Brendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour) | Oireachtas source

The road to the Good Friday Agreement of April 1998 was long and difficult. Success was not certain. Right up to the final hours, it was unclear that an agreement could be reached. In the end, led by the chairperson of the talks, Senator George Mitchell, an historic settlement was reached. It mapped out a peaceful route to addressing the issues of divided sovereignty, policing, paramilitarism, discrimination and shared government - issues that had, up to that point, cost 3,500 lives and caused untold misery.

I remember the early briefings I attended in 1993 by Albert Reynolds and Dick Spring and the prospect and hope that there could be an historic advance. When that was finally reached, it was said that the agreement was a critical milestone in an ongoing journey. It was not the endpoint but simply a way point in a journey. However, it meant that for the overwhelming majority of people, North and South, political matters thereafter would be addressed not by strength of arms but by strength of argument. So many people played a part in reaching this achievement, which was overwhelmingly endorsed in referendums North and South, and of course involved changes to our own Constitution here.

The agreement is a complex one for those who read it carefully. It is still being worked through in all its detail. It involved two separate documents: a multi-party agreement signed by most but not all parties in Northern Ireland at the time, and an international binding agreement between the sovereign Governments of Great Britain and Ireland. It involved, as John Hume, one of the key architects always envisaged, three sets of relationships, three strands: relationships within Northern Ireland; relationships between Northern Ireland and the Republic; and relationships between the Republic of Ireland and the United Kingdom. It is right and appropriate that we remember and salute all those who helped make this agreement possible: John Hume, David Trimble, Gerry Adams, Bertie Ahern, Tony Blair, Mo Mowlam, David Andrews, Senator George Mitchell, Monica McWilliams and the Northern Ireland Women's Coalition, and many more who had a part in the journey towards that historic day.

It is however more important and more urgent that we look forward now. Peace can never be taken for granted and the plain facts are that the institutions created by the Good Friday Agreement have not functioned as they should or as they had been envisaged and are continuing not to function; foremost, the internal governance structures and institutions of Northern Ireland itself, and the Northern Ireland Assembly and the Executive. As we speak in this debate, neither the Executive nor the Assembly is in place or working. That is both dangerous and undermining of the very fabric of the Agreement that we celebrate with great pride 25 years later.

On the 20th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement, in April 2018, the former deputy leader of the SDLP, Seamus Mallon, another key player in bringing this agreement about, described his anger and sadness at the state of politics then. He accused the DUP and Sinn Féin of creating political silos and almost Balkanising the country, as he put it. The agreement was meant to allow a space of peace and calm for people and communities to grow together. Too often, the focus has been on emphasising difference and division since.

There is no denying that Brexit has been an enormous destabiliser of the relationships between the United Kingdom and Ireland, and within Northern Ireland. There is no escaping that. The Brexit programme was carried out without regard to the impact it would have on this island and its people. The fact that it was pursued in its most virulent form by those who came to power in the United Kingdom after the referendum has added immeasurably to that damage, but that is the reality of the circumstances we must face. We must all try harder to understand better each other's point of view, but much more importantly than mere understanding, we must respect. It is not good enough simply to listen, we must hear. We must have inclusive education, real cultural involvement, and revisit the obstacles to the peace of mind of other people, to understand what causes them fundamental upset. Even if we do not understand it fully, we need to engage to try to understand it, and to remove those obstacles to people's peace of mind if we can. Peace is more than the absence of war, and maintaining peace requires as much work, sweat and commitment as were involved by those who achieved it in the first place.

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