DISCUSSION, DEBATE AND DEMOCRACY
A dramatic surge in Covid-19 cases across the island in early January 2021 led to over 1,000 deaths and more than 100,000 cases during the month in the South. It was attributed to a new and more infectious variant than previously experienced, first identified in Kent in the UK in late December.
The meaningful Christmas, as envisaged by Micheál Martin when he announced the lowering of restrictions, had turned into a nightmare as the new variant spread rapidly through the population, facilitated by the numbers returning from the UK for the holiday season. The crisis was compounded by the return to Ireland of large numbers of Brazilians, many working in the meat industry, who had made their way home for the annual festivities in their country, which was grappling with its own vicious variant of Covid-19 and a government in denial of its impact. By the end of January 2021, TheJournal.ie reported that the total number of deaths in Ireland from Covid-19 had reached 3,292, with case numbers of 195,303.
In the North, the Kent variant had spread even more rapidly, with NISRA reporting more than 4,500 cases in one week at the end of January and 2,355 Covid-19 related deaths since the start of the pandemic. Hospitals were operating at 95 per cent capacity and public health specialists were warning again that the failure to resource an effective testing and tracing system a year after the pandemic began was in part responsible for otherwise avoidable Covid-19 fatalities.
Once more, Gabriel Scally reminded people that across the globe over two million people had died from what he described in an Irish News article as ‘this eminently preventable disease’. The variation in deaths between countries and regions, he argued, confirmed that a failure to track and curb the spread of the disease and to prevent its importation from abroad led to ‘agonisingly high’ and unnecessary deaths.
The death toll on the island of Ireland, with more than 3000 deaths in the Republic of Ireland and over 2000 in Northern Ireland, far exceeds the death toll from the Troubles or the combined total of deaths in the Irish War of Independence and the Civil War. With appropriate action at the very earliest stage of the pandemic, the vast majority of those Covid-19 deaths would have been avoided.
The dry statistics were shocking but the case studies of those who died in various settings, from the many in their older years to infants who suffered fatal respiratory complications from the virus, were even more harrowing.
Scally blamed the Department of Health in the South for its failure to:
modernise and adequately resource the public health system and recognise the public health doctors and their leaders, the directors of public health around the country, as equals to their colleagues in clinical medicine. There was masterly inaction from the department, despite the explicit advice it received about severe public health deficits over the past 15 years.
A year since the World Health Organization had designated the Covid-19 outbreak as a ‘public health emergency of international concern’, Professor Scally wrote, there was still no effective Find, Test, Trace, Isolate and Support system (FTTIS) in place in relation to both jurisdictions on the island:
A good strategy for Ireland might consist of, first, strong and rigorously observed societal measures to get the new cases down to tiny numbers. Second, an effective FTTIS and rapid outbreak management system that is well-resourced and locally well-connected. And, third, mandatory public health measures at borders that will prevent reintroduction of the virus, and particularly new variants.
The Covid-19 crisis and Brexit collided when the EU announced in January 2021 that it planned to invoke Article 16 of the NI Protocol it had agreed with the UK in order to prevent any shipments of the AstraZeneca vaccine through the ‘backdoor’ to Britain. Article 16 permitted either party to the Protocol to take special safeguard measures in exceptional circumstances if it believed that the terms of the deal were about to be broken. The threat was in response to an alleged infringement of the guarantee by the makers of AstraZeneca to honour its supply commitments to the EU and to prevent any transfer of the vaccine to third countries outside the bloc.
While the EU quickly withdrew its threat following urgent appeals by the Taoiseach to commission president Ursula von der Leyen and his warning of the dangers the row posed to North–South and Anglo-Irish relations, it provided fresh ammunition for the unionists over the perceived danger of the protocol to the status of Northern Ireland. In a Guardian article at the end of January, DUP leader and First Minister Arlene Foster was quoted as describing the EU action as an ‘absolutely incredible act of hostility towards those of us in Northern Ireland’. She also complained that the disruption of trade flows between the North and Britain caused by the protocol were already causing difficulties for hauliers and were causing tension within the North:
We’ve been asking the PM to deal with the flow problems and indeed, since January 1st, we’ve been trying to manage along with the government the many, many difficulties that have arisen between Great Britain and Northern Ireland and there are actions he could take immediately … There is great unrest and great tension within the community here in Northern Ireland so this protocol that was meant to bring about peace and harmony … is doing quite the reverse. The protocol is unworkable, let’s be very clear about that, and we need to see it replaced because otherwise there is [sic] going to be real difficulties here in Northern Ireland.
The Irish Times reported that SF deputy First Minister Michelle O’Neill described the EU response to the vaccine row with Britain as ‘clearly unwise, ill-judged and totally unnecessary’ and called for ‘cool heads’ to prevail. However, marking the cards of the DUP on the issue, O’Neill said that the protocol, ‘while imperfect’, must remain in place.
Unionists were promised that the protocol could be reviewed in 2024 and removed by a majority vote at Stormont, but this was of little consolation to them given their declining representation in the Assembly. Clearly, the protocol, just like Covid-19, was not going away anytime soon. DUP ministers delayed the introduction of infrastructure required for checks at entry points in the North for goods coming from the UK and some loyalists used graffiti to threaten those employed to implement them. The head of Mid and East Antrim Council, Ann Donaghy, said that some staff at the port of Larne had been removed from duty after graffiti threatening them appeared in the area. The PSNI later reported that there was no evidence of a genuine threat.
Firms exporting foodstuffs and other goods from Britain to supermarkets across the North experienced delays due to the new regulations and paperwork required, but the expectation was that these teething problems would be overcome in time. Business groups in manufacturing and other sectors unaffected by the protocol urged their members to recognise the value of having the best of both worlds, with access to both UK and EU markets, offered by the Brexit deal.
The EU action was seized upon by Jim Allister of the Traditional Unionist Voice (TUV) and loyalist flags activist and social media campaigner, Jamie Bryson, who were breathing down the political necks of the DUP. In turn, the DUP was changing its views on Brexit and the protocol with every wind. After her close party ally and MP for Lagan Valley, Jeffrey Donaldson, sought clarification of the protocol’s arrangements to make it more acceptable, Arlene Foster called for it to be scrapped altogether. Clearly, she was feeling the heat from party colleagues who had for months been privately discussing a future without her as leader (RTÉ Six One News, 3 February 2021).
Among Foster’s chief rivals was Edwin Poots, who had overseen preparations for the implementation of the protocol in his capacity as agriculture minister. Poots was among those now adopting a harder line in complete contradiction to his expressed views eight months previously. In a June 2020 letter to UK Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs George Eustice, obtained by the Financial Times, Poots described alignment with EU rules on food and agricultural products as a ‘key ask’ in reducing the impact of the Irish Sea border: ‘This could be achieved, for example, by dynamic alignment with relevant parts of the EU acquis [the body of common laws, rights and obligations to which EU member states are bound] and the UK joining the common veterinary area [as in the Swiss/EU arrangement],’ Poots wrote. He insisted that his demands ‘must be met’ in order to avoid ‘unacceptable burdens’ on Northern Ireland’s population. Poots was forced to step aside from his position for medical treatment in early February but made his now harsher attitude to the protocol very clear before his departure. The DUP announced a five-point plan that involved disrupting engagement in North-South dialogue on matters relating to the protocol, opposing protocol-related bills, laws and other measures in Westminster and the Northern Ireland Assembly, and launching an e-petition to demonstrate the ‘strength of feeling’ citizens have in relation to the protocol.
The UUP which, so far, had failed to capitalise politically on the external difficulties and internal squabbles of the DUP, set out a six-point plan to mitigate the impact of the dreaded protocol. These included an extension of the grace period of three months before the proposed phytosanitary arrangements and other checks put in place, and a UK government taskforce to identify a permanent solution by the end of the derogation period. It sought new legislation that would make it an offence ‘to prohibit the use of our territory (NI) for the export of goods to the EU that are not compliant with EU regulations and standards, as required to maintain the integrity of the single market.’ In the same paper, the UUP called for an all-islands body ‘within the existing North/South and East/West structures’ of the GFA to ‘resolve the issues with onward supply and EU Customs Officials at NI ports and other Irish Sea and airports.’
The Covid-19-inspired protocol controversy came against the background of disastrous polling for the DUP, continued internal rumblings against Foster’s leadership and open dissent by MPs, including Sammy Wilson and Ian Paisley Jr, as well as predictions that SF would become the largest party in the North following assembly elections in May 2022.
Thrown into the mix was a statement by the Loyalist Communities Council (LCC), made up of representatives of the UDA, the UVF, the Red Hand Commando (RHC) and other paramilitary and illegal organisations, who warned that their identity was under threat from the protocol. In early February, LCC Chair David Campbell warned that unionist anger at the protocol could lead to a return to violence, although he hoped that the days of loyalist fighting were over. ‘We live in an imperfect society and one fights in different ways’, Campbell told the BBC’s Nolan Show, adding that ‘if it comes to the bit where we have to fight physically to maintain our freedoms within the UK, so be it.’
A former chair of the UUP and adviser to its former leader, David Trimble, Campbell recalled how the party had been displaced by the DUP because of mistakes it had made, including its role in framing the GFA. Explaining his comments after he was subjected to intense criticism from Arlene Foster and others, Campbell was quoted in the Irish News as saying that he had made his remarks ‘in the context of fighting against freedoms being removed by a tyrant like Adolf Hitler or Stalin, certainly not in reference to Brexit. …That has to be a political fight, a fight based on common sense’.
Accepting that ‘there is no place for violent activity’, Campbell called for leadership from the DUP and gave notice to Foster that her political future was in question: ‘If the protocol isn’t improved upon how can they continue? …The pressure from the ground up will become too great and the first minister’s position will be untenable,’ he said.
Campbell again reminded people that the rise of the DUP at the expense of the UUP was due to a ‘tipping point’ in unionist opinion following the 1998 peace agreement. ‘I can see similarities and if they [DUP] don’t learn from our mistakes they await the same fate. Whether my old party can step up I don’t know,’ he said
Either way, Campbell said, the LCC ‘would be monitoring the situation to ensure that there would be no actual or perceived diminution in Northern Ireland’s constitutional position’.
Images of a large group of masked UVF supporters parading through the streets in east Belfast added to the general impression of loyalist mobilisation against the hated protocol, while the continued graffiti and other reported threats to workers in the port were followed by the temporary lifting of the customs checks. The disarray within unionism, however, continued to deepen, while the existential danger to the union itself was highlighted by those who were already unhappy with Foster and with the Brexit deal that they had so strongly promoted only months earlier. Unionist instability was also playing out against the background of the growing calls for a border poll, not least from the US where the installation of Joe Biden as president was seen a significant boost for those Irish Americans who had long campaigned for Irish unity.
As tensions mounted in the run-up to the annual St Patrick’s Day celebrations in Washington, senior politicians involved in the negotiation of the GFA intervened in the debate surrounding the protocol and a referendum on Irish unity. Former Taoiseach Bertie Ahern suggested that the appropriate time to hold one would be in 2028, on the thirtieth anniversary of the Agreement. The conditions for a referendum would require that the institutions set up by the GFA, including the NI Executive ‘were stable for a prolonged period – we haven’t had that, ever since the agreement, in 23 years’, Ahern said. He wrote in the Irish Times that nationalists were entitled to a referendum under the terms of the GFA, but that the ‘conditions have to be fulfilled’ and they were not yet in place. Ahern continued:
It was an absolute understanding to bring republicans and nationalists on side, that somewhere in the future would be a poll. …That aspiration has to be there and it has to be fulfilled. I don’t think it is for now.
I understand within loyalism, within loyalist groups, [there is] a huge dislike to [sic] the protocol and particularly the border down the Irish Sea. … There is [sic] some anxieties and we have to watch that.
A LucidTalk poll in late January 2021 signalled a leakage of support from the DUP to the TUV and Alliance. This, along with the rumblings about the protocol, caused some leading unionists to suggest that the GFA should be scrapped and a hard border reinstated on the island. This was the logic expressed by Jamie Bryson who argued in the Unionist Voice newsletter and on social media platforms that the root of all unionist problems lay in the GFA.
It was no great surprise that leading DUP figures, who had never supported the Agreement, echoed these remarks as they detected the growing support among the party membership for Jim Allister’s hard-line position. The GFA had not been acceptable to the DUP until its leader, Ian Paisley, agreed to power-sharing with Martin McGuinness and SF in 2007, having displaced the UUP and David Trimble as the main voice within unionism.
Trimble, a Tory member of the House of Lords, entered the protocol row with a claim that it was a breach of the GFA and its promise that the constitutional position of the North would not be altered without the consent of a majority of its people. He made an impassioned plea in the Irish Times for the issue to be quickly addressed as, he warned, ‘the unintended, but unquestionably escalating tensions created by the Northern Ireland protocol represent a real and present danger to the lives of people living in Northern Ireland.’
Trimble described how supermarket shelves were empty, and that:
customs declarations are required for personal online purchases from Britain for everything from clothes to ink cartridges [while] horticultural trade by retailers and personal orders worth hundreds of millions of pounds every year have virtually stopped.
Petty rules have been enforced by European Union inspectors who oversee the work of UK officials at Northern Ireland ports – to the extent that used machinery has been turned away if there is soil in the treads of the tyres. Some businesses have been waiting weeks for supplies of parts. …
This false mantra of protecting the Belfast Agreement and keeping the peace in Northern Ireland has become the shield behind which the EU, the Irish government, nationalist parties in Northern Ireland, UK politicians, and even US president Joe Biden hide behind when challenged about the damage to democracy and the economy in Northern Ireland as a result of the protocol. …
But rather than the protocol protecting the Belfast Agreement, the fact is it is pulling it apart. I fear that tensions are once again starting to rise. We have already seen the threats to inspectors at ports in Northern Ireland. The democratic mandate of the Stormont parliament has been called into question. People’s livelihoods and the economy of Northern Ireland are reeling from the protocol’s pettifoggery.
Trimble claimed that there was a real potential for those, within the loyalist and unionist community, ‘who engaged in past violence to take action again into their own hands’.
Peter Robinson, who stepped down from his position as DUP leader and first minister in early 2016, wrote in the News Letter in February 2021 that unionists faced two options:
learning to live with the new arrangements or collapsing Stormont’s power-sharing institutions. …
One lesson learned after decades of dealing with governments is that they don’t yield unless life has become uncomfortable. At present only the pandemic is suppressing the outpouring of frustration and the protests that accompany that dissatisfaction.
In reference to some calls for a restoration of the land border on the island as an alternative to the protocol, Robinson said:
How infuriating it is to hear people, some of whom should know better, recite the mantra that a land border on the island of Ireland would have been a breach of the Belfast Agreement. Naturally, they ignore the equally valid truth that a border in the Irish Sea is contrary to the spirit of the agreement.
Robinson also asserted in the article that extending the grace period before the full implementation of the protocol would not ‘soothe the tension within unionism’. He wrote, ‘If there is the stomach for defiance then, in truth, you cannot try to ditch the protocol and administer it at the same time. Is the scrapping of the protocol more important than the continued operation of the Assembly?’. He then acknowledged that an outbreak of violence over the protocol would ‘would be hugely damaging’.
His comments were welcomed by Jim Allister, who insisted that ‘preserving our Britishness and the integrity of the UK should matter more to unionist politicians than Stormont, if operating the protocol is its price. Now, is the time to act in defence of the union.’
As Allister, along with the leaders of the DUP and UUP, prepared to mount a legal challenge to the protocol on the grounds that it was a breach of the Act of Union – the legislation enacted in 1801 which confirms British sovereignty over NI – nationalists and others across the island wondered where the campaign against the protocol might lead.
Gerry Adams, writing for the Belfast Media Group in February 2021, said that the dire warnings by Trimble, Robinson and other unionists over the protocol were echoes of the past:
Warnings of violence by unionists to get their own way have been a regular feature of Irish political life going back to the nineteenth century. Sectarian pogroms, the use of the Orange Card by unionist and Tory politicians, discrimination in jobs and housing, the gerrymandering of elections, state collusion with death squads, have all been part and parcel of unionist strategy when faced with anything that could be construed as a threat to their domination.
Citing comments by DUP MP Sammy Wilson, that the ‘real danger is that frustration and anger will be challenged through violence against easily identified targets’, Adams replied:
Operation Fear needs [to be] challenged … Mr Wilson needs to explain who these ‘easily identified targets’ are. … If they are easily identified, surely he can let the rest of us know who he means … He could also let us know who will be doing the challenging through violence he is predicting. If he has information about this, has he alerted the PSNI?
Mr Wilson wasn’t alone. A former member of David Trimble’s negotiating team during the Good Friday Agreement talks, David Campbell, who is now the Chair of the Loyalist Communities Council, has claimed: ‘If it comes to the bit where we have to fight physically to maintain our freedoms within the UK, so be it’. Again, this begs questions. For example, who is the ‘we’ Mr Campbell is talking about? Would he elaborate? And who will they fight physically against? The English government? The European Union? The rest of us?
Brexit is a child of the DUP. They were repeatedly warned that it would be bad for the North and bad for the economy. When the Department of the Economy published a report in July 2019 warning of 40,000 possible job losses as a result of Brexit, Jeffrey Donaldson said he could live with that. It would, he claimed, have a short-term impact on the North’s economy, but that this could be mitigated.
Adams took issue with Trimble’s claim that the voice of the majority unionist community was being ignored in relation to the protocol. He reminded Trimble that it was the consent of the majority of the people of NI that would determine the outcome of a unity referendum under the terms of the GFA. He wrote:
Since the foundation of the Northern state in 1921 until the Good Friday Agreement there was a unionist veto. It was often referred to as the ‘consent principle’ but it was only unionist consent that was involved. This was a negative mechanism that encouraged unionist intransigence and a lack of engagement with the rest of us.
However, the Good Friday Agreement is quite clear – the status of the North depends on ‘the consent of a majority of the people’ and not on the consent of the majority of the unionist people … Mr. Trimble should know this – he negotiated it in the Good Friday Agreement.
As debate raged in the North, the response in Dublin was to express concern and hope that the EU and British government could quickly iron out the technical difficulties with the implementation of the protocol. After EU Vice-President Maroš Šefčovič and UK minister Michael Gove met to discuss the matter at the EU–UK Joint Committee on the implementation of the Brexit agreement in early February 2021, the EU negotiators rejected calls to abandon the protocol. In the words of French politician Michel Barnier – who led the Brexit negotiations for the EU – at the European Business Summit on 11 February, ‘the difficulties on the island of Ireland are caused by Brexit, not by the protocol. The protocol is the solution’.
Irish Times columnist Fintan O’Toole explained that the ‘protocol helps to keep the peace process afloat.’ On 16 February 2021, O’Toole wrote:
The EU’s threat of a sudden and unilateral suspension of the protocol was both stupid and outrageous. It undid in hours what the EU had managed to do over the years since 2016, which was to establish itself, in contrast to the Brexiteers, as a responsible actor in relation to Northern Ireland.
Reprehensible as this was, there is one thing that has to be borne in mind: it didn’t happen. It took about nine hours from word of the plan first emerging for the EU to drop it entirely. The EU was wrong-headed. It was not pig-headed.
But let’s not forget that Boris Johnson was playing this reckless game weeks before the EU’s ridiculous démarche. On January 13th, he told the House of Commons that ‘we will have no hesitation in invoking Article 16’…
This is a proxy war. There are some real difficulties with the operation of the protocol, but they are perfectly capable of being dealt with by competent officials acting with goodwill and applying common sense. Northern Ireland has had enough of real wars; it doesn’t need to be the battleground for proxy ones.
Under continuing pressure from unionists and loyalists, including a DUP online petition calling for the triggering of Article 16 of the protocol in order to secure unfettered trade between Britain and the North, the Johnson government decided to extend the grace period on checks until October.
The unilateral move in early March provoked a threat of legal action by the EU against what it said was ‘the second time the UK had sought to breach international law in relation to the special arrangements put in place for the North’. The first time was the Internal Markets Bill, which the UK government introduced in September 2020 in an effort to delay any checks on goods moving into NI from Britain, a proposal it was soon, and embarrassingly, forced to withdraw.
The Covid-19 crisis in the US prevented the traditional handover of the bowl of shamrock by the Taoiseach to President Biden during the 2021 St Patrick’s Day celebrations in Washington but did not deter the unity debate and the protocol row from crossing the Atlantic. The Irish Times reported that, in advance of their online meeting on 17 March, a group of US senators submitted a resolution expressing support for the full implementation of the GFA ‘to support peace on the island of Ireland’.
The cross-party motion, proposed by Democrat Bob Menendez, the chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and Susan Collins, a Republican senator from Maine, cautioned that the introduction of ‘barriers, checkpoints or personnel on the island of Ireland would threaten the successes of the Good Friday Agreement’. It insisted, as earlier proposed by Nancy Pelosi and endorsed by President Biden, that any new trade agreement between the US and the UK should take into account that the conditions of the Belfast Agreement are met. If there was any doubt or confusion about the damaging implications of British interference with the NI protocol, Foreign Minister Simon Coveney and EU Vice-President Maroš Šefčovič were also in Washington to brief the Friends of Ireland group of senators and congressmen during the week. As part of the St Patrick’s Day celebrations, Arlene Foster and Michelle O’Neill also spoke to President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris by conference call.
SF, meanwhile, made its objective of a united Ireland loud and clear. The party enjoyed considerable support in the US, and with Biden as president, its position was stronger than ever. SF and its US supporters recognised that Biden and his team were deeply invested in the resolution of the Irish conflict and that the seeds planted through intensive lobbying work – done over many years by Adams and by US party representatives Rita O’Hare and her successor Ciaran Quinn – were about to bear fruit. The party also worked with trade unions and business groups in the US, which in turn provided finance to the party.
In the two decades since the GFA was signed, SF leaders constantly reminded their friends in high places in Washington that Conservative Party governments, along with the UUP and DUP, had consistently blocked all efforts to work the peace settlement. Since 2007, when the St Andrews Agreement cleared the way for the power-sharing executive headed by Paisley and McGuinness, commitments on policing, legacy issues such as the killings of nationalists by the security forces, and other basic equality and language rights, had been stalled. Now, the party argued, the democratic right to hold a referendum on unity, as envisaged in the GFA, was being denied.
The US-based Friends of Sinn Féin raised the considerable funds to place several expensive advertisements in leading US broadsheets to promote their message to Irish America. As St Patrick’s Day approached, the ads featured in the New York Times and the Washington Post, as well as the Irish Echo and Irish Voice newspapers based in New York. The message called on the Irish government to promote, and plan for, Irish unity, and on the British government to set a date for a referendum, as promised in the GFA. The half-page message said:
A new Ireland is emerging, and more and more people are looking beyond the divisions of the past. A new Ireland that is seeking to undo the damage of the undemocratic partition of Ireland 100 years ago and the recent British imposed Brexit. The Good Friday Agreement provides for a referendum on Irish unity. It is for the people to determine their future. The choice is clear. A united Ireland and membership of the European Union. Or a divided island at the mercy of the British government.
Among the arguments pressed by SF on its audience across the US was that, unless a date was set, there would be no urgency on the governments to make the detailed and painstaking costed preparations required to ensure that voters would have at least an outline of what a post-referendum island might look like. Also implicit in the call was the claim that governments and other parties, in Britain and Ireland, would obstruct and delay any constitutional change if it did not suit their interests, and were well experienced in using any and every political or other method to do so.
The St Patrick’s Day online meeting between the Taoiseach and President Biden yielded a typically neutral joint statement and called for the ‘good faith implementation of international agreements designed to address the unique circumstances on the island of Ireland’ and ‘preserving the hard-won gains of the peace process’ but it must have been clear to the British observers, including Foreign Secretary Dominic Rabb who was in Washington, which way the US administration was leaning in the row over the NI protocol.
Martin told an audience of Irish Americans that he did not consider it appropriate to call for a unity referendum, arguing that it would serve only to increase differences rather than reconcile them. ‘I think it is divisive and puts people back into the trenches too early,’ he said in comments that could only have served to confuse those US supporters of the GFA who were of the view that a democratic vote on unity was its key concession to Irish nationalists and republicans. Within days, Martin faced criticism at home when he voiced similar objections to a border poll, pushing the prospect even further down the road than his predecessor, Bertie Ahern.
Invited onto a special edition of the weekly televised Claire Byrne Show on RTÉ, the Taoiseach, Tánaiste Leo Varadkar, Mary Lou McDonald and DUP MP Gregory Campbell were questioned on ‘What a united Ireland might look like’ in the event of a referendum in favour of unity. While there was a degree of unanimity among the three party leaders in the South on the need to prepare for referendums and the questions it would pose to voters, there was predictable disagreement on when it should take place, with Martin seeming to dismiss any poll for at least a couple of decades. McDonald argued for the setting of a date as soon as possible in order to prepare for a referendum in five years, while Varadkar suggested that it was more important to ensure it was done properly than early. Campbell rejected any suggestion of a referendum and implied that the sooner a hard border was reimposed on the island, the better. This and other comments from Campbell provoked an angry response from commentator and lawyer Joe Brolly who railed at the racist and homophobic nature of the DUP before he was shut down by the host and prevented from finishing his point. Brolly, a popular GAA pundit from a republican family in Derry, asserted that the outlook of the DUP was a short-term fantasy:
What we’ve seen with Arlene [Foster], Gregory Campbell and Ian Paisley Jr is this short-termism all the time. You see them chuckling and guffawing when people are trying to have a serious discussion. Just like we saw Gregory tonight, laughing at the Irish language, laughing at Gaelic sports, the homophobia, the racism, all those things.
Brolly got a chance to explain himself in his Sunday Independent newspaper column some days later, when he said that he intended to:
go on and make the point that only when we honestly call this out, can we solve the Northern problem. If you took the sectarians, homophobes and racists out of the DUP, there would be hardly anybody left, so Gregory Campbell must have been bewildered that I was cut off by RTÉ.
Brolly went on to call for a civic forum ‘that gives a voice to the highly educated and decent Northern Protestant constituency that has been drowned out by the DUP – the one Andrew Trimble referred to on Monday night.’ A former Irish rugby international from a unionist background, Trimble said on the Claire Byrne Show that he welcomed the discussion on an all-island future if it was inclusive of those who identified as British. He said he looked forward to a fusion between those who see themselves as Northern Irish, Irish and British on the island.
In the same article, Brolly wrote that the British wanted ‘out’ of the North and their departure was ‘inevitable’. He believed that an organised transition to a united Ireland could involve the retention of Stormont and Protestants continuing to have the same rights as they have now, including the right to UK citizenship and a UK passport.
The first step might be a two-state solution. Stormont might remain but it would no longer be a political kindergarten overseen by the British. Both states would be in the EU … With the UK gone, there would be no point in triumphalism. Short-termism would be replaced by the dull nuts and bolts of long-term problem solving. Progressive, well-educated Protestant voices would emerge.
In her column of 29 March 2021, Irish Times journalist Una Mullally focused on what she described as the ‘stasis of Micheál Martin’ on the show, which, she said, ‘is not just an issue for Fianna Fáil – in many ways, his leadership is a manifestation of their contemporary irrelevance as a party.’
Describing how Varadkar and McDonald ‘did us all a favour by discussing the issues around Irish unity in a mature, measured, respectful and hugely encouraging manner, during which they were often on the same page,’ Mullally accused Martin of dithering and for failing to use the opportunity to deliver ‘any big ideas, big aspirations, big vision’. She wrote:
What was most profound was that where McDonald and Varadkar spoke a lot about the future, Martin spoke primarily about the past. He talked about his brand of republicanism à la Wolfe Tone, whom I’m sure would only be punching the air at the very mention of ‘common agendas like an all-island research hub’. …
That the leader of the country would arrive to a studio to discuss such an important issue and dither through, is simply not good enough. Deflating, demoralising, uninspiring, disconnected, and putting forth arguments for paralysis as opposed to action, is not where new generations in this country are at. Not only that, but such stasis is dangerous; the future of our island is not just another can to kick down the road.
The apparent reluctance of the leader of Fianna Fáil to envisage a unity referendum within five, ten or even thirty years, came as something of a shock to many of his own party supporters. His appearance was followed just days later with a speech from his party colleague and leadership rival, Jim O’Callaghan, who, in considerable detail, set out his road map to a referendum and the prospects for constitutional change.
In a lengthy paper delivered to Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, where he had studied law as a post-graduate student in the 1990s, O’Callaghan spoke to the political, economic and legal consequences of Irish reunification. Assuming that the British secretary of state would likely call a border poll within a decade, after discussions between the UK and Irish governments, it would make practical sense that both would co-operate in the preparatory work required.
Given the difficulties in engaging with the unionist parties in framing the nature, economics and laws of a united Ireland and the guarantees for those of a British identity that it would be recognised and respected, a huge responsibility would rest on civic groups to ‘propose, discuss and debate what this new country would look like’, in advance of the unity referendums, O’Callaghan said.
In his view, a new Ireland would require a new constitution. The debate for a new Ireland ‘must encompass the political fault lines that exist between people in each jurisdiction including conservatives and liberals, right- and left-wing economic views, supporters and opponents of the EU, new Irish people and those whose roots are of the island, workers and employers, unionist/loyalist and nationalist/republican and neither’.
O’Callaghan anticipated that unionists would garner some 11.3 per cent of the vote in a national election in a united Ireland compared to 1.1 per cent in Britain, based on the most recent counts for the Dáil and Westminster, and thus would have more influence in government formation. He envisaged a bicameral system of government with an Assembly/Dáil sitting in Dublin and a Senate in Belfast. He proposed that a certain number of cabinet seats should be reserved for unionists.
The flag, anthem and emblems of the state would be agreed after broad consultation among the parties and through a forum such as a citizens’ assembly. Two national languages, English and Irish, he suggested, would be recognised while the new country would become part of the EU and operate in the eurozone.
‘Neutrality may become a more complex and contentious issue because unionism may wish to avoid neutrality and support the British state in its conflicts,’ he said. ‘However, it appears inevitable that the majority of political representatives at present will support the new state adopting a position of neutrality in international affairs.’
O’Callaghan recommended the retention of the PSNI as one of the regional forces of An Garda Síochána, each operating under a national policing authority.
A practising barrister, O’Callaghan asserted that the judicial arm of government ‘will cause the least difficulty’. He proposed the continued operation of ‘different laws on both sides of the [present] border until, over time, the new legislature passes laws that operate for all of the new territory.’
On economic unification, O’Callaghan dismissed the focus on the amount of the annual UK subvention to the North as ‘strangely defeatist’. He said, ‘Northern Ireland should not be doomed to forever be a relatively poor region of a wealthy country, forever subsidised by taxpayers in wealthier parts of Great Britain.’ The subvention, he said, could be phased out during the 10-to-15-year transition period, or longer in the case of public service pension liabilities incurred by the UK exchequer prior to unification. The EU should provide regional development funding and the same, attractive corporation tax rate should apply across the island.
‘Harnessing the strength of the whole island would help make these six counties a more prosperous region of a prosperous country,’ he said.
High-speed rail links between Dublin and Belfast and to other cities, developing the all-island energy market, promoting renewable energy and attracting inward investment to the North, in particular, would raise productivity and foster new, innovative, ventures.
The European Convention of Human Rights would form the basis for the legal protections for all those living in the new Ireland, while a new constitution would protect the rights, cultures and traditions of minorities, including the religious and cultural freedoms of those with a British identity. People from NI, and those born there in the future, would be entitled to maintain and claim British citizenship, he said.
O’Callaghan concluded his speech by saying that the people of Northern Ireland would decide its future status in a referendum that ‘will be vigorously contested and professionally argued’, while there will also be a requirement in the South to approve any new constitutional arrangement. ‘Resolving the problems caused by the partition of Ireland and aspiring to the cherished aim of reunification,’ he said, ‘are legitimate political issues that should be decided by discussion, debate and democracy.’
Among the first to welcome O’Callaghan’s contribution was Ireland’s Future, whose recently appointed chief executive Gerry Carlile said on Belfastmedia.com that it confirmed that:
The conversation on constitutional change and a new Ireland now forms part of everyday discussion.
There is a growing momentum around the requirement for preparation and planning. Ireland’s Future encourages the Government in Dublin to establish an all-island Citizens’ Assembly or National Forum that can begin to formalise the outworkings of what Irish unity will entail for the people of this island north and south.
Ireland’s Future particularly agrees with Jim O’Callaghan TD when he states that, ‘irrespective of what the new country requires or permits, nothing will diminish the traditions and culture of unionism. Its strength lies in its people. Its home is in Ulster. Its future rests in improving the quality of life for all the people on the island of Ireland within the European Union and in close harmony with the three other nations [of the UK].’ Ireland’s Future urges our friends and neighbours from a unionist and British background to get involved in the planning process and to play their part in shaping the future as we move on a trajectory towards referendums on both parts of the island.
The timing of the referendums was also raised by SDLP leader Colum Eastwood who warned that, while he expected a unity vote within 10 years, it was possible that the British government might go earlier while the unionists still had the numbers to win it. He told the Sunday Business Post on 14 March 2021:
There is still a possibility that the British government would call a referendum early to support unionism because they think that unionists have the numbers right now. That’s where nationalism has to be careful what it asks for. …
We have to be clear that it will be a united Ireland, and a new Ireland that will celebrate and very much involve the British tradition and the Good Friday Agreement will remain and all the protections within it.
He agreed, however, that nationalists should not be expected to refrain from calling for a referendum because of unionist or loyalist sensitivities.
Influential journalist Justine McCarthy used her weekly column with the Sunday Times to rail at the hypocrisy of politicians who accused SF, Ireland’s Future and others of sectarianism for calling for a referendum and a united Ireland. Citing a recent poll of voters in the South by public relations firm, Edelman, which found that 52 per cent were in favour of a united Ireland, with 30 percent undecided, McCarthy said that it:
will take years of debate and planning before any referendum with a chance of success could be held. …
It will be 23 years this Easter since the signing of the agreement that brought a semblance of normality to Northern Ireland. An entire generation has been born and come of age since then. Unionist parties have lost their electoral majority. Sinn Féin has strengthened its all-island presence, being the main nationalist party in the north and the lead opposition party in the south.
Pointing to the initiative by Liverpool University’s Institute of Irish Studies in early March to launch an online platform for ‘pro-unity and pro-union voices to debate the future of the island of Ireland and the UK’, McCarthy suggested that ‘this state keeps its head firmly stuck in sand that is shifting all around. …The ruling parties’ constant refrain that they don’t want to scare off unionists is wearing thin. Might their real concern be that they don’t want to scare off their own electorate?’