Northern Ireland (Stormont Agreement and Implementation Plan) Bill

Debate between Lord Empey and Lord Kilclooney

Thursday 21st April 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Kilclooney]

My Lords, briefly, I support the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Lexden. The term “Ireland” is being used very loosely by the present Conservative Government, which is causing great offence to the vast majority of people in Northern Ireland. This error of decision by the Conservative Government has been increasingly noticeable over the past 18 months. Nationally, it is contrary to the laws of this country, as has been said. The Ireland Act 1949 made it clear that the Government in the southern part of our island are the “Republic of Ireland” —nothing else, not “Ireland”. Why are the present Government pretending that the Government in Dublin are now the “Government of Ireland”, because that is causing offence?

It has been stated that, in international law, they are the Government of the Republic of Ireland, but that is not so in European law. When the United Kingdom decided to accede to the treaty of Rome, the southern part of Ireland agreed to do the same on the same day, just as it is suggested now that, if the United Kingdom leaves the European Union, the southern part of Ireland will also leave the European Union on the same day—that is for the future to decide. At the time of accession, it was the Conservative Prime Minister who was there on behalf of the United Kingdom, and it was Mr Lynch, the then Prime Minister of southern Ireland, who was there on behalf of the Republic of Ireland. As they were signing, Jack Lynch said to Ted Heath, “Do you mind if I sign as the Prime Minister of Ireland?”, and the Conservative Prime Minister of the United Kingdom said, “It’s fine, go ahead”. Since that day, the European Union has referred to the southern part of Ireland as being Ireland and, I am sorry to say, it is Ireland in the context of the European Union and its laws.

However, in the context of the United Kingdom and our laws, it is the “Republic of Ireland”, and the present Government are going contrary to the laws of this nation by referring to it as the “Government of Ireland”.

[Lord Empey]

My Lords, as usual, the noble Lord, Lord Lexden, has an uncanny habit of putting his finger on something that sparks a series of comments.

I am no lawyer or expert in these matters. All I can say is that, when we came to the Belfast agreement in 1998, no agreement would have been reached had the constitution of the Irish Republic remained as it was. We had the issue of Articles 2 and 3, which claimed the territory of Northern Ireland as part of the nation. If I remember correctly, “the island and its territorial seas” was the terminology at the time. Had that remained in place, there would have been no agreement.

A treaty was eventually written to implement the agreement—although it was brought in here as the Northern Ireland Act 1998, there is of course a treaty. The Irish Republic effectively changed its constitution by referendum in 1998 to remove those offending articles. So in terms of our operational day-to-day relationships with the Republic, when we were going to meet Irish Ministers, deal with them and set up bodies with them—which, as the result of the noble Lord, Lord Trimble, appointing me to positions, I had the opportunity to do—it was clear to us that the perceived threat/claim no longer existed from a practical position.

However, the problem was demonstrated by the 1985 arrangements, when there were two separate documents, as was pointed out. There was the question of the United Kingdom being given its full title—the mirror image of this question. This country was not getting its proper legal title from the Republic. We are the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, as anyone who looks at the passport will see. The Irish state was not legally permitted to acknowledge anything other than Great Britain as part of our national territory. That was where the agreement of 1998 made progress, in that it was then accepted that we are an integral part of the United Kingdom. That had been the missing link and something that we had attempted to achieve. Several noble Lords who are here today were part of that negotiation.

So we have made huge progress. I am not qualified to judge what the international implications of this could be, but we know from dealing with this issue that things can creep in over time to dilute the agreements that we have made, because there are always people who will never give up their ultimate objectives. We know that people have been prepared to kill, be killed and do all sorts of other things to achieve an objective which does not meet with the democratic will of all of the people on the island of Ireland, as was expressed by the 1998 referendum.

Your Lordships will recall that John Hume’s argument always was that, if you got the people on the island to vote, you would undermine the arguments of 1918 and the republican movement, because you would actually get people to vote to accept the position. That was, of course, the whole purpose of the agreement. People were forced into accepting that—through gritted teeth, I suspect—and we got the vote.

I thank the noble Lord, Lord Lexden, for raising this matter, because it brings out whether people truly and actually believe what they have signed up to.