OFFICIAL REPORT (Hansard)

Committee for The Executive Office OFFICIAL REPORT (Hansard) The EU and Irish Unity: Mr Mark Bassett and Professor Colin Harvey 28 April 2021 NORTHERN IRELAND ASSEMBLY Committee for The Executive Office The EU and Irish Unity: Mr Mark Bassett and Professor Colin Harvey 28 April 2021 Members present for all or part of the proceedings: Mr Colin McGrath (Chairperson) Mr Doug Beattie (Deputy Chairperson) Ms Martina Anderson Mr Trevor Lunn Ms Emma Sheerin Witnesses: Mr Mark Bassett Bar of Northern Ireland Professor Colin Harvey Queen's University Belfast The Chairperson (Mr McGrath): I welcome Mr Mark Bassett, Bar of Northern Ireland barrister, and Professor Colin Harvey from the School of Law at Queen's University. They have prepared a written [Inaudible owing to poor sound quality.] Thank you for coming along to give us an update on your report. If you are happy to do so, begin with a short presentation, and we will follow that with a question and answer session. Are you happy with that? Professor Colin Harvey (Queen's University Belfast): Thank you, Chair, and good afternoon. I will start, and my colleague, Mark Bassett, will follow. I thank the Chair, Deputy Chair and Committee members for the invitation to provide a briefing to the Executive Office Committee. We appreciate the opportunity that you have given us to address you. Our aim in this briefing is to assist all participants in these debates by offering an evidence-based assessment of key themes that fall within our areas of expertise. We have provided a written opening statement, which we hope is helpful. Our independent research report, 'The EU and Irish Unity: Planning and Preparing for Constitutional Change in Ireland', was launched in the European Parliament in October 2019. We have given evidence on our findings to the Oireachtas Joint Committee on the Implementation of the Good Friday Agreement. The report needs to be read in light of other work that Mark and I have undertaken and the legal and policy developments since we submitted it. We have included in annex B to our written statement selected examples of additional material that we hope will be of interest to the Committee. Members will note that we have written that material in as an accessible way as we could in responding to questions around the process. Although the report was written some time ago, our core recommendations, many of which were addressed to EU institutions, remain relevant. The document's emphasis on planning and preparing for constitutional change has, we believe, clearly informed the framing of the conversation and discussion since then. This afternoon, we reiterate that our contribution to the debate is intended to assist all political parties and communities across these islands that are contemplating the possible implications of constitutional change here, in line with the Good Friday Agreement. 1 We have included in annex A to the written document extracts from relevant texts that highlight the existing and established constitutional position. It is clear that Northern Ireland remains part of the UK and that that position will change only in the way outlined in the Good Friday Agreement and as reflected in domestic law, policy and practice in both states. In our view, nothing contained in the withdrawal agreement, the Ireland/Northern Ireland protocol or the Trade and Cooperation Agreement (TCA) alters the constitutional status of Northern Ireland. Our aim this afternoon is to focus on the main themes in our report, with particular emphasis on what you will all be aware is an intensifying debate about the constitutional future of the island. As Committee members will know, that discussion is becoming much more detailed and much more focused, with a proliferating number of civic and political projects and initiatives. In recent weeks, for example, we have seen Jim O'Callaghan TD, Fianna Fáil, and Neale Richmond TD, Fine Gael, providing detailed thoughts, for public discussion, on what future arrangements might look like. That collective effort includes valuable ongoing work by colleagues in universities across these islands and beyond. I acknowledge and commend that work, which will be useful for the Committee to draw on in its work going forward. We very much welcome those developments, many of which started after we submitted our report. We encourage others, including the Committee, to contribute to what is, essentially, our basic premise and starting point. Our view is that satisfactory planning and preparation need to take place before these referendums happen on the island. Whatever your view on the constitutional future — we are well aware that there are different views — there is merit in encouraging and supporting exploratory work on all of the relevant possible outcomes. If there is to be mutual respect, equal treatment and parity of esteem for divergent constitutional objectives in this society, relevant and appropriate contingency planning needs to be undertaken by the Executive Office, Ministers and their Departments on all potential constitutional eventualities facing the region. We are pleased to see what we believe is a widespread and growing acceptance of the need for sensible and responsible preparation and what appears to be a measure of convergence among some on a possible time frame for giving people a choice. As you will be aware, the agreement contemplates Irish reunification following concurrent referendums in both jurisdictions on the island. The process is underpinned by international law, and the promise of self-determination is a central feature of the constitutional arrangements of Ireland and the United Kingdom. Following Brexit, reunification is further recognised as a matter of international law in the "without prejudice" provision in article 1 of the protocol. The constitutional status of Northern Ireland will alter only in the way prescribed in the Good Friday Agreement, and the language of status change there refers explicitly to the option of a united Ireland. We want to underline this point again for the Committee, and this follows on from what we heard in the earlier session: the constitutional status of Northern Ireland has not changed as a consequence of anything that has happened in the Brexit negotiations. We have outlined elsewhere our preferred approach going forward. We draw the Committee's attention to the important and significant work of civic initiatives that we are involved in, such as Ireland's Future and the Constitutional Conversations Group. We have offered publicly a view on what we believe a good faith interpretation of the agreement requires of the process, and we have provided further details in annex B of our document. We remain concerned by the attempts to erode and undermine key elements of the agreed process. We recognise that there are areas where more work is required to promote clarity and certainty. Again, the spirit in which we undertake this work is our continuing insistence on the need for necessary preparations that must take place in advance of the referendums envisaged in the agreement happening on the island. In addition to the work that I have just noted, I have written, as many of you may be aware, in a personal capacity to the Secretary of State on a number of occasions to seek answers to detailed questions on his role in relation to the provisions of the Northern Ireland Act. Thus far, I have received three responses from the Northern Ireland Office, and I note that a further response was received last week, which was after the submission of our written opening statement. I have forwarded these to Committee members. Essentially, like the other work that I noted this afternoon, the letters are an attempt to seek clarification on significant aspects of the referendum process and the role of the Secretary of State. In our view, these matters of preparation, planning and sensible management are of interest to all political parties and communities here. We hope that you will find them of assistance and value. My 2 colleague, Mark Bassett, will now take you through the rest of our opening statement, and I thank you again for the invitation to brief you this afternoon. Mr Mark Bassett (Bar of Northern Ireland): Good afternoon, Chair, and members of the Committee. Chair, I also thank you and your colleagues for the opportunity to present the report and take questions on it. The focus of the report is [Inaudible owing to poor sound quality.] It tries to look at Irish reunification from the EU perspective. The whole point is that, after reading the report, those who are familiar with British and Irish constitutional law and the Good Friday Agreement will have learned something about how this issue is viewed in EU law. On the other hand, it is also, hopefully, of assistance to EU lawyers and politicians in the European institutions [Inaudible owing to poor sound quality] will learn something about the Good Friday Agreement and how it is implemented and given effect in Irish and British constitutional law. The —. The Chairperson (Mr McGrath): Mark, we have a very bad connection. It was beginning to rectify itself, but I think that most members will have struggled to have picked up much of what you have said so far. I suggest that you go back to the start. If the connection does not improve, we may need to assess things. Mr Bassett: Yes. Is that any better? The Chairperson (Mr McGrath): I am certainly struggling. I do not think that the connection is working, Mark. Mr Bassett: Apologies. The Chairperson (Mr McGrath): Will you take a second to log out and in again? We will pass to Colin for a minute to give us an update on another issue. If you dip out and back in, that might get us a better connection.

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