Mr. Tim O'Connor:

They are very fair questions. With regard to the architecture and checks and balances, we knew in the negotiations that we had no history of co-operation between the two states on the island since 1922. We had never cracked it. Here we are, 70 years later, and that is a long time of back to back. That is a long time of nothing. Therefore, in design terms, there was a real issue as to how we were going to find a way to crack that and get through. We kind of knew, and we certainly hoped very strongly, that North-South co-operation and cross-Border co-operation makes sense and will bring the benefits, but we had no way of actually demonstrating that because we had no data and no evidence. We were saying, “Give us a chance.” That is why the checks and the balances were important. Let us be blunt. Unionism would always have seen cross-Border co-operation as a Trojan horse for a united Ireland, or that is the cliché. Even in the negotiations, David Trimble's position, which is on the record, was, “We don't want any institutions. The Executive in Belfast and the Irish Government will co-operate ad hocand we do not want any institutional expression of cross-Border co-operation.” That was not acceptable. In the back-and-forth and in the negotiations, there was agreement and that got cracked by saying we will have a North-South Ministerial Council, there will be an institutional expression of the relationship between North and South and there will be a framework for that.

It was then agreed there would be at least 12 areas of co-operation, six through existing mechanisms and at least six through new bodies. Why six and six? It is because that is what the market would bear and because that is what the deal required. Those checks and balances were then built in. As a Minister, Ms Gildernew would have been through that and will know the checks and balances. A unionist Minister is always accompanied by a nationalist Minister and vice versa. All of those checks and balances were built in.

As somebody who was the civil servant then, I remember executing the first three or four years of it. Unfortunately, we had the suspension from late 2002 onwards but, between 1999 and 2002, we had 65 meetings of the North-South Ministerial Council, from a place of nothing for 70 years. I am a witness to that and I saw what it was like. Once we got the architecture going, people just came and it got working. We had some nice meetings in Enniskillen in Fermanagh. I can remember a meeting around environmental issues with the environment Ministers, Sam Foster and Noel Dempsey, on beautiful Belle Isle. I can remember the mood. People felt comfortable and we could get on with the issues.

There is no debate about Mr. Quinn’s point that this could be done better. What is encouraging for me, as a Southerner who is a nerd in all of this, is the way organisations like IBEC, the CBI and the ESRI are very heavily involved now and are saying in the mainstream that "the island" makes sense. We are going to have to find a way. Unfortunately, the architecture has got jumbled, so I am afraid that is back to the politicians, but what we are bringing to the table is that this works.

On the lost opportunity of Dublin and London, in my opening statement I talked about the centrality of the approach of the two Governments. There is one counter-intuitive point about what happened from 2008, 2009 and 2010 and then onwards to 2012. There was a view that now that there was an Executive and Assembly in Northern Ireland and Ministers had their own mandates, there was a way in which a maturing was taking place. If we take this as involving Belfast, Dublin and London, then Belfast had to be given the freedom to get on with it. We can understand that. We cannot be thinking of London and Dublin as the parents. It was time to step back and give it a chance to breathe. There was a bit of that. Of course, what happened then is that life intervened. We had the recession and the crash and people dealing with other issues, but there was a benign reason one could say the eye was taken off the ball. There was a benign kind of rationale there.

Where I completely agree with Mr. Quinn, and I am speaking personally now, is that when the problems arise, as they are arising right now, it has to be the two Governments back together again. I regret that that is not the case at the moment because when difficulties arise of the nature we have now, they can only be resolved with the starting point of the two Governments.