Dr. Martin Mansergh:

I would like to respond to a couple of points, if that is okay. Seeing our ambassador to Canada there, I will say that Canada is a prime example of a country. If one goes to the history of the late 18th century, the assumption was that Canada and the United States would join together and be one. That has not happened and does not look as if it will happen. That is a caution against inevitability of neighbouring jurisdictions coming together.

I have a strong preference at this point for the gradual evolutionary path. Dr. McKee mentioned a discussion he and I had. If one thinks about Germany, I was in the embassy in Bonn during the Ostpolitik. That involved a lot of functional co-operation - cross-border, east-west co-operation, much of which took place under the table as opposed to out there in public - between the Federal Republic of Germany, FRG, which was far wealthier, and the German Democratic Republic, GDR. I remember reporting back to home about a book which claimed that the GDR was the tenth member of the EEC at the time. My point is that the Ostpolitik itself did not bring about German unity, which came about for other reasons, namely, a more general political-economic collapse, but the fact that it had been there was helpful in building a united Germany afterwards in that there had been some habit of co-operation and so on. The same is true with North-South co-operation. The single island economy is, in itself, a good value but if we were to move for other reasons to a united Ireland, the fact that it had taken place would be distinctly helpful.

Obviously, when we are talking about an Irish unity referendum, we are talking about something enormously bigger than, say, the Brexit referendum across the water. I would have two concerns about it, particularly if it were to happen before the conditions are properly satisfied. One of these goes back to Canada. Quebec has had two referendums on independence at considerable intervals apart and both were defeated. I am not aware, but maybe Dr. McKee is, of further discussion about a third referendum. A defeat, whether by a small or large margin, of a border poll would not be helpful to the longer term aim of a united Ireland. That is my firm conviction. There is another view that one would have a poll and then another poll and so on. The British Government may not grant a poll in less than seven years afterwards but it does not mean to say that it is obliged to do so. The committee will be aware of the argument that has been used in relation to Scotland that its referendum was for a generation.

My other concern, if I could quote a sentence from Professor Brendan O'Leary's relatively new book, Making Sense of a United Ireland, is that "Unifying Ireland in referendums must be done carefully to avoid civil war, let alone state collapse." I presume by the term "state collapse", Professor O'Leary means in the North rather than here. If we go at it too hard or too fast, we are dealing with something that could be very dangerous to what has been achieved. A lot has been achieved, and not only south of the Border in the Republic. There are people, including people from nationalist and republican backgrounds, who are proud of what has been achieved, especially economically and development-wise, in Northern Ireland over the past 20 years.

My apologies to the Senator. To come to his question on decommissioning, the huge irony is that when the ceasefires were first announced on 31 August 1994 the message coming from Sinn Féin was "Momentum, momentum, momentum". This led to a fairly quick reopening of Border roads south of the Border, the release of prisoners, the organisation, with Mr. Wally Kirwan, of the Forum for Peace and Reconciliation, where the then Taoiseach, John Bruton, had the pleasure of meeting Gerry Adams for the first time, and the organisation of the Washington economic conference which brought out many of the community activists from west Belfast the following May.

Decommissioning was, first of all, used by the unionists after the joint framework documents were published as a means of slowing down the momentum. There had been incidents, such as the Newry post office murder on 9 November 1994, of which the Senator will be aware. The British Prime Minister, Mr. Major, was beginning to focus on decommissioning. The British had been very careful in the clarification they gave to 20 Sinn Féin questions. After the Downing Street Declaration, they did not want to provide clarification. They had been very careful and fully realised before the ceasefire that to put the decommissioning upfront would have been more than the traffic would bear.

I have come to the conclusion, both from what I have heard from Fr. Reid and comments I have read, that maybe there was at least momentary consideration of some decommissioning in early 1995 but it was pretty quickly dismissed. Clearly, it was only going to happen in the context of a wider agreement. Even then, it was difficult. The phraseology about decommissioning in the Good Friday Agreement is what one might call "weak and aspirational" and did not really commit anybody to much more than best efforts.

The reason decommissioning happened was that in the end, if Sinn Féin wanted to participate in devolved government for any length of time on a sustained basis, it would have to bite it. I remember once being asked on local radio if I trusted the Sinn Féin leadership, to which my reply was that I trusted the necessities it was under. Sinn Féin wanted to be in government and in the end the weapons had to be let go. I remember Government officials in a little steering group, which included me, Paddy Teahon, Tim Dalton, the then Secretary General of the Department of Justice and Equality, and whoever was in charge in the Department of Foreign Affairs, which was Dermot Gallagher to begin with, being told that anyone who thinks that decommissioning would happen was living in cloud cuckoo land.

There is no doubt that held things up but then there was a subtle tactical shift, in about 1999, because there was the question of the Patten report on the new Police Service of Northern Ireland. There was legislation. The point is that under unionist pressure, by which I mean Ulster Unionist Party pressure primarily, Peter Mandelson, who came from what one might call pro-unionist Labour Party stock - Herbert Morrison, etc. - tried to pull back. We were equally firm. There was a kind of tug of war taking place. Mandelson had political problems of his own.

He had to resign at different points at least two or three times so he was not always on the team. It got back on track and I agree that the PSNI is one of the outstanding achievements of the agreement, which incidentally shows that in respect of the things people predicted would be very difficult if not impossible such as shared symbolism - the six symbols - they did agree an emblem for the PSNI without too much delay. Even symbolic things can be solved if the will is there.

In some ways, sticking out on policing was more acceptable to nationalist public opinion than sticking out on decommissioning. Policing was an issue on which the entire nationalist community and people outside Northern Ireland had views. Decommissioning related specifically to the republican movement and smaller factions. It was not something that was germane to the SDLP, for example. That did hold up the momentum. We had very regular meetings. When I was young, I could never understand how the Soviets and the US could sit for years across a table about nuclear disarmament, test ban treaties and so on. Having lived through the peace process, I understand it better because a lot of the time, you could go round and round the mulberry bush and not make any progress but at a certain point, a decision would be made on the other side that "okay, we've got the last drop out of the stone, we need to move forward on this", perhaps for wider tactical considerations so these problems did eventually get solved. Decommissioning involved the fuss that affected US opinion such as the so-called Colombia three and other issues later on such as the murder of Robert McCartney. The DUP had a reasonable position in saying that if you are going to be in government, the police service must be supported. The SDLP came to that conclusion quicker during the Weston Park talks in 2001 and got a lot of stick for it. Having attended one or two meetings in the North, my assessment was that the republican support was willing to move on policing several years before it did. It was a tactical decision to be taken.