{"id":134307,"date":"2025-11-11T17:01:08","date_gmt":"2025-11-11T17:01:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/134307\/"},"modified":"2025-11-11T17:01:08","modified_gmt":"2025-11-11T17:01:08","slug":"island-of-ireland-is-not-ready-for-a-unification-referendum-says-former-tanaiste-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/134307\/","title":{"rendered":"Island of Ireland is \u2018not ready\u2019 for a unification referendum, says former t\u00e1naiste \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

The island of Ireland is not \u201cready\u201d for a unification referendum and calls to have one quickly are \u201can overstretch\u201d, former t\u00e1naiste and minister for foreign affairs Dick Spring has told a Belfast<\/a> conference.<\/p>\n

Speaking at a Queen\u2019s University Belfast gathering to mark the 40th anniversary of the Anglo-Irish Agreement<\/a> in 1985, Mr Spring urged political leaders of today \u201cto jump one fence at a time\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe most remarkable thing that has happened is that the guns are silenced. Let\u2019s take that as a huge achievement. The guns are silenced and people are into democratic politics. Let us make Northern Ireland<\/a> work. <\/p>\n

\u201cLet us develop relationships with the South, economic relationships in particular. We can benefit, North and South can benefit tremendously co-operating on economic matters. But let\u2019s not try to overstretch. <\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think that we\u2019re ready for a referendum [on unification], or for debates. There\u2019s an awful lot of work to be done. It\u2019s a long way away,\u201d Mr Spring said.<\/p>\n

His declaration comes just days after Northern Ireland Secretary of State, Hilary Benn<\/a> said a border poll is \u201cway off in the distance\u201d, because no one is \u201carguing that there is an appetite for constitutional change\u201d.<\/p>\n

The Queen\u2019s conference was well attended, including by diplomats who played a key role in the negotiation of the 1985 agreement, notably retired foreign affairs officials, Michael Lillis, Noel Dorr and Sean Donlon.<\/p>\n

Highlighting the importance of the agreement signed on November 15th, 1985, Mr Spring said it gave Dublin a voice in Northern Ireland\u2019s affairs for the first time \u2013 something denied for years by London.<\/p>\n

Praising Fine Gael\u2019s Garret FitzGerald, Mr Spring went on: \u201cI will forever say that it probably couldn\u2019t have happened without Garret. He had huge powers of persuasion with Margaret Thatcher. She was very reluctant.\u201d<\/p>\n

Primarily seeking greater help from Dublin against the IRA, Mrs Thatcher had \u201csome very funny ideas\u201d, he went on, believing that Catholics and Protestants could be forcibly moved to different counties within Northern Ireland.<\/p>\n

\u201cSomebody mentioned Cromwell in the conversation … that that had been done before, not very successfully,\u201d said the former leader of the Labour Party: \u201cUltimately, I think, it was Garret\u2019s persuasion all the way.\u201d<\/p>\n

One of the agreement\u2019s key architects, former foreign affairs official Michael Lillis, spoke of his early contacts with a leading British official, the late David Goodall.<\/p>\n

During a famous stroll along the Grand Canal in 1983, Mr Lillis proposed that garda\u00ed and Irish soldiers, along with judges from the Republic should operate in Northern Ireland to give nationalists confidence.<\/p>\n

His ideas were seen as \u201ccrazy\u201d by London, he said, but they were designed \u201cto wake the British up\u201d because they did not want to hear anything from Dublin: \u201cSo, you had to present them with something which was a bit shocking, and I did that deliberately.\u201d<\/p>\n

Explaining how US president Ronald Reagan\u2019s support was gained, Mr Lillis\u2019s colleague, Sean Donlon told of how he secretly briefed three people in Washington, including House speaker Thomas Phillip \u201cTip\u201d O\u2019Neill and Democratic senator Ted Kennedy.<\/p>\n

However, the third crucial person is little known here, a Republican called Bill Clark who was \u201can old friend of Reagan\u2019s from the Californian days\u201d.<\/p>\n

He was deeply interested in Ireland, even though he had \u201cabsolutely\u201d no Irish blood, but had spent his honeymoon in Monaghan with his German wife.<\/p>\n

That \u201cgave him roots in Ireland\u201d, said Mr Donlon. Later, he bought a house in Malahide, kept horses in Ireland and had a private aeroplane in Dublin Airport.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The island of Ireland is not \u201cready\u201d for a unification referendum and calls to have one quickly are…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":134308,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[78169,4501,9686,8937,65,61,60,78170,43,2443],"class_list":["post-134307","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-anglo-irish-agreement","tag-belfast","tag-common-ground","tag-garret-fitzgerald","tag-hilary-benn","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-margaret-thatcher","tag-news","tag-northern-ireland"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134307","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=134307"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134307\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/134308"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=134307"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=134307"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=134307"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}