Northern Ireland: Topic 7 - Testing the agreement in practice

The ultimate test of an agreement is what happens in the process of implementation. How easy is it to implement? Are its provisions sufficiently flexible to deal with new situations and at the same time able to give the parties certainty and security that their interests are still protected? Its implementation may also expose issues and problems that were avoided or overlooked in the original negotiations. When the parties to the Belfast Agreement began to implement its provisions, problems began to appear. It must also be borne in mind that the best agreement can be undermined by the unwillingness of parties to make it work and some of these problems revealed continuing tensions and distrust between some of the parties, but they also revealed ambiguities in the provisions of the Agreement itself. Many of the problems related to some of the issues that were quickly decided in the last forty-eight hours before the Agreement was accepted.

The extracts below highlight some of these issues. It also raises questions about how far these difficulties could have been foreseen and dealt with in the original negotiations (see the final quote).

Exercise 1

1. On the basis of the extracts below identify the ambiguities in the Agreement. (10 minutes)

2. Working in small groups divide these issues into those which could have been clarified in the original Agreement and those on which the parties would not have been able to agree? (10 minutes)

3. Which of the ambiguities were adequately dealt with and which continued to be obstacles? Can you speculate on why some were easier to deal with in the end than others were? (20 minutes)

Exercise 2

The sequence in which different provisions came into effect has proved to be a crucial issue. As the third extract indicates some provisions were of interest to one party and some were of more interest to another. As all the provisions did not come into effect together this meant that some parties did not feel they were getting benefit from the Agreement as quickly as other parties.

1. In small groups use the extract below and the Summary of the Belfast Agreement to list the order in which the provisions of the Agreement were to be implemented. (15 minutes)

2. On your list mark which parties seem to have more interest in which provisions. (10 minutes)

3. Assess whether it appears to you that one or other party did get benefits more quickly than others. Discuss any differences of opinion. (15 minutes)

4. What could have been done in minimising any discrepancies you have found in the speed at which different parties were being satisfied by the implementation of the Agreement? (10 minutes)

Exercise 3

A problem in any agreement is that some of the provisions can be reversed quite easily while others are much more difficult to reverse. This means that one party concedes in one area and expects that another party will make concessions in another area. However there is a danger that one party can go back on what was agreed in one area but the other party has limited room to go back on the agreement in another area. In the case of the Belfast Agreement the establishment of the Executive would have seemed to be hard to change but in fact it was suspended after 7 weeks. Therefore it is important to build up confidence that the provisions of the agreement will not be reversed.

1. In small groups use the extract below and the Summary of the Belfast Agreement to divide the provisions of the Agreement between those which seem easy to reverse and those which seem to be fairly fixed. (15 minutes)

2. How could the more open provisions be made firmer? (10 minutes)

3. On the other hand do you think it is helpful to build in provisions which allow the firmer provisions to be reviewed as has been done in the Belfast Agreement? Would this create more uncertainty? (15 minutes)

Exercise 4

McWilliams and Fearon seem to be suggesting that the process of implementation had been left ambiguous. Some areas may have been left unclear because of the pressure of time at the end of the negotiations but in some areas clear consensus across the parties may have been impossible to reach and therefore uncertainty was necessary.

1. As a group identify those areas of ambiguity which existed in relation to the implementation of the Agreement (what needed to be done? what were the responsibilities of each party? what were the effects of specific steps in the implementation process? etc.). (20 minutes) 2. Suggest proposals which might have clarified the ambiguities (e.g. propose roles and responsibilities). (15 minutes) 3. Are there some ambiguities that could not easily be made clearer because it would have been difficult to reach agreement and therefore they had to be left uncertain? (10 minutes)

Extracts

The Agreement is hugely ambitious and by no means a perfect product, but it has what some have termed a “protective ambiguity” which provides some freedom of interpretation necessary for the Agreement to be sold to the opposing constituencies. When put to the people in a referendum it was overwhelmingly endorsed, but the result was hard won.

It required many different factions who had been hostile to each other to pull together and promote the flawed product to the people in the face of a vociferous “No” campaign. But the freedom of parties to interpret different provisions to their own advantage at the expense of their enemies, while tactically useful at the time of the initial campaign, has proved to be a double-edged sword. In the short term, in the absence of trust between parties, this was a pragmatic and effective stance. For the long term though, a different strategy should have been embarked upon.
Monica McWilliams and Kate Fearon (Women’s Coalition)

LACK OF CLARITY The UUP, fearing that any .... endorsement might result in the automatic establishment of an executive, backed off from the deal because very few people knew exactly what the legislative status or impact of any progress or decision might be. They therefore held back for fear of doing something indirectly that they did not intend to do.
Monica McWilliams and Kate Fearon (Women’s Coalition)

Fulfilling the obligations of the Belfast Agreement required some seventy-four different tasks of varying degrees of difficulty. These tasks were variously the responsibility of the British government, the Irish government, the parties participating in the process and the new First Minister and Deputy First Minister to complete. Some provisions were not assigned to any named sponsor and therefore depended on individual parties and interest groups to lobby for their implementation.
Monica McWilliams and Kate Fearon (Women’s Coalition)

Trimble became vulnerable as other parts of the Agreement, over whose implementation he had no control, began to be delivered. Such an area was the accelerated release of politically motivated prisoners. The unionist analysis was that the Agreement was designed to deliver quickly on issues, including prisoner releases, which were seen to favour republicans. They argued that it was difficult for their constituency to see the value of the Agreement in this context when their favoured part (a working Assembly in Northern Ireland) would not be delivered until later down the line.
Monica McWilliams and Kate Fearon (Women’s Coalition)

The question of how committed some parties, particularly the UUP, were to the implementation of the Agreement surfaced again in January 1999 when the First Minister and Deputy First Minister were due to present the deal to the Assembly for endorsement. The UUP, fearing that any such endorsement might result in the automatic establishment of an executive backed off from the deal, almost at the last minute, because the nature of the Agreement meant that very few people knew exactly what the legislative status or impact of any progress or decision might be. They therefore tended to hold back for fear of doing something indirectly that they did not intend. A last-minute compromise was brokered to acknowledge but not formally endorse the report for a month until the legal position could be clarified. At a tense meeting in February 1999 the report was formally accepted.
Monica McWilliams and Kate Fearon (Women’s Coalition)

One difficulty in the Agreement is that the provisions are interdependent but some could come into operation earlier than others. Parties found it difficult to be sure that if they met their commitments other parties would do the same. Since the Agreement, the UUP has consistently argued that all parties could fulfil all their commitments under the Agreement simultaneously and that this would be the best way to develop confidence and to allow both communities to feel at ease with each other. In particular, the commitments to forming the government and to decommissioning paramilitary arms could have taken place at the same time, a process known as “jumping together”. This is only fair and reasonable and it was hoped that the republican movement could see a way to accept this proposition.
Dermot Nesbitt (UUP)

The UUP had demanded that IRA decommissioning of weapons take place before Sinn Féin representatives could assume their seats in government, though no such demand was in the Agreement. Indeed, Sinn Féin representatives stated that if it had been they could not have delivered any weapons or the referendum “yes” vote.
Monica McWilliams and Kate Fearon (Women’s Coalition)

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