Brendan Smith warns trust eroding over British policy and institutions

Thank you very much, and Jonathan, I want to, like the previous speaker, Senator Blaney and our chairman, compliment you on the work that you did working with Mr Blair as his chief of staff and chief negotiator, your commitment to the advancement of peace on this island and your continued interest and good commentary and very impartial commentary that you give through the media at different times. Just as a former senior person who worked both at an official level with the British government as a diplomat and then working as Mr Blair's chief of staff, your comments today in regard to the foreign policy pursued by Mr Johnston's government is fairly stark, to say the least. You use a few phrases there that I totally agree with from my limited knowledge of British foreign policy. You talk about the unilateral action, how damaging it is that the British government are proposing to break international law. That they are undermining their own country's international reputation, that they are alienating North American and European allies, a possibility of potentially triggering a trade war, and you outline then the difficulties that are created for the political institutions here as a result of the policies implemented, being pursued by this government. That is a fairly stark message coming from a former senior British diplomat and a person who worked at the highest level in politics in Britain as well, speaking to an Irish parliamentary committee and I welcome your very clear message and the clarity you deliver in that message. But it is fairly worrying for us because, as has been said by my colleagues, relations between Ireland and Britain now are at a very low level. I think one thing that those of us who were in politics during that era, the one message that came across, and again as the second, one of the last words you used in your initial contribution, was the need for trust. There was obviously great trust between John Major and Albert Reynolds at the time, and then subsequently with Mr Blair and Bertie Aherdon. We listened to some of the Irish diplomats who were involved in negotiations at that time as well. The one message that I got was that you will not make progress unless there is trust between the heads of government, and that I presume permeates down then at official level. If there is not trust at political level at the heads of government between the respective ministers of the different administrations, then the official system will be poisoned as well in regard to the lack of trust between officials working on both sides of the Irish Sea as well. So, bearing that in mind, would you lay a huge emphasis on the progress being made because of trust between governments at the time, at official level and at political level, and particularly at heads of government level? With your experience now, the unionist parties have trusted successive Conservative governments by and large. Do you think they will continue to have trust in Mr Johnston, seeing that a lot of the commitments that have been made have not yet been honoured? And we know that today, sadly, this country, and indeed all our islands suffer because we do not have the political institutions that were established under the Good Friday Agreement, endorsed North and South in referenda, that we do not have those operational, fully functioning on behalf of the people. Now, so the will of the people is not being implemented in Northern Ireland due to the institutions not being in place. So, again, a sincere thanks for your contribution in the past and your ongoing commentary as well. Thank you, Oka Heerlich. Thank you very much. And I think you put your finger on the crucial issue, which is trust. You know, just as we spent a decade building trust, the current government is spending its time destroying trust, which is just catastrophic, really. And I really do regret very deeply the state of bilateral relations, which is terrible, totally unnecessary. My only comfort I take is that it can be restored, I think, very quickly. That it is, if you like, ad hominem rather than about the country's concerns. And any new British government, I think, whatever party, would do its best to rebuild relations because they're so important and rebuild that trust. So, I certainly hope I'm right in saying that. In terms of trust in the Good Friday Agreement, I think it's the crucial point in a way. It is true that John Major built a very good relationship with Albert Reynolds. And there was a good deal of trust between officials or senior officials on both sides. As I said, there was a little frisson still of, I remember some British officials talking about how green Irish officials were and things like that. Interestingly, once you move to the Blair government, and Tony says this, and I think he's right, that it was a new generation. Both he and Bertie O'Hearn didn't quite have the burden of history that someone from a previous generation, like a Thatcher or whatever, would have on Irish questions. For them, there was a much more open mind. And they saw the need to get to peace and to get Northern Ireland politics working properly and remove this poison of identity from it. And I think, firstly, building that trust with Bertie was crucial because he was able to work seamlessly with him. Bertie didn't think we were trying to pull something over on him at any stage, and we weren't, and vice versa. And then me building my relations with Paddy Tihan in the Taoiseach's office, later with Michael Collins, and, of course, at every level of government. Because, as you say, once you've got good relations between the principles, it's much easier to have good relations all the way down the official chain. I think it was also important that we were running this Northern Ireland thing from Number 10. I mean, sometimes we were criticised for that, but I think it was a symbol of how important getting to peace in Northern Ireland was to Tony Blair. That he wanted it to take up a good deal of time with himself, with his chief of staff, of Number 10. And one of the problems we have now is that Number 10 is sort of largely backed out of Irish questions, except when it comes to being destructive with the protocol. And I think that's a mistake. I think it is important for Number 10 to stay involved. Beyond that, it was then important for the trust to be built with the parties. And I think Mo Molem, who I'd like to pay tribute to, played a very important role in building trust with nationalists, in particular, after the election. You know, she was very different from her predecessors, who were good men, but very much in the mould of guards, officers, rather than a more normal representative of the British public. And I think that Mo managed to really break a lot of ice in opinions in Northern Ireland. And I think, I always think of Mo as a sufficient, necessary, but not sufficient cause of peace. If we hadn't had her, it would have been very difficult to build that trust. It was also important to build the trust on the unionist side. And Tony Blair did devote a lot of time, as did I, to trying to build that relationship of trust with the unionists. And he spent really a lot of time sitting, talking to political leaders. So, I do think that without that investment in building trust, in fact, there's an anecdote later on in the negotiations, I think illustrates it, that when we were trying to get the DUP into a peace agreement after they won the elections in Northern Ireland, we actually, we were in Leeds Castle and the whole thing fell apart, as you remember, when we were trying to get the Good Friday Agreement implemented, and before we got to the St Andrew's Agreement. And I remember going, Tony and I going up to one of the bedrooms there and sitting on a four-poster bed with Peter Robinson, saying, well, how are we going to do this? And he said, what you've got to do is you've got to build trust with Ian Paisley. And what you need to do is see him and talk to him and talk to him about not just politics, but about religion and all those things. And Tony Blair then devoted hundreds of hours, you know, literally hundreds of hours, to sitting with Ian Paisley and actually talking about things like faith and matters relating to religion rather than politics. And that played an important part of building trust with Paisley so we were able eventually to get to St Andrew's Agreement. So I think you're right in saying that trust was central to what happened then, and the destruction of trust, to be honest, is the tragedy of what's happened now. Thank you.