In unlikely event of united Ireland, UK Government could retain a crucial role on behalf of unionists
THE lively comments in your columns arising from Peter Robinson’s recent remarks on a possible border poll reminded me of conversations with the late Taoiseach Dr Garret FitzGerald during and after the negotiation of the 1985 Anglo-Irish Agreement.
I write as a former Irish Government official, one of the negotiators of the Anglo-Irish Agreement of 1985 and the First Irish Joint Secretary of the Maryfield Secretariat from 1985 to 1987.
FitzGerald took considerable comfort from the fact that the Agreement provided a structure whereby, if in the future a majority in Northern Ireland opted for a change of sovereignty from the UK to Ireland, the UK Government would almost certainly be obliged to maintain a role in Northern Ireland on behalf of the unionist tradition analogous to that which the Irish Government assumed on behalf of Northern Nationalists in 1985 through the mechanisms of the Agreement.
I would add on a personal note that the Agreement proved remarkably effective in quietly reforming laws and policies in Northern Ireland and rebalancing the generationally skewed system of government there.
The mechanism for ‘resolving differences’ between the Irish and British Governments on all internal issues in Northern Ireland delivered positive outcomes on a frequent basis through the Secretariat and more formally through the Intergovernmental Conference — and considerably more, from what I can gather, than the Assembly and Executive delivered, even when they were up and running.
While accepting that a putative poll might well deliver a pro-unionist result, there might be some elements for a template for unionists and nationalists to ponder in Garret FitzGerald’s vision of a future system for government for Northern Ireland which would ensure British support for unionist concerns in the event that a future poll were to support Irish sovereignty for the entire island. This is, of course, merely one suggestion for one possible scenario.
MICHAELLILLIS Dublin