H.E. Dr. Eamonn McKee:

It is a great honour to be here. I well remember Wally in the castle complex, bearing the burden of the North-South negotiations. It is great to see Wally. When I saw “Walter Kirwan”, I asked who Walter was, because we all know and love him as Wally. It is great to see him. I also remember Dr. Martin Mansergh shouldering the burden of Articles 2 and 3 of the Constitution in the run-up to the negotiations. It is great to see Martin as well. I am very honoured to be in their company and in the company of all the witnesses who have been called here.

The committee has my statement. The main point I want to make, which is illustrated by what we have here today, is the continuity of expertise developed within the Department of Foreign Affairs and the Department of the Taoiseach, in particular the expertise required to manage the Northern Ireland peace process. This goes back to the Anglo-Irish agreement of 1985, which I think was very important because it established the co-operation between the two Governments in a formal way. It had an agenda dealing with the causes of the conflict.

It set up a network - a community - of officials between London and Dublin that supported and got to know each other and became a mainstay of the continuity of effort to bring about peace.

The other point I make in my statement is that the Department of Foreign Affairs ran a very successful human resource strategy, which meant that people were circulated through the Anglo-Irish division. When the time came up for postings, we would be posted to London, Washington, Boston or the other consulates. This made sure that by the time we had the negotiations on the Good Friday Agreement, we were all pretty expert in the areas that were under our responsibility, which helped as well. The process between the Anglo-Irish Agreement of 1985 and the Good Friday Agreement at intergovernmental level meant that an awful lot of the issues that we were dealing with and that were causing conflict had been addressed. We addressed issues in terms of the administration of justice, job discrimination, public appointments and so on. By the time we got to the Good Friday Agreement, many of those issues were dealt with. Of course, we broadly knew the outline of what the settlement was going to be. It was going to have the three strands, as defined and envisioned by John Hume. John Hume and the Social Democratic and Labour Party, SDLP, leadership, all through the ranks, were absolutely critical to the efforts that we made in steering Northern Ireland towards peace.

I refer to the role of the travellers. When the Anglo-Irish Agreement was established in 1985, to service the intergovernmental conference, we needed travellers dedicated to certain areas so that when we met in conference, our senior politicians and Ministers knew what they were talking about. Our travellers engaged with a whole range of stakeholders – NGOs, politicians, solicitors and lawyers who were involved in human rights cases, SDLP politicians and republican and local activists. All of this illustrates that the Good Friday Agreement was not just, as somebody once said, a few good men in a room; it was a collective effort of an enormous number of people who took risks for peace at all levels of society. Through the traveller system, we tapped into those and reported back so that we knew what was going on. This created a huge continuity of expertise in managing the peace process and dealing with things.

In looking back on it, it reminds us all, and while I just referred to some of the kind of violent incidents around Bloody Sunday, that this was pretty continuous throughout the decades. These were very grim times for an awful lot of people. Often in the peace process, we would be essentially in Iveagh House and get surprised or ambushed by events in Northern Ireland and have to deal with them. However, as Seán Ó hUiginn, one of the heads of the Anglo-Irish division used to used to say, we had a duty of hope to keep going, and so on.

We had many partners in Northern Ireland and Washington. In my time in the embassy in Washington between 1990 and 1996, I got to see up close the degree of support that we enjoyed within Congress, in terms of the Friends of Ireland. Senator Edward Kennedy was an absolute giant when it came to supporting Ireland on Northern Ireland and all other kinds of issues. There was definitely a step change when it came to the Clinton administration. We had established connections with him and his staff through Dermot Gallagher, who was ambassador at the time, and Brendan Scannell, who was political director. We had this support for the peace process through President Clinton, which has been well documented but is well worth underlining because it was so important.

The expertise that we had and that continuity of effort paid dividends when it came not only to negotiating the Good Friday Agreement, but implementing it. The process required - I think as of now it is 29 agreements and counting - to implement the agreement. While we can think about the difficulties in restoring the institutions, so much progress has been made across a whole range of fronts, particularly on policing. That has made a great difference and created a sense of stability inside Northern Ireland.

Mr. Kirwan, Dr. Mansergh and I represent a range of officials who were part of a decades-long effort beginning in 1985. However, it could be said it began with the Haughey-Thatcher summits in the early 1980s, where both governments agreed to co-operate in finding a solution to Northern Ireland and that Northern Ireland was not just a security issue.

After my time in Washington, I came back again into the security and justice area, where we dealt with areas such as policing and the administration of justice. Dermot Ahern, the Minister at the time, asked me to set up a conflict resolution unit. We did some work there around the world, sharing lessons on the peace process. Since then, I have enjoyed postings as ambassador to Korea, Israel and, currently, Canada.

The committee has my fuller statement and I am happy to answer any questions.