Ms Alison Hough:

I am a barrister and law lecturer, based in Athlone Institute of Technology. I was commissioned by the Environmental Pillar and Northern Ireland Environment Link, NIEL, to produce an report on the relationship between the Good Friday Agreement and cross-Border environmental co-operation on the island of Ireland post Brexit. The committee has been provided with a copy of my full submission in writing, and a copy of the report entitled, Brexit, The Good Friday/Belfast Agreement and the Environment: Issues arising and possible solutions, published in March 2019. I am grateful to the committee for the opportunity to present the key findings of my research carried out for the report and happy to assist the committee in any way I can.

The Good Friday-Belfast Agreement had at its heart the objectives of peace, prosperity and the protection of human rights on the island of Ireland. Our shared landscape and its ecology are the bedrock of these objectives, the stage on which they are performed, and the medium through which they occur. The drafters of the agreement understood this, which is why they nominated the environment as one of the key areas of cross-Border co-operation. They understood what was at stake if we did not preserve our shared environmental heritage, in terms of the peace process and the economic and social well-being of the people of Northern Ireland and Ireland.

The island of Ireland is a single biogeographic unit. Despite political arrangements, there are no borders in nature, and what happens in the environment of one jurisdiction unavoidably impacts the other. The only way to preserve the environmental integrity of both Northern Ireland and Ireland is through a coherent system of environmental management. EU membership provided the ideal context for this, with shared regulatory standards, supranational enforcement mechanisms, a funding agenda designed to encourage co-operation, and a trade agenda which removed the need for a hard border. The EU project shared the objectives of the Good Friday Agreement of peace, prosperity and protection of rights, and in this sense they have a symbiotic relationship. The failure of full implementation of all the provisions of the Good Friday-Belfast Agreement means that the full potential of cross-border environmental co-operation has not been realised, and environmental governance on the island of Ireland is incomplete and fragmentary.

It is likely that Brexit in any form will interfere with Good Friday-Belfast Agreement co-operation and place obstacles in its way, through loss of the features of EU membership mentioned above. In particular, regulatory divergence - or uneven enforcement resulting in de facto regulatory divergence - represents the biggest threat to maintaining the environmental co-operation required by the agreement. However, it is possible that the Good Friday Agreement itself could offer potential solutions to these obstacles. More complete utilisation of the Good Friday Agreement bodies and institutions could assist in preventing regulatory and policy divergence.

My overarching recommendation is that full implementation of the Good Friday-Belfast Agreement be made a matter of the highest priority, and that sufficient resources be directed towards achieving this aim, such as provision of adequate facilities and support to the Good Friday Agreement bodies and institutions. To this end, practical steps, a work plan and a timeline for implementation should be recommended by this committee.

I have set out ten detailed recommendations, the first of which is that coherence of environmental regulation and management between Northern Ireland and Ireland be prioritised in the negotiations on a future relationship to safeguard Good Friday-Belfast Agreement co-operation. The second recommendation is that common frameworks be developed between the UK, Northern Ireland and Ireland in order to safeguard agreement co-operation. Third, an independent environmental regulator should be established, having responsibility for Northern Ireland, as part of the terms of any future relationship to ensure the conditions required for continued environmental co-operation are safeguarded in the absence of EU enforcement in this area. The fourth recommendation is that funding streams for cross-Border co-operation continue to be guaranteed after Brexit. Fifth, should an Executive form in Northern Ireland, the North-South Ministerial Council should be re-established as a matter of priority and utilised as a vehicle for discussing policy and regulatory alignment on environmental matters falling within devolved competence. The sixth recommendation is to ensure the British-Irish Council be allocated sufficient resources and that it prioritise maintaining common environmental policy between Ireland and Northern Ireland, in order to safeguard environmental co-operation. Seventh, the British-Irish Intergovernmental Conference should be more effectively realised by allocation of a greater budget, a website, increased secretariat, more frequent meetings and any other resources needed to render it functional, and that maintaining common environmental policy be added to its remit. The eighth recommendation is that the Irish Government should emphasise the importance of any future Northern Ireland Government re-establishing the consultative civic forum to provide important policy input on environmental policy from civic society. The ninth recommendation is that the all-island consultative forum required by strand two be established as directed by the Good Friday Agreement. The tenth recommendation is that a Good Friday Agreement mechanism, a treaty body, be established on a legislative basis with responsibility for monitoring implementation of the agreement, interpreting its meaning and with a function of continuously mapping North-South co-operation.