Mr. Tim O'Connor:

I thank the Senator for his comments. I worked very closely with Jim Gibney in the Forum for Peace and Reconciliation. This goes back a long way.

The Senator poses a challenging question about the loss of institutional memory. A few points come to mind, one of which is the interaction between political leadership and officials. What is that relationship? It changes at different times. It can vary depending on the personalities involved. From 37 or 38 years of experience in the public service, I would say that ultimately, the big-picture directions of travel are decided on by the politicians. I say this with all due respect to us civil servants, who have a very important role to play.

I recall, for instance, the build up to the Anglo-Irish Agreement in 1985. Some British civil servants played a critical role in bringing Margaret Thatcher to the signing of the agreement at Hillsborough on 15 November 1985. I am speaking in particular of people like her Cabinet Secretary, Robert Armstrong, as well as David Goodall who was also in the British Cabinet Office and in the British Foreign Office. They had institutional memory. They were key. Yet, in my experience, the decisive moves always come at political level. There are clearly big ideological battles going on. In the current British Government, and they are entitled to this in democratic terms, there is a particular ideological direction of travel being driven. That is being driven at a political level, in my observation. I know from my experience, and God bless the Civil Service and anybody who is trying to intervene there. That is what I would say about that.

For me, as a citizen, that raises the question about the agreements that have been reached in the past. What do we make of these, as opposed to the high politics of today, where people have given a mandate to politicians to do what they say they want to do? I see a conflict of mandates and referendums at play. I say this because there was a referendum in 1998 for the people in Northern Ireland, the people in the South and for the whole island. They validated and approved this. Then there was a referendum in 2016, which was absolutely valid as well. The implications of the two referendums are in some degrees in conflict with each other in respect of Northern Ireland. However, they are two valid expressions of the will of the people. That is my view of what is going on. I am choosing my words carefully here because I want to be respectful to everybody. There is a view that is now being expressed and implemented. It partially calls into question what exactly we agreed to in regard to certain matters in 1998.

I return to the issue of architecture. I believe we are coming up against the difficulties and complexities of creative ambiguity. We drafted certain issues on the basis to find an agreement between irreconcilables. Language has been put together here which, in some instances, is ambiguous. However, it had to be ambiguous with the constructive view to get agreements.