Professor Tamara Hervey:

I will quickly add to that before Professor Maher goes back to the other point. In British constitutional law, ordinary international law does not have any special constitutional status like EU law. In that sense, from the point of view of individuals holding rights, there is no difference between an MOU and an international agreement. The rights Irish citizens in the UK enjoy are there because of domestic UK law. Apart from membership of the EU, there is no way of holding the UK Government to account for future compliance with those undertakings. In that regard, I agree that an MOU gives clarity. There are all sorts of good political reasons for having a more public joint statement but legally speaking it is the specific bits of UK domestic law that give people rights and not anything else.