Belfast Agreement's all-Ireland agenda unchanged - Allister
01 February 2008
In a 28 page response to the St Andrews Agreement Review of North/South implementation bodies and areas of cooperation Traditional Unionist MEP Jim Allister has highlighted the threat that the Belfast/St Andrews Agreement poses to the Union and argued that – contrary to the claims of other Unionists – the all-Ireland arrangements established in 1998 remain largely unchanged.
Commenting Mr Allister said,
“When one looks at the arguments forwarded by the DUP in the past in policy papers such as North South East West and Towards a New Agreement you discover that the reasons they gave for opposing the Belfast Agreement remain unchanged.
The role of the Assembly in holding the North/South Ministerial Council remains non-existent as power is vested in Ministers, and those Ministers must now pledge, as a term of office, that they will operate all the north/southery. They are tied in to it irreversibly.
As First Minister, the leader of the DUP – who in 1999 led a boycott of the North South Ministerial Council on the premise that it constituted "an embryonic united Ireland" – is now legally obliged to nominate Ministers to that body and oversee its smooth running."
Mr Allister goes on to slam the Cross-border bodies established under the Belfast Agreement.
“As I made clear in my submission, the review is fundamentally flawed because its terms of reference prohibit it from addressing the basic question of whether we in fact need any or less bodies. Its terms of reference only permit it to contemplate expansion, not reduction.
When one considers these bodies we discover that most serve no useful purpose and they have lamentably failed to embrace the unionist tradition within their workforce – always a telling indicator of the ethos and culture of a body.
Assembly scrutiny of the Belfast Agreement’s cross-border bodies – one of which doesn’t employ a single person in Northern Ireland in spite of the Northern Ireland taxpayer providing it with 30% of its funding – is woefully inadequate. Chairs and Chief Executives of the bodies are only required to appear before the relevant Assembly Committee “at least yearly” and since St Andrews a convicted IRA terrorist has been appointed as the vice-chair of one of these bodies without so much as a squeak of protest from anyone in the Assembly.”
It is clear that the all-Ireland harmonization process continues apace, a worrying development for Unionists. But the encouraging thing is that more and more Unionists are wakening up to this reality and prepared to take a stand for Traditional Unionist principles.”
Read the 28-page response in full here:
Released: 31st January 2008
