Mr. Les Allamby:

It is clear that Irish citizens in Northern Ireland will still have access to EU institutions. That is one of the areas where the EU 27 are on record about what Irish citizens will retain. An interesting aspect for me is that access to those institutions are probably the only area where they have been clear about what rights will be retained by EU citizens. Beyond that, freedom from discrimination, freedom to assert one's national rights have been set in very broad terms but what they mean in practice is very unclear. My guess is that the Irish Government is hoping for an EU 27-wide UK negotiated solution, in other words the UK Government is on record as wanting for example all UK citizens to retain access to the European health insurance card, access to educational opportunities across the EU in the Erasmus programme etc. and therefore if that kind of agreement is reached then the gap between Irish citizens in Northern Ireland and those who identify as British in Northern Ireland will be relatively small. If, on the other hand, there is no agreement on some of those core issues, when one moves outside of Northern Ireland to the rest of EU, then the gap between the Irish and British citizens will be very different and one has the internal issues that Professor Harvey has alluded to around Irish citizenship, the De Souza case etc.

The third issue, the European Charter of regional and minority languages, the question of trying to get within the withdrawal agreement some reference to what will be covered in terms of language rights, given that it is in the relevant section of the agreement has been a point of discussion between the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission and the UK Government. I am not sure we have convinced them that it should be explicitly put into any kind of document that might follow the withdrawal agreement to flesh out the detail but it remains in play. How one translates the rights contained in the Good Friday Agreement and some of the broad concepts into EU law will become a matter for the withdrawal agreement. No doubt people will come to both commissions, people may come to lawyers and I suspect that is an issue that will be in play if the withdrawal agreement is introduced. What the outcome of that will be remains to be seen. I would be surprised to see it explicitly put into any kind of document that states definitely that, yes, it is contained. I do not think that one can legitimately put in a document that it is not, so I suspect that it will be one of those areas where we will see how it is interpreted in practice.