Professor John Doyle:

Some things are certain. One thing that is certain is that no future Irish diplomat will leave the room agreeing to pay for both pensions and debt. There is zero likelihood of this. What we cannot predict is whether the British Government will completely renege on pensions. I think it is unlikely but it could. We would not agree to pay debt if that happened. If negotiations are tough, we might say we would take on €1 billion a year of debt allowing for asset transfers if the UK did the pensions. One of the reasons the UK would agree to do pensions is not only that it is a reputational issue, as it would be very damaging for it to walk away, but inevitably pensions decline every year if they are based on a historical legacy. People pass on. If it were only paying on the basis of the number of years a person may have contributed to a UK pension, it would be £3.8 billion in year one and 40 years later, it would be zero as sure as night follows day. However, if it agreed to contribute £4 billion a year as a legacy peace and reconciliation contribution, as any civil servant in the Department of Finance would say, it is very hard to get that £4 billion out of the budget. It would look terrible to abandon it the year before. I imagine Treasury officials would be very reluctant to commit an amount of money over which they have no political control in future. However, agreeing to pay pensions means it would disappear after a while. It would be much more palatable to Treasury officials.