Northern Ireland (Ministerial Appointments and Regional Rates) Bill

Lord Eames Excerpts

2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords & 3rd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 26th April 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Eames (CB)]

My Lords, I, too, will be brief in using the gap. I think that what noble Lords have heard this afternoon from those of us who come from Northern Ireland, if they needed any conviction or encouragement, will have left them in no doubt as to the sheer frustration and disappointment which is felt right across our community. It is not easy at this stage to stand back and point the finger of accusation. It is, I believe—in the words of the noble Lords, Lord Trimble and Lord Empey—a time for us, in the positions that we occupy in this House, to encourage positive, creative thinking about the whole nature of the theory of devolution. What we are seeing in Northern Ireland is not just the reaction or the failure of the political machine, after years of violence and suffering and filling a vacuum, rather it is fundamental questions about what devolution means in a post-conflict society. I regret that, having tried to play a role in the reconciliation process as Primate of All Ireland for over 20 years, I have learned the hard way how difficult the whole question of the legacy issue is.

I simply caution the Minister that to talk about the publication of a White Paper on ways of dealing with the legacy issue is the right step but it takes us into a minefield. As co-chairmen of the Consultative Group on the Past, way back over the years, Denis Bradley and I discovered how difficult that minefield was. The minefield has not altered; it has deepened. We are not finding new mines, but ways of discovering the old ones and putting a different colour on them, putting a different emphasis on them, and hearing other voices talk about the same mines. This is one of the worst lessons about the situation we are in, and we ignore it at our peril.

The question is: what is devolution and what is the best form of devolution for the people of Northern Ireland? The mother of one of our security forces who was murdered during our Troubles said to me the other day, “We have simply answered the violence of the IRA and the loyalist groups by saying, ‘Let’s see how we can split the political process and make it another way of fighting the war’”. That is a devastating indictment of where we are: “another way of fighting the war”. In God’s name, can we not have the ingenuity and wisdom to find a way of increasing the responsibility that local politicians can have, not just encouraging them to use it but educating them on how to use it? That, I believe, is what the people of Northern Ireland are saying at this time as I—with regret—support this legislation.