence generated a very full work programme. The SDLP, notably John Hume and Seamus Mallon, were frequent visitors to Dublin. SDLP representatives across Northern Ireland were essential sources of advice and guidance.
  2. As a junior officer, I supported the work of the political traveller, Liam Canniffe. Liam and I worked with members of the SDLP, notably Alastair McDonnell, to develop the Disadvantaged Areas Programme to help direct funds from the International Fund for Ireland to areas most affected by the conflict.
  3. The Department of Foreign Affairs conducted a human resource strategy that ensured that officers who were assigned to Anglo-Irish Division were rotated to related postings (Embassy London and Missions in the United States) and back to the Division on return to HQ. This developed a cadre of officers who had in-depth knowledge of, as well as a range of contacts relating to, the key issues in the peace process. This was an important factor in the negotiations of the GFA and the long process of its implementation.
  4. Following the pattern established by the Department, I was posted as Vice-Consul General Boston in August 1989. I was then transferred to the Embassy Washington in January 1990.
    1990-1996
  5. I worked directly with the Political Director at the Embassy Washington, Brendan Scannell. Early tasks included countering Ancient Order of Hibernia critiques of the International Fund for Ireland, the establishment of a funding scheme for Irish emigrant groups in the US, and support for the passage of legislation creating the Morrison visa programme which solved the problem at that time of the undocumented Irish. The Embassy’s relationship with Senator Kennedy, the Speakers O’Neill and Foley, the Congressional Friends of Ireland and related staffers was particularly strong and productive on issues related to Northern Ireland but also on all other issues, from visas to agricultural regulations.
  6. Ambassador Dermot Gallagher had opened lines of communication with Bill Clinton and the Clinton-Gore campaign. At the request of Senator Kennedy’s office, which was providing advice to Clinton-Gore on foreign policy and policy in relation to Northern Ireland, I wrote the draft text for the Clinton-Gore letter on Northern Ireland. Clinton’s presidency transformed the role of the White House with regard to the peace process and gave the Embassy unparalleled access. Brendan Scannell played a key role in this, having developed key contacts from his time as Consulate General in Boston. The Saint Patrick’s Day receptions at the White House were invaluable opportunities for networking and validating the significance of the Peace Process.

Anglo-Irish Division 1996-1999

  1. I returned to Anglo-Irish Division at the request of its then Director, Sean Ó hUigínn, to act as the traveller for the Justice and Security Section. Sean had been the key architect, along with Taoiseach Albert Reynolds, of the Downing Street Declaration, one of the breakthrough documents of the peace process leading to the 1994 ceasefires. This breakthrough built on the courageous outreach of John Hume in the Hume-Adams talks. Issues on my desk included parades (the Government’s submission to the North Commission), Bloody Sunday (the Irish Government’s Assessment of the New Material), policing, administration of justice, use of lethal force by the security forces, and allegations of collusion. I worked closely with a number of key contacts, including Alex Attwood of the SDLP, Don Mullan, Martin O’Brien and the Committee on the Administration of Justice, Jane Winter of British Irish Rights Watch, Brendan McAllister of Mediation Northern Ireland, Resident groups in Belfast, Garvaghy Road, Dunloy, journalists, solicitors, and republican contacts. I travelled extensively, more or less weekly, filing reports for the Box and regularly briefing the Secretariat on current issues and participating in meetings there with NIO officials. I acted as the lead official for the proximity talks on Drumcree 1997-1998. My opposite number was Jonathan Powell, Prime Minister Blair’s Chief of Staff.
  2. In the run-up to the negotiations for the GFA, the new Director of Anglo-Irish Division, Dermot Gallagher, formed the Talks Team. I was a member of that team with particular responsibility for policing, justice and security normalisation. Martin Mansergh worked on the new proposed text for Articles 2 and 3 and I sent him a paper recommending the addition of ‘entitlement’ to the ‘birth right.’ By the time I arrived at Castle Complex, draft text had been agreed to on the policing section of the GFA. I invited Seamus Mallon and Alex Attwood to review it, and they confirmed my concerns. Thereafter I was the lead official negotiating new text with the NIO team. The NIO were focused on policing, that which continued to be effective, whereas I was focused on a future policing service that in its composition and ethos reflected society. Both objectives were essential. This creative tension produced hard bargaining, but a very good outcome regarding the terms of reference for what would become the Patten Commission’s recommendations. I extracted some final concessions at our last negotiation session unaware that PM Blair had instructed his officials that all text be finalised with the exception of the language around the North-South bodies.
  3. Overall, the Patten Commission did an excellent job through extensive consultations and a comprehensive set of recommendations that adhered closely to the terms of reference. Patten himself made this clear on the publication of his report when some unionists expressed surprise at the outcome of the Commission’s work. The post-conflict transition in the security sector is one of the most difficult to achieve and sustain in any peace process. In the formation of the Patten Commission, I insisted on the inclusion of Professor Peter Lynch. I understand that he made a significant contribution that helped eliminate the use of plastic baton rounds. The PSNI is an outstanding example of a successful security sector reform process.
  4. I would like to pay tribute to Alex Attwood and Brian Barrington who helped steer the whole implementation of the Patten Recommendations and the establishment of the Policing Board with a forensic focus and determination. For example, Alex played a particularly crucial role in resolving the issue of the Policing Board’s access to sensitive material involving national security on matters relevant to the Authority and its credibility. As with the Finucane case, the SDLP were determined to ensure that allegations of state collusion in the use of lethal force could not and would not be outside the mechanisms for accountability that it endorsed.
  5. Another crucial factor in the success of the policing transformation was the creation of the Oversight Commission led by former New York police officer John Considine and the Office of the Police Ombudsman under Dame Nuala O’Loan. The Oversight Commission ensured that the recommendations of the Patten Commission were fully implemented and operational on the ground. This provided a vital assurance for the acceptance of the PSNI and the eventual decommissioning of paramilitary weapons.

Consulate General New York, 1999-2001
I was assigned as Press Officer to the Consulate General in New York and returned to HQ in December 2001.

Anglo-Irish Division, 2002-2004
I was again assigned to Anglo-Irish, this time as head of the Justice and Security Section.

  1. During the negotiations of the GFA, I learned that it had been agreed that while policing would have a full independent commission, the justice system would be reviewed only. This reflected a strong belief in the NIO and among Unionists that the justice system had continued to operate throughout the conflict and did not require fundamental reform. However, the review process was not without its problems. When I returned in 2002, I learned from contacts that the Criminal Justice Act, which gave effect to the recommendations of the Review, fell short of requirements, notably on judicial appointments. In anticipation of another round of talks to advance the implement of the GFA and secure the decommissioning of paramilitary weapons, I convened talks involving the SDLP, led by Alex Attwood, and Sinn Féin, led by Gerry Kelly, at the Wellington Park hotel to agree a common agenda for amendments to the Act. These proposed changes became part of the negotiations convened at Hillsborough in March 2003. These commitments, including to a new Act, were published in a Joint Declaration by the British and Irish Governments in April 2003.
  2. I was also involved in secret talks at Farmleigh with British security officials on security normalisation. This was the culmination of many years of talks about the pace of normalisation. For example, the Chief Constable regarded the Observation Towers in South Armagh as essential to the safety of his officers where locals detested them as unwarranted intrusions. They had continued in operation for many years after the signing of the GFA. Seamus Mallon with mordant humour regarded them as the bane of his life. The eventual dismantling of the Towers and other military installations were seen as tangible indications of the progress of the peace process.
  3. Arising from the Weston Park Agreement and the SDLP’s endorsement of the new policing arrangements, the British and Irish Governments agreed to appoint a judge of international standing to investigate allegations of collusion in six controversial cases, including the murder of Pat Finucane. The judge was to make a recommendation on whether any or all of these cases merited a public inquiry. There was considerable back and forth between Dublin and London as to the appointee7. I interviewed and recommended Judge Peter Cory of the Supreme Court of Canada. This was endorsed by the British Government. Judge Cory did an outstanding job with speed and great integrity. His recommendation for a public inquiry into the murder of Pat Finucane has yet to be implemented.

Irish Aid, UN Director, Director Conflict Resolution Unit, 2004-2009

In 2005 I was asked by the Secretary General Dermot Gallagher, acting at the request of the Minister, Dermot Ahern T.D., to establish a conflict resolution unit to share the lessons of the peace process. We launched a number of initiatives including a National Action Plan on UNSC 1325 Women, Peace and Security, and projects in East Timor, Liberia, and Sierra Leone. In 2009 I was appointed as Ambassador to the Republic of Korea and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.
 

2013 to the present
In 2013 I was appointed Ambassador to Israel. In 2015 I returned to HQ as Director General for Trade. In 2020 I was appointed as Ambassador to Canada, Jamaica and The Bahamas.

Eamonn McKee
Ambassador of Ireland, Ottawa
15 January 2022

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January 1, 2023 · 8:34 pm

The Good Friday Agreement Twenty-five years on: The Summer of 1998 and the Long Road to Peace

Travelers were officials working in Anglo-Irish Division who would weekly travel north to meet contacts, learn what was going on, report back and feed into intergovernmental discussions. Memory jog seeing my NI reports surface in the released state papers.[1] The parades issue was my beat as a traveler.  It pitched NI into new levels of heightened social tensions with dire potential.

Flashpoints combusted when Orange Lodges insisted on marching through nationalist areas. Places like the Lower Ormeau Road in south Belfast and the small village of Dunloy in the heart of Orange country in Antrim.  Drumcree in Armagh, the birthplace of Orangism, emerged as the leading battle of wills. 

Portadown Orange Lodge No. 1 held a traditional church service at Drumcree on the Sunday before the Twelfth of July, the annual celebration of King William of Orange’s victory over King James at the Battle of the Boyne in 1691.  The traditional route took them along the Garvaghy Road, a nationalist housing estate on the edge of the predominantly loyalist Portadown. For the Twelfth, Portadown centre would be festooned with red, white and blue bunting, curb stones similarly painted, and triumphal arches erected across the street depicting King Billy astride a white horse.

Why now, with the ceasefires in place? As my contact and friend Brendan McAllister of Mediation Northern Ireland explained to me, the parades issue emerged after the paramilitary ceasefires as the new vehicle for the cross-community divisions that lay at the heart of the conflict.  The struggle between the paramilitaries and the security forces had acted as a default, a kind of lethal Punch and Judy show between ‘professionals’ on both sides, paramilitaries and the security forces.[2] 

The Orange Lodges insisted that they had the right to march ‘the Queen’s highways.’  Resident groups resisted this, saying they should not be locked in their homes with the security forces aiding a sectarian and triumphal demonstration. Each side saw in this a contest about their place in society, their rights, and the esteem of their identity.

The British Government appointed the North Commission to review parades and marches.  It reported that “The dispute in the summer of 1996 between the Loyal Orders and Nationalist residents groups, which required major intervention by the police under the public order legislation, brought Northern Ireland close to anarchy.”[3] Since the issue was on my desk, I drafted the Government’s response to the North Review.  It appeared from my research that while the right to assembly was a well-established one in many jurisdictions, there was no right to decide the route to that assembly.  Our submission argued that each parade dispute be subjected to arbitration based on the rule of law to adjudicate between those who insisted on marching and those who resisted such marches. The Director General, Sean Ó hUigínn, reviewed, honed and approved the draft. We traveled to meet the North Review to discuss the submission, Sean leading the delegation and responding to their questions with his eloquence and deep intellect. He left satisfied with the outcome. The North Review recommended the establishment of a Parades Commission operating under a new Public Processions (NI) Act 1998.[4] 

Tensions spilled over again in July 1997 as the Garvaghy Residents were cleared off their streets by the RUC on the night before the Orange parade. Riots broke out across the North.  The Minister, Ray Burke, called me to his office and instructed me to meet the residents. From the rise above Newry town, an eerie sight of plumes of black smoke rose across the North.

With the signing of the Good Friday Agreement in April 1998, the Drumcree march in July became a test case.  The newly established Parades Commission had ruled against the parade going via the Garvaghy Road. Loyalists and Orangemen gathered outside the church at Drumcree.  Nationalist supporters flooded into the Garvaghy Road.  The British Army dug a ditch and put up barbed wire in between both groups. There was something primal about the carnival of menace, jeering, fireworks and hatred from Drumcree hill. Everything seemed to be on the line: rights, law and order, the authority of the Parades Commission, the future.

In an attempt to head off the confrontation, ‘proximity talks’ were convened.  The Orange Order refused to meet directly with the Garvaghy Residents, seeing in this an admission that the Residents had a say in public order.  I was with them as the Government’s representative.  Their legal advisor was Rosemary Nelson from nearby Lurgan. I knew Rosemary from previous cases that we had raised through the Secretariat of the Intergovernmental Conference.  We talked a lot about the North in the longueurs of the proximity talks, about the tensions of living there, of the relief she felt whenever she crossed the border south. There wasn’t much for me to do but observe, check with contacts, make sure no untoward or unacceptable initiatives made matters worse, and keep Dublin closely informed. Under the leadership of the new DG of Anglo-Irish, Dermot Gallagher, senior officials in Dublin, Belfast and London were actively engaged and monitoring developments, advising the Taoiseach Bertie Ahern as developments unfolded. I’m sure the lines between Ahern and Blair were busy. Up north, as a mediator trusted by all sides including leading churchmen on both sides, Brendan McAllister was trying his best to cajole a solution. My opposite number was Jonathan Powell, Tony Blair’s chief of staff.  Jonathan too tried his best to negotiate a solution as he shuttled between Portadown Orange Lodge No 1 and the Garvaghy Road Residents. 

Then a horrific incident changed the atmosphere. Jason, Mark and Richard Quinn, three young boys, died in a UVF firebomb attack on their home in Ballymoney on July 12th. Widespread condemnation was immediate, including from some very courageous Protestant clergymen who spoke out from the pulpits.  A new consensus coalesced, enough was enough. Tensions eased, the Parades Commission’s decision was upheld. Garvaghy Road did not see an Orange Parade.

The Good Friday Agreement faced another dreadful test a month later.  On August 15th the Real IRA exploded a bomb in Omagh, killing 29 and including more than 200.  It was the worst incident of the Troubles in Northern Ireland, surpassed in lethality only by the Dublin Monaghan bombings in 1974 that killed 33 and injured more than 300. The consensus hardened that such murderous violence had to be consigned to the past, that the GFA was the future. 

In that summer of 1998, it was as if the Agreement, the shield of good intentions and high ambitions, made of words and ink, blessed by the people’s endorsement North and South, was being tested by the swords and dragons of Northern Ireland.  

Though Northern Ireland’s swordsmen and dragons died hard, the shield stood.  There would be other killings, for sure. In March 1999, Rosemary Nelson was killed when a bomb exploded under her car.  It was claimed by a loyalist group.  Yet peace had the upper hand and the inclination to use of violence ebbed.  Even the means to carry it out were tackled, led by the Independent International Commission on Decommissioning.  Canada’s General John de Chastelain played a key role in this along with its other members.  I had never been sure that decommissioning had been feasible.  In the wake of the GFA, a republican contact in Derry had thrown a live round across a table at me, said take it to Dublin and “tell them that’s the only f—king decommissioning they’re going to see.” It was a stubborn issue that took years to unlock but that too was achieved. As the new policing represented by the PSNI took hold, the prize of decommissioning all paramilitary weapons was finally won. The monopoly on the use of violence was returned to the state.

Twenty-five years on, the signing of the Good Friday Agreement reminds us of what we left behind: killing and hatred, a decent future frustrated by the claims of the past. Finding peace in Northern Ireland had been a long road: the Sunningdale Agreement 1973-74, the Haughey-Thatcher summits in the early 1980s, the Anglo-Irish Agreement 1985, the Hume-Adams talks, the paramilitary ceases fires in 1994 and 1997, the GFA in 1998 and the twenty-nine subsequent agreements to implement it.  Through infinite hours of talks, meetings and negotiations, peace came dropping slow.

Great leaders emerged who took courageous decisions: Hume, Mallon, Haughey, Thatcher, FitzGerald, Spring, Major, Reynolds, Adams, McGuinness, Trimble, Robinson, Bruton, McAleese, Paisely (eventually) and Blair.  Countless others included the women of the Peace Movement like Mairead Corrigan and later leaders of the Women’s Coalition like Monica McWilliams and Pearl Sagar.  People working in NGOs and community groups at interfaces, risking vilification and physical violence to inch forward toleration.

Now the black swan of Brexit calls again for leadership of a very high order, provided on the Irish side by a new political generation. Like generations of peace makers of all kinds, as officials we were sustained by a ‘duty of hope’, committed to the process, always working toward a better future.  Here’s to more progress in 2023.

Eamonn

Ottawa

1 January 2023

[1] https://www.irishtimes.com/news/politics/pithy-and-precise-the-post-it-notes-from-bruton-s-era-1.4765531

[2] Security forces as a term covers many organizations, including RUC, its Special Branch which was regarded as a force within a force, the British Army and a host of covert intelligence agencies, including MI5 and the British Army’s Force Research Unit.

[3] https://cain.ulster.ac.uk/issues/parade/docs/north97sum.pdf

[4] http://www.paradescommission.org/

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March 30, 2018 · 1:21 pm

The Long Road to the Good Friday Agreement – A Day at the Royal Irish Academy

Twenty years ago, a group of political leaders supported by officials convened at Castle Complex, Stormont Castle, to negotiate an agreement.  It was an intense and concentrated effort, the culmination of decades of work.  There was no certainty of outcome and yet in the end they came to an agreement.  By any measure it was an historic one.

The anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement is being marked in a number of ways with events, discussions and even publications.  As part of this recognition, the Royal Irish Academy, inspired by Prof. Mary Daly, and working with the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, convened a one-day conference on 21 March whose theme was “The Road to the Good Friday Agreement.”  Its focus was on the role of Irish officials who had worked on the Northern Ireland peace process.  Apart from a few key officials from the Departments of the Taoiseach and Justice, they were my colleagues from the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade: since the eruption of violence in 1969 my Department led on Northern Ireland. When the conflict broke out, we had one official on the job.  By the time of the Anglo-Irish Agreement in 1985 we had a strong Division at Headquarters, a group of travellers active in Northern Ireland gathering views and information, experienced officials rotated through our embassies in London and Washington and the consulate in New York, and a team manning the Maryfield Secretariat twenty-four-seven.

The panellists were officials who had by now retired; in other words most of those involved in the peace process at senior official level up to the GFA.  In fact myself and one other DFAT colleague, Rory Montgomery, are the only two who were on the GFA Talks Team and still in service.  There’s apparently one official left in the British system who worked closely on the peace process (it shows).  The discussion was held under Chatham House rules and so I can write about it without attribution.

Most of the chief officials from the early 1980s onwards were at the RIA, in good fettle, impressive in their intellectual heft, amusing in their telling anecdotes, and sagacious about what they were up to in trying to tame history and bring about a secure peace and resilient settlement: Michael Lillis, Sean Donlon, Noel Dorr, Sean O hUigínn, Martin Mansergh, Richard Ryan, Ted Smyth, Tim Dalton, Paddy Teahon, Tim O’Connor, David Donoghue and Daithí Ó Ceallaigh.  It was interesting to savour their individual approaches which spoke to their character and talents; gnarly world experience, impish Machiavellian insight into human behaviour, almost scientific parsing of factors, awareness of history, capacity to influence through charm and diplomacy, diligent officialdom and note taking, shamanistic authority and logical perspicacity.  And one should note too that generations of officials in Anglo-Irish Division served their part in the peace process at all levels, from clerical to senior levels, each in their own way adding to the collective push towards peace.

The panels at the Conference were organised according to the broad chronology of the process.  The failure of Sunningdale and the importance of Haughey’s 1980 tea-pot summit with Thatcher were rightly acknowledged as key milestones.  There was much insight on the negotiation and operation of the 1985 Anglo-Irish Agreement, and some drama too concerning the Irish team (officials, clerical support, drivers, and housekeeping staff) working at the Maryfield Secretariat outside Belfast and besieged by anti-agreement unionists.  These brave people had their lives threatened for working there.   The role of RUC officers assigned to protect them, many of whom along with their families had to be rehoused for security reasons as a result, was also acknowledged.  When I joined the Department in 1986 I was assigned to Anglo-Irish Division and recall vividly the buzz on Friday as the team at Maryfield changed for the weekend, the anxious checking on logistics to ensure safe passage north.

The outsized role of John Hume featured in the RIA discussions, notably his understanding that both the EU and US could play critical roles in bringing peace.  He was “a master strategist of the first order” as one panellist put it.  Hume’s achievement in the US was to recast the issue of Northern Ireland in a way that could be embraced by Irish American Congressmen hitherto steeped in a more traditional nationalist view that the solution to Northern Ireland’s problems was unity.  It is impossible now to imagine a peace process without the Hume-Adams dialogue, a courageous and risky act by Hume for which he paid a heavy price.

Albert Reynolds was extolled for his laser focus on making progress over process, an insistence that he knowingly deployed aggressively, particularly in London.  To make progress, the killing had to stop and that was the task he had set himself.  His approach was resisted, even resented, but ultimately acknowledged by the British side as creating the breakthrough from conflict to peace.

That breakthrough took the form of the Downing Street Declaration, the seminal document of the peace process, a masterpiece of intellectual architecture that resolved the riddle of self-determination that lay at the root of partition and of the conflict.  It laid the groundwork for the Good Friday Agreement itself, brought to a deal by the unflagging determination of Bertie Ahern and Tony Blair that the moment had to be seized, that this rendezvous with history would be met.

The most notable absence from the day was Dermot Gallagher, one of three key senior civil servants on the Irish side most responsible for the peace process at the official level, advising and guiding the political level of Taoisigh, Prime Ministers, Ministers, and political leaders.  He sadly passed away last year.  Along with a senior official from the Department of the Taoiseach, Paddy Teahon, and another from the Department of Justice, Tim Dalton, this troika of officials played the leadership role at official level.  Apart from his inexhaustible energy and leadership, Dermot created the DFAT Talks Team that negotiated the various elements of the GFA text.  That was why I was there, assigned to negotiate with my opposite numbers at the NIO (the famed ‘securocrats’) on policing, justice and security issues.

The outcome of that agenda was determined in my view by the thinking of the SDLP, where Seamus Mallon and Alex Attwood acted as my guides and arbiters of whether the texts met the threshold for real and essential transformation in this critical area.  They grasped that it was in the relationship between the citizen and the justice system that the State earns its authority. It was where Northern Ireland had lost its authority with the nationalist community.  As in so many elements of the Good Friday Agreement, Mallon was a totemic figure in the negotiations, an unerring chancellor to whom we officials turned not just for guidance but for critical interventions. Indeed the SDLP as a whole was the conscience of the GFA.

The Women’s Coalition were represented at the RIA and only right too because they made a huge and largely invisible contribution to the negotiation process and outcome, ensuring that everyone moved in concert and that no one’s concerns were not addressed.  As a result most everyone at Castle Complex felt an ownership of the final document. Mo Mowlam, the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, was also recognised as a great energising force at the talks, her humour and directness used as battering rams against personal conceits and misplaced stubbornness when occasion demanded.

I was not sure I’d spend the whole day at Academy House.  Despite the comforting allure of elegant classicism and bookish cosiness, it was a long programme and a long day.  Yet I could not quite pull myself away.  The contributions made for a day rich in insights and overviews, an entertaining ricochet through a complex palace of memory.  I resist the temptation to inventory my take on those insights and contributions but here’s three things that stand out for me.

The first is that no one understands the peace process.  That is to say, no one individual has all the pieces.  We each did what we did at a particular time, with a particular function, in a given context,  providing continuity and adding incrementally by our efforts one more piece to the overall edifice.  I’d hazard even that of the august panellists perhaps two had the greatest grasp of what it was really about.  The peace process was so long-term and so complex that I suspect even they learned something on the day and, knowing both of them, will continue to learn more to the day they die.

What held all our efforts together over the decades, even with our individual limitations of perspective and talent, was a deep sense of the underlying plan, the entity that we were collectively trying to create.  Like ants building a colony, we took our turn knowing that the structure had to have power-sharing, had to have a north-south dimension, had to have parity of esteem, had to be rights-based, had to have a police service that in its ethos and composition reflected the society, and had to have accountability and the rule of law.

All of this had its roots in constitutional nationalism, even constitutional republicanism, brought to a potent cogency by Hume and thinkers in the SDLP who insisted that the problem was not territory or jurisdiction – so often Dublin’s default starting place – but the relationship between the people and the traditions from which they took their identity and mores.

In striving toward this end, we as officials and travellers were operating in an environment of many actors, from the security forces, intelligence services and paramilitaries (all engaged in the dark arts and their own sub-agendas not to mention sub-economies), officials, and political parties to a host of other groups like the Churches, civil society, academics, business figures, resident associations and community leaders who played a role in the peace process at its widest definition (as it should be considered and not, in other words, as “a few good men in a room”, a reductio ad absurdum I once heard from an official).

There were, too, many other factors that bulwarked the drive to peace that could not feature in a mere day’s discussion of what we as officials were doing.  There was the work of ministers and officials through the Anglo-Irish Intergovernmental Conference from 1985 onwards that addressed many of the causes of conflict and whose resolution over the years lessened the agenda for the GFA.  Another was the investment and efforts of the International Fund for Ireland and the Special EU Peace Building Programme addressing the social and economic effects of conflict and insisting that it be done through cross-community cooperation.  All reached out across the community divide to ease tensions and build trust.  Irish Government pressure to set aside Widgery and establish a new inquiry into Bloody Sunday created its own form of confidence building.  There were a succession of foreign statesmen, officials, former military figures and even senior judicial figures (like Judge Cory) who were drafted in to help at critical times, most notably Senator Mitchell. Over the years a large coterie of people made their contribution at a critical time.

The second thing that I took away – not something new to me but more deeply etched by the discussion – was the massive investment by the Irish Government in outreach and diplomacy to create the conditions for the success of the negotiations and the outcome of the GFA.  At its heart were Haughey, FitzGerald, Reynolds, and Ahern (those associated with breakthrough agreements but all Taoisigh played a part), accompanied by successive generations of Ministers and officials, outreaching to Prime Ministers (Thatcher, Major, and Blair) and backbenchers in Britain; to Presidents (notably Reagan, Carter and Clinton) and Congressmen in the US (the inexhaustible goodwill of Ted Kennedy and Tip O’Neill, of  course, but many others); to key interlocutors in Europe, and leaders in Northern Ireland from the political chieftains to the street heroes of peace building.

It was a relentless and painstaking effort over decades that brooked no faltering, no matter the frustrations and obstructions.  There were dark days in my time in Anglo-Irish Division when shattering news arrived; the Enniskillen bombing in 1987 and the assasination of Pat Finucane in 1989 stand out in my memory as events that confounded and then confirmed the need to search for peace.  I worked on a variety of cases, including Bloody Sunday, Dublin-Monaghan, Pat Finucane, Sean Brownand, and through the parades issue, came to know Rosemary Nelson well, murdered in 1999.

There was great ingenuity too used to break impasses.  Recall, for example, the Forum elections and the clever list system devised to allow smaller parties involving the loyalist community and the Women’s Coalition to be participants and make their vital contribution.  Think too of the eruption of the parades issue after the 1994 ceasefire and the creation of the Parades Commission to resolve it.

Father Alec Reid’s role and that whole seam of engagement with Sinn Féin and the IRA to broker the ceasefires was an effort without which the paradigm shift to peace could not have been achieved.  The British Army itself would have views of their own on this dimension.  Adams and McGuinness themselves undertook personal risks to advance the agenda of peace in the face of deep republican anxiety about the implications of surrendering the Armalite for the ballot box.

Ultimately it was this investment in influence in so many quarters that ensured that the people who had to do the deal that Good Friday were going to be there and do it, do it by making history.

My memory of the final two days of the 1998 negotiation is fragmentary but those fragments are clear; the texts on my remit having been agreed, trying to get some sleep in a chair as the leading politicians and officials tried to seal the deal; the rumours of trouble about decommissioning; and the fall of snow on that fateful morning that seemed ineffably meaningful.

Once the deal was done, the day was a blur of activity, relief, joy, a sense of huge accomplishment.  That night we packed into the Government jet for the short flight back to Dublin.  Our hearts and our heads told us that something historic was achieved, even if we knew too that implementation of the Agreement – complex, delicate, challenging, comprehensive – would take herculean energy and determination.  So it would prove.  The flight was barely long enough to guzzle a stiff gin and tonic before the lights of Dublin twinkled in the velvety blackness.  Somewhere down there my wife and young family hadn’t seen me for a while.

If all of these efforts had one common spur it was the victims of violence and their relatives.  As travellers we often dealt directly with them, tried to empathise with their pain and loss, tried to find some way to bring them solace through truth and justice, or maybe truth or justice, or maybe just listening.  Most of the time we met them up North but often we would accompany them to Government buildings to meet the Taoiseach of the day who would likewise try somehow to use our influence to help them.

As part of the peace process, we tried different ways to deal with the past, never successfully in any comprehensive way but always earnestly.  Sometimes we made progress but other times not; I found the Finucane case particularly recalcitrant. Poignantly for many relatives the most important thing for them is the entry concerning their lost loved ones in the magnificent Lost Lives, the inventory of the 3,636 people who died during the Troubles.

Lost Lives is a great whispering tome that should grace every desk of every politician and official who has any responsibility for maintaining the Good Friday Agreement, particularly any artful dodgers of history tempted to cut loose from facts or personal responsibility; and not as a coy prop but as volume to be consulted on occasion to remind of the price of conflict, of failure.

I said that there were three things I took away from the RIA Conference.  The third is again not novel but was reinforced by the day’s journey back through history and those parts of my past that intersected with the peace process.  It is that the GFA contains all that Ireland could and did bring to the process; the commitment to unity by consent, the need to respect diversity, the foundation of rights and rule of law, the North-South dimension and the East-West relationship, and the overarching imperative for contemporary concord to triumph over the complexities and antagonisms of our past.

As the medieval cartographers would have it, beyond the GFA’s map of civility and principles, there be dragons.  They have been sleeping for decades now. The incremental hum of peace building as barriers have fallen and attitudes soften with time’s passing keeps them quiet. We have a long way to go on reconciliation,  make no mistake about that.  But stray off this map back into old forests and those dragons will stir.  Today’s backdrop to the anniversary of the GFA is of course not triumph but anxiety.  It was not part of the discussions at the RIA but Brexit loomed large, not quite a sword of Damocles, more perhaps a lance wielded by errant knights who in their quixotic quest to recreate an illusion of Britain’s glorius past threaten those sleeping dragons.

Happy Easter

Eamonn

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November 23, 2014 · 12:46 pm

Clever but not Wise: British Interests and Irish Aspirations

Review of Ronan Fanning’s Fatal Path, British Government and Irish Revolution 1910-1922

The centenary of Irish commemorations is well and truly underway. If you are interested in Irish history you have many treats in store, from the ceremonies two years hence to mark the anniversary of the 1916 Rising and all that flowed from that seminal event, to the many new histories and reassessments being published about this period.

A great place to start, or continue, is to spend some comfortable hours reading Ronan Fanning’s Fatal Path, British Government and Irish Revolution 1910-1922 (faber and faber, 2013). I have an interest to declare in that Ronan was my history professor at UCD and subsequently advisor on my Ph.D. His book echoes with what I recall as his immense interest in how the interactions of people created the events, negotiations and outcomes and that shaped our history. In class he would positively thrill to the telling anecdote or incident that revealed the human side of history making. That humanising quality shines through in this volume. His deft sketches of the characters involved – British and Irish – give enough to enliven them and their relationships with each other without unduly pausing the rush of narrative.

And it is a rush, a–hard-to-put-down story of the birth of our country. A lifetime steeped in this story, notably from the perspective of Anglo-Irish diplomacy, allows Fanning mastery of the material both original and secondary. It is a master class in selection and compression.

Fanning’s magnum opus is of course his history of the Department of Finance. Concerned that he alone would see many of the files made available to him for his research, Fanning included in the volume much original material, making it quite a hefty tome, an essential guide to one of the key stakeholders in Ireland’s story, but ultimately an unwieldy product. (As it turned out, the archives would eventually be released.)

In contrast, one of the strengths of the Fatal Path is the ruthlessness with which Fanning uncovers and directs his story. Again and again he underscores, as if etching the point in disapproving red, that the primary British interest lay in sorting out the Ulster unionists first, and only then dealing with the wearisome business of the perennial Irish question. The British Government adopt partition as the unavoidable outcome of, and solution to the Irish problem just as soon as the Ulster unionists and their Tory party allies realise there is no stopping home rule once the Great War is brought to a conclusion.

The only issue on which the Ulster unionists were not accommodated was their own status in relation to the rest of Britain. They would have preferred simple integration but London, ever mindful of Washington’s disapproving eye, felt it had no choice but to make a virtue of granting self-determination (within the Empire of course) to the whole of Ireland even if it was to be bifurcated between two local parliaments.

The converse of Fanning’s analysis holds true for nationalists and if he hovers a red pen over them it is for their unwillingness to accept what was staring them in the face – the implacable hostility of the Unionists to home rule and any accommodation within an autonomous Ireland. If London came to the conclusion that the fundamental question was how to sort out the Ulster unionists, nationalists held to the contrary view that it was no such thing, that it was merely internal housekeeping to be decided after national self-determination was granted.

There was of course nothing to gain for nationalists to concede the point of unionist implacability, but it left them open to the accusation of willful delusion. If nationalists could claim self-determination, why couldn’t the Ulster unionists do the same? Why indeed did nationalists find the UVF so inspiring? There is no gainsaying the point that the formation of the UVF directly inspired the formation of the Irish Volunteer movement and all that that portended for the future course of Anglo-Irish relations.

Fanning’s interest is the perspective from London and much of his narrative therefore is drawn from British documents and the records of British officials involved. Events shaping things on the ground in Ireland – the 1916 Rising, the impact of the prospect of conscription, bloody incidents of insurrection and counter-insurgency – come as reports from a distant land in this telling. Their value for Fanning’s purposes is how they shaped the thoughts of the members of the cabinet and their advisors who are charged with calculating and politicking their way toward a negotiated outcome, while managing to keep the coalition government intact.

No greater politician, nor greater schemer, occupies this story than David Lloyd George, and Fanning rightly accords him pride of place as the little dynamo of diplomacy and intrigue, fixated on his twin objectives of staying in power as Prime Minister and inexorably maneuvering to solve the ‘Irish question’.

Perhaps the single most consequential question for Ireland was why Eamon de Valera did not lead the delegation to London for the fateful negotiations that would lead to the Treaty. Again Fanning deftly sculpts his prose to capture the likely factors and miscalculations at play. According to Fatal Path, it was a combination of calculation and miscalculation. Of this fateful decision Fanning writes:

“De Valera knew from his own talks with Lloyd George in July of the extreme difficulty of the negotiations that lay ahead. He knew, too, that any Irish negotiating team would be callow and inexperienced compared to their British counterparts, who would also enjoy the advantage of playing at home. In theory, his strategy of denying finality to what might happen in Downing Street by insisting that that final decision be taken in Dublin seemed shrewd. In practice it was fatally flawed because of the inherent contradiction between the plenipotentiary status of the delegates and their agreement to sign nothing in London that had not been endorsed by the Dáil cabinet in Dublin. First, because de Valera failed adequately to explain his reasoning to the plenipotentiaries before the talks began; the corollary was that it never occurred to de Valera that the ultimate decision about an agreement might be made in London and not in Dublin. Second, because the bonding that took place between the plenipotentiaries on their wearying journeys by sea and rail and during their long hours in London silently corroded de Valera’s authority with consequences that proved disastrous.”

I’ve always wondered about this decision myself. (Indeed, we discussed it in depth in Fanning’s tutorials as he threw the imponderables of the vexed episode at our callow minds: I doubt we ever gave the man an original thought on it.) De Valera once said that his greatest regret was not arresting the delegation on arrival in Dublin Treaty in hand. They had defied him, the elected President, in concluding terms on the most profound issue of independence, the holy grail of eight hundred years of struggle.

Yet this was surely hyperbole on de Valera’s part, offered in hindsight and with a fair degree of awareness that he himself had contributed to the tragic events that followed the Treaty debates. De Valera had received regular reports from the delegates, including Collins and Griffith. As Fanning notes, the delegates themselves plied their weary way between London and Dublin at intervals. De Valera himself had discussed the territory of the deal with Lloyd George previously. Above all, as Fanning points out, the outlines of the deal were pregnant in the very acceptance of the invitation to talks.

One might usefully parse Fanning’s use of the term ‘disastrous’ on two counts. One because it presumes that something substantially more was on offer than the delegates secured; and two because part of the disastrous effect of the Treaty was generated by de Valera’s own reaction to and ultimate rejection of it, a response that added to the fateful momentum toward civil war.

Fanning’s analytical stare, his focus on the essential, brooks no patience with those who might quibble or equivocate, mitigate or excuse the performance of the Irish delegates; his portrait of the Irish delegates, and indeed their performance when pitted against their British counterparts, is so candid as to verge on the merciless. They arrived without a written text of their own, a disastrous ceding of advantage to the British side. In place of their chief navigator, de Valera, Arthur Griffith assumed effective leadership, his sense of honor exploited by Lloyd George at the critical hour. They had limited instructions and no worked out fall-back positions or creative proposals about the critical issues surrounding partition – its territorial extent, its relationship with the parliament-to-be in Dublin, protections for Catholics within unionist jurisdiction, not even for the mechanisms for registering local opinion in the event of a border plebiscite. (For all of these failures, de Valera must shoulder responsibility too.)

Ranged against them were some of the finest political and legal minds of the British Empire, led by a political mastermind in Lloyd George who had just spent much of the previous year honing his skills as he negotiated the postwar peace in Europe.

Fanning’s brisk account of the Anglo-Irish negotiations is fascinating and compelling. Even as he recounts the negotiations and Lloyd George’s mastery of them, he cuts back again and again to the fundamentals – that a deal on the Irish question was built on an unwavering commitment to the Ulster unionists. There appears for a time some tussle over the question of the crown and unity i.e. that the nationalist side believed a fair outcome included some semblance of unity in exchange for acceptance of the Crown and Empire. The logic of their argument was impeccable. If they were not getting unity, why accept anything less than a republic for the twenty-six counties; conversely for a semblance of unity they would acquiesce in a semblance of loyalty.

Logic does not however dictate outcomes in power politics, however, and the forces facing the delegates were overpowering – the impregnable position of the Ulster unionists, the power and influence of their allies, the utter dependence of Lloyd George on the Tories for his continuation as Prime Minister. By the time the delegates were pleading for fairness, Lloyd George knew he had them where he wanted them and the deal in the bag; all that remained was for them to sign before departure, which he accomplished with a magician’s flare.

Of Lloyd George’s triumph, Fanning quotes from the diary of Tom Jones, a key Whitehall official on Irish affairs, to devastating effect: ‘In essentials we have given nothing that was not in the July proposals.’

The scions of Empire might indeed congratulate themselves on their triumph but as one pulls back from the immediate drama and intrigue of the Anglo-Irish negotiations one must wonder at its Pyrrhic nature. Were they so really so blind to this? After all, they had not negotiated to keep Ireland but to let it go. Collins would stand in Dublin Castle the following January to assume command and see off the departing British garrison. They had conspired – and conspired is the right word in this context – to divide Ireland as definitively as the Ulster unionists dictated. For the sake of an oath of loyalty to the Crown adopted per force by the unwilling, Ireland would suffer a civil war.

Stepping even further back, Home Rule had been promised by Gladstone since 1886 yet had been undelivered, its frustration breeding an implacable seam of republican nationalism that would stage the 1916 Rising and reshape Anglo-Irish relations irrevocably. In this thirty-six year long debacle surely lies an honorary companion to Barbara Tuchman’s catalogue of inexplicable historical failures, The March of Folly.

In threatening war to seal his deal, Lloyd George was transgressing one of the laws of successful negotiations or at least those that look to an enduring outcome – that the result of all the late nights and deadlines be manifestly fair to all sides, with gains and losses accounted for equitably. My own experience of negotiation during the Good Friday Agreement talks suggests just such an outcome. For while there was much hard bargaining, the talks were undertaken by equal partners, jointly managed by Bertie Ahern and Tony Blair (in what was assuredly their finest hour), and presided over by the avuncular and trustworthy George Mitchell. There was a common aim in trying to broker an historic peace deal, not a competition to win unsustainable gains.

By that measure, Lloyd George was clever but not wise. Indeed the palpable relief of Lloyd George, Churchill et al to be free of the ‘Irish bog’ would be funny if the circumstances were not so tragic. It was a measure of their partisanship, their lack of any sense that Ireland could be a valued partner in the great enterprise of a Commonwealth that they so ostensibly valued as a free one. The great divide, which Fanning does not shrink, was religious sectarianism and the fundamental problem so many in British governing circles had in regard to Catholicism.

Has the verdict of history been kind to Lloyd George’s achievement in the Government of Ireland Act and the Treaty?  Yes and no.  Lloyd George had the inestimable common sense to look at what he faced and reconcile the demands of the Ulster unionists, the aspirations of the nationalists and the needs of the imperialists.  That was no mean achievement and, aside from the tragic events of the Irish civil war, in doing so he brought about a settlement.

On the other hand, his settlement was twice unpicked.  As soon as he was in power, de Valera surgically dismembered the Treaty, mainly and substantially through his 1937 Constitution.  After three decades of conflict in Northern Ireland, the Government of Ireland Act was transcended by the 1998 Good Friday Agreement that recast partition not as a sundering but as an expression of self-determination that was, moreover, capable of change if a majority so decided in the future.

What is striking from Fanning’s account is how negative British attitudes toward the Irish determined so much of the approach and decisions made between 1910 and 1922. His account reminds us of how far we have travelled in Anglo-Irish relations and how firm our concord now is, resting as it does on a relationship of equality and mutual respect. Had those qualities been in greater evidence back then perhaps the path of Anglo-Irish relations might not have proven so fatal. Fanning has done good service in looking afresh at Britain’s approach to the Irish revolution. His firm divination of the sources of power directing that approach brings a welcome candour and maturity to the analysis.

Eamonn McKee

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August 6, 2013 · 2:08 am

Irish Korean North South Lesson Sharing

In Korea, a much discussed example of unification was and remains the “Berlin” model.  As one scenario and a contingency, it has generated a lot of discussion, comparison and analysis amongst Korean academics, officials and commentators. The Irish model, alternatively, is based on the premise of two jurisdictions continuing to exist until there is agreement otherwise, recognizing each other’s legitimacy and aspirations, and agreeing to formal intergovernmental North South structures working on a programme of cooperation.  The message below summarizes the visit of the delegation from the North South Ministerial Council.  Subsequently, the German Ambassador, HE Rolf Mafael, and I made a joint presentation of both models to the Asia Society of Korea.

Ambassador’s Message – North South Lesson Sharing

23 October 2012

As you may have seen in some media coverage, the Embassy hosted a North-South lesson-sharing visit by a delegation from Ireland last week.  This project began in discussions between the Tánaiste and Minister for Foreign Affairs Eamon Gilmore and the Minister of Unification Yu Woo-ik this time last year.

How to characterise the visit?  I would say stimulating, informative, revealing and affirmative.  Perhaps the most important description is ‘affirmative’ in that the visit affirmed the value of sharing lessons and exchanging views with our Korean counterparts.

This was partly because of commonalities such as our shared colonial history, partition, the generation of conflict and aspirations for unity.  But importantly it was affirmative too for what was not held in common; for example the absence of internationally binding agreements embracing all issues and relationships or of inter-governmental mechanisms for managing escalating tensions and unexpected events or actions.  While the equations of identity are different, exploring our differences helped illuminate the nature of national identity and the nature of aspirations about the future.  The news of the Scottish referendum on independence in 2014 was a useful entry point into these discussions.

The focus of the visit was on the North South Ministerial Council, the work of its Secretariat and the purpose and activities of two of the six specialised North-South bodies established by the Good Friday Agreement.

The delegation comprised Mary Bunting, Northern Ireland Joint Secretary of the North-South Ministerial Council, my colleague Margaret Stanley, Southern Deputy Joint Secretary, Pat Colgan of the Special EU Peace Programmes Body and Thomas Hunter McGowan (CEO) and Aidan Gough (Director for Strategy) of Inter-Trade Ireland.

Our counterparts were senior officials from the Ministry of Unification and members of the Korean Institute for National Unification.  In addition to presentations on their areas of work by the delegation, I gave an introductory presentation on the peace process focusing on intergovernmental cooperation since the 1985 Anglo-Irish Agreement and the historic settlement of 1998.  At the end of their visit, the delegation briefed a group of interested Ambassadors on their views and impressions of the exercise.

In the question and answer sessions, several themes and topics emerged.  These included approaches to unity and cross-border cooperation; the nature of national identity, territory and consent; negotiations, trust and the role of the US; security; dealing with the past; sustainability of peace building; power-sharing; and mechanisms for intergovernmental cooperation.

Two particular issues of interest garnered much attention.  One was the sheer patience required and the time spans involved – the Anglo-Irish Agreement of 1985; the Hume-Adams dialogue 1988; the IRA ceasefire 1994; the Good Friday Agreement 1998; decommissioning of paramilitary weapons and the establishment of a stable power-sharing 2007; the first meeting two weeks ago of the North-South inter-parliamentary forum.  The other was the delicate and complex nature of North-South relations that are the heart of the historic settlement of 1998.  For the officials involved in the NSMC Secretariat and the North-South bodies, this is a daily reality given that what are in themselves mundane matters become highly political in the nationalist-unionist force-field.

The delegation visited the DMZ, including observing the crossing into Kaesong, the 3rd tunnel, the Joint Security Area and the observation platform.  I think it is fair to say that they found it both impressive and sad that such mighty infrastructure divided one people.

While all conflicts are different in origin and character, peace-building solutions share many common features; a commitment not to use violence or the threat of violence to influence negotiations; a resilient inter-governmental process that can withstand and manage unexpected events; comprehensive talks under independent chairmanship; agreed outcomes established through binding treaties; supporting input from regional partners and the international community; effective and monitored implementation.

I would like to thank the members of the delegation for their presentations and the candour of their engagement.  Indeed, the joint nature of our delegation itself illustrated how far we have travelled in our own journey to peace and reconciliation.  I would also like to acknowledge the wonderful hospitality of our hosts at the Ministry of Unification and the serious engagement of our interlocutors throughout the visit.  I am very hopeful that this lesson-sharing exchange is just the first of many.

Best wishes,

Eamonn

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August 1, 2013 · 3:14 pm

Northern Ireland: Devolving Policing and Justice

Devolving Policing and Justice, Northern Ireland

5 February – A Good Day for Ireland

 I am delighted to report a major achievement of the Northern Ireland peace process.  

 On 5 February 2010, the parties in Northern Ireland reached an agreement at Hillsborough which will see the devolution of responsibility for policing and justice by 12 April; will seek to improve the prospects for agreed outcomes to contentious parades; and will improve the working of the Executive and Assembly at Stormont.

 As the joint statement by the Taoiseach Brian Cowen and Prime Minister Gordon Brown states:

 “The successful outcome of these negotiations is the result of the political parties in Northern Ireland demonstrating leadership, mutual respect and political will to act in the interests of the whole community.  The two Governments fully support and stand over this agreement. We are committed to working, as appropriate, to ensure its faithful implementation.  Today is a good day for the people of Northern Ireland and for the people of these islands.”

 The Northern Ireland peace process has been a complicated and long process.  It has been necessarily so given the complex origins, duration and course of the conflict between 1969 and the ceasefires in 1994.

 I was honoured to have been part of the team of Irish officials involved in the negotiation of the Good Friday Agreement in 1998.  At the time we had faith that the Agreement was the most comprehensive document addressing the complexity of factors that made the conflict in Northern Ireland so intractable. 

We also knew that agreeing an outcome document was one thing; implementation quite another, even in the context of the tremendous process of change brought about by the Anglo-Irish Agreement some thirteen years earlier.  And so it proved to be. 

That peace making and peace building in Northern Ireland should take such time and attention should not detract from what a success it has been, whether for measured for example by the power sharing arrangements or the transformation of policing. 

A major feature of the Good Friday Agreement was the establishment of the North-South Ministerial Council which is a structured inter-governmental framework for cross-border cooperation across a range of economic and social sectors.  From this process, for example, emerged Tourism Ireland which jointly promotes the island of Ireland, North and South.  This cooperation has helped enormously to bridge relations across the border and advance the social and economic interests of all of the people who share the island.

The agreement on 5 February last to transfer policing and justice is the last unfinished business of the Good Friday Agreement and a major testament to how far we on the island of Ireland have travelled from conflict to shared responsibility.  Its significance is enhanced by the fact that it was the parties themselves that negotiated and concluded the agreement.

Of course, there remain many challenges ahead.  However, the 5 February agreement is an historic step toward the realisation of the vision set out in the Good Friday Agreement. 

Eamonn McKee

Ambassador

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