Opinion

Martin O'Brien: Any form of direct rule should include role for Dublin

Taoiseach Leo Varadkar welcoming DUP leader Arlene Foster to Government Buildings in Dublin earlier this year
Taoiseach Leo Varadkar welcoming DUP leader Arlene Foster to Government Buildings in Dublin earlier this year Taoiseach Leo Varadkar welcoming DUP leader Arlene Foster to Government Buildings in Dublin earlier this year

The current fiasco, with no departmental budgets, health and education sectors in prolonged crisis, no agreement on legacy, no official Northern Ireland response to Brexit, and MLAs still receiving full salaries, is neither morally nor politically sustainable.

This time the DUP and Sinn Féin are in the last chance saloon.

By far the best outcome, one that would most likely promote the growth of trust and healing, would be a speedy restoration of the Good Friday institutions, with necessary reforms, including an end to the unjust bar on a nationalist politician becoming minister of justice by appointing that minister through the D’Hondt process, and a rule enforcing genuine collective cabinet responsibility to deter ministerial solo runs on controversial cross-cutting issues.

But if that doesn’t happen the prime ministers of the two sovereign governments, Theresa May and Leo Varadkar, may have to make a joint call that Northern Ireland just can’t work politically, at least in the medium term, and consider appropriate new arrangements for our governance.

Given the unstable parliamentary arithmetic at Westminster it is a co-responsibility that may fall on Jeremy Corbyn, if he becomes prime minister, a development the Economist said last week is “increasingly plausible.”

The distraction of Brexit and the continued life support provided to Mrs May by the DUP should not delay that judgment call if it becomes necessary.

The decision may become urgent because the EU status of Northern Ireland - whether these six counties of north-eastern Ireland are to remain with the other 26 Irish counties in the single market and customs union - is an issue in the Brexit negotiations.

But what would appropriate alternative arrangements look like?

It is difficult to say precisely because we would be in unchartered and dangerous territory, something the DUP and Sinn Féin should consider carefully while they still have a little time.

However, the simple re-imposition of direct rule is a non-starter for any British government with a modicum of common sense and Simon Coveney, the Irish foreign minister, was merely stating the obvious when he insisted earlier this month that “there can be no British-only direct rule.”

Exemplifying the strain Brexit and the Tories’ reliance on the DUP has put on Irish-British relations the UK government responded by rejecting “joint authority”, an idea that is attracting growing support among nationalists, 41 pc according to the latest LucidTalk tracker poll, even if Coveney was careful not to mention the term.

It was no surprise, therefore, that Varadkar strongly opposed direct rule when he met May in Downing Street on Monday.

It would not make sense for Britain to provoke the Irish with normal direct rule given that they may find Irish goodwill particularly welcome when the final Brexit negotiations get particularly sticky, notwithstanding their reliance on the DUP which some Tory MPs resent.

It’s sometimes forgotten - but not by Brian Feeney here earlier this week - that there is institutional machinery under the British-Irish Agreement of 1998, part of the Good Friday Agreement, stemming from the Anglo-Irish Agreement (1985) which gives Ireland an on-going input into matters around Northern Ireland that is, in words once used by Garret FitzGerald, “more than consultative and less than executive.”

This is the “standing British-Irish Intergovernmental Conference” which currently empowers Ireland to “put views and proposals” on non-devolved matters and enjoins both governments to “make determined efforts to resolve disagreements between them”.

The “standing conference” should not be confused with the formal public Intergovernmental Conference that last met in Dundalk in 2007.

It follows that if devolution formally ends, Ireland’s case for also addressing matters previously devolved would be compelling given that the Irish government enjoyed such rights prior to the Good Friday Agreement, and that the British government recognised in that agreement “the Irish government’s special interest in Northern Ireland and … the extent to which issues of mutual concern arise in relation to Northern Ireland.”

In short, any new form of direct rule would require a beefed-up role for Dublin thus giving it a strong green tinge, ensuring in so far as it is possible, that the interests of both main traditions and identities, including the Irish/European citizens, are protected.

It is difficult not to see some form of “joint stewardship” to use a term from the Blair-Ahern era, not a million miles from the concept of “joint authority”, come to the fore for consideration, if the present deadlock continues, especially in the context of Brexit, which as John Major predicted, threatens to throw the pieces of the peace process up in the air without anyone knowing where they will land.