Discover more from REACTION
Northern Ireland has been without a devolved executive for over eighteen months and, in an apparent attempt to reboot power-sharing, the British-Irish Intergovernmental Conference (BIIGC) will meet tomorrow, for the first time in 11 years.
This body was set up by the Belfast Agreement in 1998, to “bring together the British and Irish governments” to cooperate “on all matters of mutual interest”. The agreement is very specific that the conference may discuss only, “non-devolved Northern Ireland matters, on which the Irish government may put forward views and proposals”.
The wording is not accidental.
It is designed to emphasise that the BIIGC is part of ‘strand 3’ of the Good Friday accord, which covers ‘east-west’ links between Great Britain and Ireland. It is also intended to reassure unionists that Dublin will not have a direct say in Northern Ireland’s internal affairs. When the agreement was negotiated, it was David Trimble who insisted on the east-west dimension, to counterbalance controversial ‘north-south’ institutions with responsibilities to cooperate on very specific all-Ireland matters.
It seems this constitutional subtlety has eluded Irish nationalist parties and even the Dublin government.
Sinn Fein is demanding that the BIIGC cover a range of devolved topics, from abortion to policing to health and education, and the SDLP leader, Colum Eastwood, has asked that it agree a package of legislation for the province. Apparently, they believe that the conference has powers to initiate new law in the absence of devolution, even though the agreement determines almost exactly the opposite.
More worrying still, the Irish government’s foreign minister Simon Coveney, who will attend the meeting, previously asked for, “the triggering of intergovernmental conferences to make decisions on Northern Ireland”. His prime minister, Leo Varadkar, also made a number of garbled statements, implying that the BIIGC could be used to establish some kind of interim ‘joint authority’ over the province, by Dublin and London.
In a startling display of constitutional illiteracy (or worse), he told the Irish parliament that, with devolution at Stormont stalled, “everything is devolved to the British-Irish Intergovernmental Conference”. These statements accompanied Dublin’s repeated claims that it will not accept any move to establish ‘direct rule’ over Northern Ireland from London.
The DUP has dismissed the BIIGC meeting as a ‘talking shop’ and it is likely that it will produce only a joint communique, expressing the governments’ shared determination to get the devolved institutions back up and running. It would be astonishing if the British government were even to allow it to appear that the discussions led directly to changes in policy.
Yet, many unionists will still be nervous and suspicious, having already spent months watching Varadkar and Coveney push for an internal UK border in the Irish Sea, as part of the Brexit negotiations.
At the very least, the pair seems oblivious to the acute constitutional sensitivities that can be triggered in Northern Ireland, by effectively refusing to accept the principle of consent and challenging British sovereignty. At worst, they are using the political impasse at Stormont, as well as Brexit, in order to attempt a power-grab that gives Dublin a say over the province’s internal affairs.
This is hardly a new problem. For a long time, senior Northern Ireland Office officials have admitted privately that they are not uncommonly obliged to remind officials from the Republic of Ireland of the limits of their authority, under the 1998 agreement. These wrangles usually involve Dublin’s Department of Foreign Affairs, which is institutionally the most republican part of the Irish government, and is now led by the Fine Gael administration’s most vocally republican minister, Simon Coveney.
Though the mindset is not new, it has been many years since the Republic has been so strident and public in its interference in Northern Ireland, or so cavalier in its interpretation of the Belfast Agreement. Even a veteran supporter of Sinn Fein like Jeremy Corbyn acknowledges that the BIIGC mustn’t make decisions normally taken at Stormont because “it can’t do that constitutionally”. (Though, with her rapier eye for propriety and detail, Diane Abbott contradicted her leader on Radio 4’s Any Questions, soon after).
It really isn’t likely that Varadkar is implementing a master-plan to deliver an all-Ireland state, which would involve far too much trouble and expense. However, the Irish government consistently behaves as if it shares authority over Northern Ireland with the UK. It’s practises a brand of all-island nationalism that won’t involve taking genuine responsibility for the province and certainly won’t leave it paying the bills.
At a time when the two governments have an increasingly tetchy relationship over Brexit, convening the British-Irish Intergovernmental Conference could be a worthwhile symbolic exercise, particularly if the participants come up with a plan to coax Northern Ireland’s parties back into the power-sharing institutions. However, there’s every sign that the UK side will have to watch this Irish delegation, represented by Coveney and justice minister Charlie Flanagan, with special vigilance.
If there’s any attempt to use the BIIGC as an alternative to direct-rule from London, then we’re entering dangerous and unprecedented constitutional territory that could constitute a breach of the Belfast Agreement and create further uncertainty in Northern Ireland.
Subscribe to REACTION
Iain Martin and the team make sense of the news, providing commentary and analysis on the stories that matter in politics, geopolitics, economics and culture.