Remarks of Senator Michael McDowell

• Date: 01 January 2018

163

Remarks by

SENATOR MICHAEL MDOWELL*

Ever since the people of both parts of this island by referenda approved the terms

of the Good Friday Agreement in 1998, and following its implementation in the

St Andrew’s Agreement in 2006, a new constitutional order having legal eect in

both domestic and international law has come into eect in relation to the status,

constitution and government of Northern Ireland.

at new order exists and operates at many levels: constitutional, legal, economic,

social and cultural.

at new order was intended and has largely succeeded in bringing about the

ending of armed conict in the North between paramilitary terrorist organisations

and the open strife between the communities in which they operated. It has created

the minimum necessary – if not sucient – conditions for reconciliation and

justice on our island

e over-arching context for those Agreements and for the establishment of that

new order was the membership of both the UK and Ireland of the European

Union – carrying with it free movement of people and goods, free movement of

establishment, investment and economic resources and an invisible geographical

border between the two jurisdictions on this island.

While it may be arguable as to whether indenite membership of the EU was

technically a term – implicit or explicit – of the Good Friday Agreement, in the

realm of realpolitik the agreement would never have been arrived at other than in

the context of both parts of Ireland being and remaining in the EU, and had they

not been part of the EU a very dierent agreement would have been needed to

underpin the peace process.

Suddenly, and clearly against the wishes of a majority of the people on both sides

of the border, the result of the Brexit referendum, carried by a majority only in

the English and Welsh parts of the UK, has threatened to snatch away the most

important legal and political underpinning of the Good Friday Agreement,

although not in terms appearing to abrogate that agreement in its entirety.

e Piano Movers

Should we be surprised, then, that for the second time in 150 years, the selsh

internal interests of the Tory party in England, the saving of which gave rise to the

* Senator Michael McDowell is a Senior Counsel and a former Attorney General.