Bertie Ahern on Northern Ireland: "There's no such thing as the status quo staying as it is"

LONDON – Bertie Ahern, former Irish Taoiseach, you are one of the architects of the Good Friday Agreement together with Tony Blair. Ahead of the imminent 25th anniversary, are you concerned about the current deadlock in Northern Ireland?
“The important thing now is that we’ll be celebrating and commemorating the anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement. But there are three things in my mind. Firstly, we can celebrate and commemorate the fact that for the last 25 years we’ve had very little violence. We’ve had some isolated incidents. While one incident is an incident to many, it has been very peaceful.”

“The second thing, I’m hoping for the period ahead, not just for the next 25 years, but hopefully soon, that we will get the institutions up: the Assembly, the executive, north-south bodies, the British-Irish parliamentary bodies and the British-Irish council, that we can get them up and running. Also, that we can move away from the instability we’ve had with the institutions over the last few decades. It’s an unsatisfactory position that, for different reasons, the institutions have collapsed a number of times. We have to find a way a mechanism that moves away from that”.

“My hope is that we can build economic prosperity into the North, with US president Joe Biden and US envoy Joe Kennedy taking over the economic role. Generally America taking a big interest in trying to help to bring more foreign direct investment and more jobs into Northern Ireland that we’d be able to, to move forward. But more than anything else, there are people alive today that would have been killed if the Troubles continued on. Of course, I always think about all those people and the families of people who did die in the troubles and it’s a hard time for them because the GFA we didn’t come soon enough for them.”

On the second point, what kind of updates or tweaks to current Good Friday can you imagine, also to get the Northern Irish institutions back and running? 
“In the last 25 years to build trust and confidence reliability has been very hard to do. That’s still part of the problem. I would like to see the institutions set up as quickly as possible. It might take another few months. But anyway, whenever it is, the main thing is that they’re settled. I think then they need to sit down again, maybe with the government or a third party intermediary, to try to find a way that they agree a set of procedures where you can’t have just somebody saying “we’re not happy with this” and then they walk out and everything collapses”.

“They have to move to more of what happens in democracy, so you only have the suspension of Parliament and governments when you have an election, that you just don’t have this instability. Because of the unique position of Northern Ireland, this cannot be done without a cross-community consensus. However, I think that that needs to happen. I would like to see that be the priority over the next months ahead. And when I say next months ahead, I mean this calendar year”.

Are you talking about removing the possibility of veto for the single communities on multiple issues?
“You can’t just remove it. They must agree on it but I think it’s in their own interests. The world is watching them. Europe wants to help them, the European Parliament celebrated the agreement the other day, you had the President of the Parliament, the President of the Commission, President Joe Biden is coming… It’s not in the interest of the Northern Irish communites to have this form of instability. That brings bad publicity”.

But the DUP, the main Unionist party, seems to fight an existential battle and they are blocking everything in Northern Ireland, despite the new deal between the UK and EU on Brexit. In your view, what can break this impasse?
“You know, I got on well with all sides and I tried to help them and be accommodating to them. However, after a lot of dialogue over the winter, the DUP came up with their “Seven points” to be met in order to accept that Brexit deal. In fairness to the European Union and Rishi Sunak, who has done a good job in the last six months, I’m not saying they found solutions to all “Seven Points”, but they certainly came up with imaginative solutions for most of the points. Particularly the main issue for the DUP, which was the UK internal market. They’ve genuinely found solutions for that”.

“Now, the unionists, the DUP in this case, said that’s still not enough. I have asked them: “What does that mean?”. They have said: “Well, we’re worried that the EU might make changes to some of the Protocol or some of the legislation, and that then we’ll find ourselves inside the EU law”. Now then they say: “Oh, no, we just don’t want an insurance by the British government, we want that in legislation”. Now, of course, legislation takes a long time and I’m not sure that Rishi Sunak would want to do that.”

“Then, even if you did that, some of them would say: “Well, you know, you’re asking us to agree with this EU stuff, but that is changing our identity and we don’t want to be changing our identity for money”. But we’re not asking them to do that. When you work with the EU, you don’t change your sovereignty. We’re asking people to work together and create a future and jobs for their young people. As a Republican. I’m not asking them to change their British identity. I’m not asking them to change what our forefathers fought for. What we ask is to build a new future, in a harmonious peaceful way. That’s what we’re trying to do. But we all seem to find it very hard to convince them.”

During the negotiations of the Good Friday Agreement in 2019, the then Unionist leader David Trimble had the guts to their people and say: “Well, we have to accept this”. Is this spirit missing today?
“That’s the issue. Politics is the art of the possible. But the art of the possible only works when people are prepared to compromise and to move forward. If nobody compromises, it’s very hard to do anything. Every day in life we all compromise, at home, with your family, with your kids, at work. I think what we badly need now for a period ahead that sense of goodwill, good spirit, to be able to move to the next phase. We need to take the next steps. That’s what’s necessary. This is for the greater good, the common good. It’s for all their people. Nobody is a winner: you’ll only lose if people don’t move forward. If you always see badness, nobody wants to do anything. But if you see goodness and what’s best for our kids and the people in Northern Ireland, they can move forward in a good sense. We need a bit of David Trimble, Iain Paisley and even Martin McGuinness or Gerry Adams nowadays.”

Meanwhile, the MI5 has raised the alert in Northern Ireland to “severe”, which means that a terrorist attack is “very likely”.
“No, I don’t think there’s a big problem, to be honest. I think it is related to the celebrations that are coming up and the fact that Joe Biden is coming in, Bill Clinton is coming and you know that. There is only a small minority of people who never accept anything. People who linger back to 100 years ago and don’t want to listen. But they are small and they have very, very little support.”

Next week Joe Biden will visit Belfast and the Republic of Ireland. What do you think about his trip? Due to his origins, he’s considered “too Irish” by many Unionists.
“He is very much of an Irish background. It’s strange. When I go to America, I always make a habit of going to the groups from the Protestant community as well. They do invite me, but they never really wanted too much coverage or much publicity. Those groups also want to see peace in Northern Ireland. So it always seems as if the message from America is very much Republican nationalist, but I think President Biden, in fairness to him, he has been a visitor to Ireland all his life and he understands the subtleties in this. He will be reaching out to everybody.”

What is the best lesson you have learned during the Good Friday Agreement negotiations?
You have to put yourself in the other person’s shoes. You have to try and help them to move to a central position, and to move forward. If you come in and you lecture “you know, you’re wrong, we’re right”, you’ll never get anywhere. The second big issue, is that the status quo. There’s no such thing as the status quo staying as it is. I always find you’re either going forward or you’re going backwards. I never like to go backwards.”

Are you still optimistic about Northern Ireland?
“I’m always optimistic. My glass is always half full.”