§ 7. Mr. MallonTo ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland when he last had discussions with the representatives of the Government of the Republic of Ireland about political progress in Northern Ireland.
§ Mr. BrookeI last met the Irish Foreign Minister, Mr. Collins, on 11 March.
§ Mr. MallonI very much welcome the Secretary of State's statement today and I am glad that a final draft is being put to the parties, not least because 14 months is a long time—it feels like 400 years—for the discussions. Does the Secretary of State agree that, if negotiations take place, as I hope, they will be based on the three sets of relationships that we discussed in great detail during the previous talks? Does he further agree that it is only on the basis of those three sets of relationships that a workable and lasting arrangement can be found?
§ Mr. BrookeI am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for what he said, and I share his sense of the passage of time. I do not mean to be discouraging when I say that the 100 years war went on for 116 years.
The three sets of relationships have informed all the discussions that we have had, and I agree with the hon. Gentleman that they seem to be the best basis for such talks in terms of securing widespread acceptance.
§ Mr. BellinghamWhen the Secretary of State had these discussions with his Irish republican counterparts, was extradition on the agenda? Can he say exactly whether the new extradition arrangements are working properly?
§ Mr. BrookeI am not sure that extradition per se falls into the category of political progress, which is the question that the hon. Member for Newry and Armagh (Mr. Mallon) asked me; but in the meetings that we have at the Intergovernmental Conference under the Anglo-Irish Agreement, extradition is of course discussed, and there are exchanges in both directions.
§ Mr. TrimbleI should like to refer the Secretary of State to Tuesday's Irish Times, in which Mr. John Bruton, the leader of Fine Gael, the second largest party in the Irish Republic, is reported to have said:
The deletion by the Irish Government"—
§ Mr. SpeakerOrder. Paraphrase it, please.
§ Mr. TrimbleI am sorry, Mr. Speaker.
I should like to refer the Secretary of State to Tuesday's Irish Times report in which Mr. John Bruton, the leader of Fine Gael, the second largest party in the Irish Republic, is reported to have said that the deletion by the Government of the Irish Republic of the reference to Northern Ireland's status as part of the United Kingdom from its latest proposals showed that the Irish Government's main objective was to try to arm-twist the Unionists into a united Ireland. This view is reinforced by a statement of Mr. Ahern, a member of the Dublin Cabinet, in which he said that any solution that did not provide for movement towards an all-Ireland unitary state would be unacceptable.
Is that, in the Secretary of State's view, consistent with the so-called recognition in article 1 of the Anglo-Irish Agreement? Is it one of the interests of the Irish Republic that he is trying to protect in his proposals?
§ Mr. BrookeThe text to which I referred in my answer to the right hon. Member for Strangford (Mr. Taylor) was composed subsequent to the Tuesday when the text to which the hon. Member has referred appeared in the Irish Times. Given that we now have a potential common text which I am putting to the leaders of all the parties and to the Irish Government, I do not think that we shall make a successful outcome more likely by engaging in retrospective argument about what has occurred in the past.
§ Mr. DickensDoes my right hon. Friend believe that Her Majesty's Government are putting as much urgency and energy into solving the Northern Ireland question politically and peacefully as they are putting into the search for a solution to the middle east question?
§ Mr. BrookeYes.