 Ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much indeed for coming. My name is Catherine Neenon. I have a few technical points. Please turn off your mobile phones. Just to let you know that the formal talk is on the record, then we'll move to question and answer, and that will be off the record. There are many distinguished people here today, particularly on the platform. I'm going to claim one piece of one small piece that I played in Irish history, British history. I actually canvassed in the UK referendum, and I tallied, spent a whole night tallying in Haringey. Which is very interesting, and I can let you know that the sandwiches in Haringey are much better than any available in the audience. But we got home about half past one at night, and we turned on the BBC. And there was a woman I've never been able to identify who was saying as we turned it on, Ireland, Gibraltar, who knew? And guess what? We've been at it ever since. So we're very fortunate that arising out of that, we've the opportunity today to launch Mary Murphy's book, Ireland and Northern Ireland's Future, Negotiating Brexit's Unique Case. I've had a chance to have a quick look through it. This is a really exceptional piece of academic work, and also up to date, and really on the button. So I'm going to ask Mary just to introduce the book, and then Mark Durkin of the SDLP will respond. So, Mary, please. Thanks, Catherine. Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and thank you, Catherine. It's a real pleasure to be here, and I'm very grateful to you too for being here today. I know I'm competing with the sunshine, so thanks for being here. I don't think my presentation will be particularly sunny, but I'll do my best to keep it upbeat. I'd like to thank the IIEA for the opportunity to be here today. They've been hugely accommodating, and I know what is a very, very busy time for the Institute. So I'm very appreciative to Andrew Gilmore and to all the team for their support. I also want to thank Mark Durkin for being here today, and for his support, and for his interest, and for his engagement. I do have respect. I'm a political scientist. I still have enormous respect for politicians, but I think if there were a ranking, Mark Durkin would be right there at the top. And I suppose I... APPLAUSE I would say as well that us academics, we do need the support of people like Mark because we write and we research, but it's people like Mark. They're the ones who lead the charge and really make the difference, hopefully with some help from us along the way. So let me just start by introducing the book, really, and to introduce the book, I just wanted to reflect on the past in Northern Ireland. I think sometimes we don't sufficiently reflect on the past in terms of understanding where we are and what we're trying to achieve, because this day, 23 years ago, in 1995, Gordon Wilson passed away. And I'm sure many of you will know Gordon Wilson. He became a real symbol for hope and reconciliation in Northern Ireland after the 1987 in a skill in bombing when his daughter, Mary, was killed. His ability at the time to forgive those who had committed that dreadful atrocity brought him to national and international attention. And one of his responses to the bombing was, I bear no ill will. I bear no grudge. And it's maybe one of the most remembered quotes that we associate with the troubles when we look back. But he became a campaigner for peace and he really did make sacrifices in his attempts to end the violence and to nurture reconciliation between the communities. And some of his choices were very unpopular at the time and he was condemned for many of his actions. You might remember that he was actually criticized by his own community for his decision to meet with the IRA after the warring and bombing, which killed two small children. And he was also derided by unionists, by his own community, for accepting an appointment to Shannon Aaron, which by the then-Teshuk Albert Reynolds. But if we look back now, I think we can pretty assuredly say that Gordon Wilson's work and his words and his actions and I suppose his bravery as well played a role in helping to win peace in Northern Ireland. Well, it's over 30 years now since Ennis Gillan and it's 24 years since the paramilitary ceasefires in Northern Ireland and it's 20 years, this year, since the Belfast Good Friday Agreement was signed. And through all of that, all of that time, Northern Ireland has changed and in some ways it's changed utterly, primarily because the shadow of political violence has effectively dissipated over that period. But I suppose in other ways, we must remember, the progress actually has been quite slow in many ways. Relations between the two political blocks in Northern Ireland still remain quite unstable and I think the collapse of the Stormont Assembly last year is a testament, really, to the absence of trust which still pervades Northern Ireland's society. This environment, from an academic perspective, this type of environment is what we call a negative peace. It's characterized by a lingering disagreement and tensions that contribute to ongoing polarization of the two communities. And a negative peace is actually a vulnerable point in any peace process and typically comes at the end of the peace process. And crucially, it can be derailed by unexpected and unanticipated forces. And I suppose the key argument in this book is that Brexit has the potential to be one of those forces. So if we consider for a moment Northern Ireland's relationship with the EU prior to the 2016 referendum, I think it's interesting, we can make some interesting observations about what the EU meant in Northern Ireland. And to be perfectly frank, in truth, it was largely an uncontested issue in Northern Ireland. The parties, they certainly differed in terms of their attitudes to Europe, but not to the point where this prevented engagement with Europe or engagement between each other on European Union issues. And of course, the EU supported Northern Ireland's peace process financially and practically as well. And that support was welcomed across the board but also interestingly, it spurred cross-party engagement on a whole range of issues. So the tenor of Northern Ireland's relationship with the European Union, much of it became filtered, much of it was filtered through the power-sharing institutions after 1998 and the North-South bodies. That permitted a kind of a functional, a pragmatic engagement with the European Union. And this approach was largely able to coexist with what were differing political perspectives on Europe ranging from Euroscepticism, in the case of the DUP, to a much stronger degree of support on the part of the SDLP. So where other constitutional questions and even social and economic issues had a tendency to expose divisions between the two communities, the EU was not an area of intense political competition. It certainly evoked difference in division, but EU issues were not politicized and they rarely had a polarizing effect. So you fast forward then. Sorry, let me just make a point actually before I fast forward, is prior to 2016, no party in Northern Ireland, even those with the Eurosceptic tendency, was calling for the UK to leave the European Union. So you fast forward to 2016. The UK's referendum brings new issues and questions to the fore. And these were much more political questions. They were far less functional in character and they exposed some very stark differences between Northern Ireland's political parties and two communities. And what happened is that Northern Ireland's negative peace environment was receptive to the kinds of forces which Brexit unleashed. So having been a largely uncontested issue, the referendum result, it resulted in Brexit and the EU becoming an additional source of contestation in Northern Ireland. In other words, what was a previously unpolitical matter has now become political. So what we observe is the politicization of Brexit in Northern Ireland and it's happened in three distinct ways. And the first way is that Brexit has become an issue and the EU has become an issue of much more increased salience in Northern Ireland. There are public concerns about Brexit, particularly around the border, but in other parts of Northern Ireland as well and at different sectoral levels and they are substantially in evidence now. Opinion on Brexit also became polarized and that really crystallized after the referendum result when we can see that the question of Brexit divides unionists and nationalists. And we've also seen, thirdly, an expansion in the number of actors and organizations who are engaged by the Brexit issue in Northern Ireland. So, and that includes political parties, it includes interest groups, it includes business and it includes citizens as well. And in a divided society, which Northern Ireland still is, when you politicize an issue that can become inherently negative and it can have a polarizing effect. And we're actually seeing that play out right now. We're seeing that the preferences of nationalists and unionists are different on an issue where difference had not necessarily been the case. Their interpretation of what UK withdrawal from the EU means differs and also their formulations about Northern Ireland's status outside the EU, they're also different as well. So, Brexit has produced a polarizing effect in Northern Ireland. Now, this politicized debate around Brexit and in particular the constitutional connotations which it has been associated with have fueled mistrust and they've antagonized existing political differences between the two political blocks. And they've done it at a vulnerable moment in the peace process. Now, despite those political differences, there is nevertheless a shared understanding on one thing and that's that economically Brexit is problematic for Northern Ireland. In fact, Northern Ireland is particularly vulnerable to Brexit in an economic context and there's numerous reasons for that. Some of them are because of the structural peculiarities in Northern Ireland itself, a very heavy reliance on the public sector, an underdeveloped private sector, high rates of worklessness, et cetera, et cetera. They make the region particularly vulnerable to any sort of Brexit related economic risk. And moreover, and I think this is sometimes a point that's lost in the broader commentary, it's the most deprived segments of society in Northern Ireland which are likely to be hardest hit by the potential economic detriment following Brexit. And this cohort of society, it was this cohort of society, the most economically vulnerable, who were also the most prone to political violence during the troubles. It's possible therefore that we may witness the exacerbation of economic inequalities in Northern Ireland, which in conjunction with polarization on numerous other issues, constitutes a threat to the region's ongoing peace process. Now, I'm not implying for a moment a return to widespread violence or anything like that, but what I am referring to is a regression in relationships, a dissatisfaction with the political and institutional status quo which has been achieved by the Belfast Agreement and a threat to stability. So there's a complex, it's even a toxic interplay between the economic effects of Brexit and their impact on stability in Northern Ireland. Now Northern Ireland hasn't been so intensely discussed probably since the days of the Good Friday Agreement, but for all the debate and all the discussion about Northern Ireland, what is glaringly absent from one of the most important and maybe even transformative events in recent British history is a strong Northern Ireland voice. We are all talking about Northern Ireland, but the voice that's emanating from Northern Ireland is pretty muted. The bulk of the debate and the negotiating processes between the British government with some input from Scotland and the other constituent units and the European Commission. This is manifestly not an optimal arrangement for accommodating the various interests in Northern Ireland. Now, as we know, there's a fundamental problem in the event that the UK does not remain within the customs union and the single European market. What this means is that the options really for dealing with Northern Ireland's unique circumstances narrow and the gap between the two blocks will also widen in that context. Now, political parties in Northern Ireland tend to intertwine their national aspirations, their competing national aspirations with proposals for a possible Brexit deal. There is a tendency to that. So where nationalists have been calling for so-called special status for Northern Ireland where the region remains within the custom territory. And somewhere inclined to see this as a stepping stone to a United Ireland, I think that's a very small number, incidentally. By the same token, unionists insistence on Northern Ireland leaving the EU on the same terms as the rest of the UK seems to prevent what might be termed a creative Brexit solution. But the simple truth is that with or without Northern Ireland input, the UK is set to leave the European Union. Now, an imposed settlement, whatever that form that settlement might take, if it's not informed or influenced by direct input from Northern Ireland, that's undesirable for both communities. It may not command the necessary legitimacy for it to be broadly acceptable. And opposition to its terms might in fact propel Northern Ireland backwards as well. So there's two key points that I want to make at this juncture. And the first point is that the collapse of the Northern Ireland executive and assembly in the cross-border institutions is singularly preventing Northern Ireland from shaping its future destiny post-Brexit. This lack of engagement with institutional spaces, it removes a forum where some form of dialogue, if not agreement, at least some form of dialogue could be achieved. In the absence of political moves towards the return of those institutions, the withdrawal formula will bear the hallmarks of those who do not necessarily have to live with its consequences in Northern Ireland. Now at best, this just reflects poorly on Northern Ireland's political class. At worst, it's an abdication of responsibility at a time of political and economic risk. And the second point I would make is that if Brexit is to be effectively navigated and if Northern Ireland's future is to be safeguarded, there is a necessity for the region itself to confront hugely difficult and very, very challenging choices. The very future of Northern Ireland, in fact, depends on it, whatever form that might take. And what's interesting is that there's widespread agreement among very disparate political interests in Northern Ireland that a hard-border is best avoided. But all of the options that have been put on the table so far, whether it's the various versions of the backstop or the proposals for a technological solution or Max Fack or all of these other options, all of them have courted controversy. So while agreement remains elusive, the prospect of a hard-border, possibly accompanied by an economic downturn, still continues to loom large. And such a scenario has the potential to produce both economic and political instability in Northern Ireland. And it may also reignite constitutional arguments. If the soft UK exit is not on the cards, then some form of disruption is absolutely inevitable. And the question is, how do you best manage that disruption? Keeping Northern Ireland in the customs territory, although very unpalatable to many, and a particular constituency in Northern Ireland in particular, even that aside, keeping Northern Ireland in the customs territory is not synonymous with the same level of economic, political, or constitutional instability as the hard-brikes it might produce. Instead, it acknowledges the specific difficulties facing the region. And it provides a means of preventing a hard-border on the island of Ireland. But I think even more significant than that from the perspective of both communities is that it undermines the rationale for constitutional change by keeping things largely the same in Northern Ireland. So Brexit has the potential to be a negative moment in Northern Ireland's post-conflict journey. And it does present very profound challenges and very difficult choices. If there's no appetite to meet those challenges or to confront those choices, well, the prospects for stability are undermined. In his lifetime, Gordon Wilson, he made unpalatable choices in his quest to contribute to peace. And back then, there were many who doubted the wisdom of his actions from within his own party and beyond or within his own community and beyond. But in hindsight, the difficult choices he made may well have been the right choices. So, and a skill in his widely regarded as having been a turning point in wider moves towards peace in Northern Ireland. And I suppose I reflect on the fact that maybe what are the chances that in the years to come, Brexit might be similarly regarded. Thanks very much. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. And just before I hand over to Mark, I just want to say a couple of thank yous. And I just want to take the opportunity to say a couple of thank yous. I want to thank my publisher, Agenda Publishing and Columbia University Press. In particular, my editor, Alison Housen, who demonstrated extraordinary patience with me, I must say. I want to say a very particular thanks to Books Upstairs for being here today. They're an independent bookseller. They're a great bookshop and they're a great supporter of the kind of work that we do as well. And I'm very grateful to all the people who helped me while I was writing this book. They remain nameless, but there were politicians and civil servants and stakeholders and they gave their time and they gave their insights and the book is all the better for that. I do need to thank my home institution, University College Cork and my colleagues in the Department of Government and Politics for their support. On a personal level, I was thank my family, my parents and my brother. One of my brothers, one of my sisters are here today for all their support. And my husband, Paul, finally. Paul and I got married in December 2016. I was in the midst of writing this book. And when you take on a project like this, it really does become all-consuming. And I think partners and families have to put up with a lot and I know Paul did put up with a lot. I'm pretty sure, Paul, that you didn't grow up thinking you'd love to have a book on Brexit dedicated to you. But I mean it in the nicest possible way. Thanks very much. So on the basis that you get a book on Brexit whether you want it or not, can you ask Mark Durkin, the former leader of the SDLP just to respond? Thank you. Thank you very much, Catherine. I'm delighted to be here for the launch of Mary's book. I've read the book, as it was said downstairs to Mary and some others. In some ways, it's an annoying book because it means you have to look at all of the issues, not just the issues that you've been comfortable in arguing and very pointed in arguing, but you have to look at some of the other angles as well. And I think the book brings out the range of challenges that we face in a very important way. The interlay between the economy and politics is worked and presented very well in this book because the book isn't just looking at the politics of Brexit or the structural issues around the Good Friday agreement. We've, right throughout the book, are reminders of the economic conditions and circumstances in Northern Ireland, both historically, what the current indicators are and the challenges of future pressures and prospects as well for different sectors. The profile of the island economy in different sectors and how the value chain crosses the border so often in so many sectors is played in alongside the political questions which are there about institutional cooperation and joint implementation, as well as the questions that dominate particularly on the UK media about the border, which usually means about crossing the border, either people crossing the border or goods crossing the border. And too often, the wider issue of cross border cooperation, which of course entails far more, than just people or goods crossing the border is sometimes missed. A lot of people, I think, fail to remember that aspect on that side of the Good Friday agreement that for many people who came to support the Good Friday agreement, the trade-off was between accepting things around constitutional status, accepting that constitutional change could only come with consent, alongside the fact that there was an institutional prospectus there which was going to allow growing experience for the island economy and growing North-South cooperation. So while the constitutional border would still be there, borderism could be lessened in more and more aspects of Irish life. And that was the whole point around having a North-South ministerial council and having the capacity for cooperation and joint implementation there so that the border didn't need to be as intrusive or obtrusive in different aspects of life, affecting families, affecting services, affecting firms, that we could have arrangements where we could de-borderise things insensible and practical ways. And I think a lot of that often can't be packed into some of the discussions in the studio debates and other debates that we see in relation to Brexit, but they are very well reflected and balanced in this book. What's also annoying, of course, about the book is the... It brings us up against the point that Mary just made. It's the... There's a hole in the bucket there, Liza. The fact is we don't have an executive. We don't have, therefore, because we don't have the assembly and the executive sitting, we don't have a North-South ministerial council and we don't have the British Irish arrangements working in the way that we would want them to work under the agreement. And I think there is a case in the book that does try to point out some positives around things by looking at the fact that we have at very fixed positions of parties before on different issues. We've had many big challenges, but the fact is the space was able to be created whereby we could find convergence so that those different positions could be taken along, at least into a new circumstance and at least into a common agenda. We're going to have to do that with Brexit, just as we've had to do it with other things. So, and the real issue there is how do we make sure that the agreement not just survives but thrives post-Brexit? And so I think we need to move from a position which kind of worries about how Brexit is going to damage the Good Friday Agreement to looking at one that says, how are we going to use the Good Friday Agreement to avoid and offset the damage that Brexit can bring to us, not just politically but economically in so many sectors as well? And it's a matter of reminding ourselves that the Good Friday Agreement actually can be a toolkit to provide a lot of the answers. Contrary to what some commentators write, the scope for cooperation under the Good Friday Agreement was not confined to the 12 areas that were listed in the original agreement, as some people seem to pretend. The fact is they were only there as inclusive examples. They weren't there as an exclusive maximum list. And the proof of that was whenever we came post-agreement to negotiating the areas, the first areas of cooperation and joint implementation, member two of the implementation bodies were for areas that weren't even in the list of 12. Languages isn't in the list of 12. Trade and business development wasn't in the list of 12, yet it was one of the areas that we agreed for the North South body. So that's proof that the capacity for cooperation is more open. It can be anything that is devolved in the North alongside anything that the Irish government want to agree to cooperate on as well. So we need to widen out our sense of what the full ambit of strand two could be and also, of course, be fully open to what the full ambit of strand three could be as well. So when people talk about the need to guarantee possible alignment in the future North and South and East and West, rather than looking at those issues of alignment as being as some of the Unionists seem to think and some of the British media seem to think, being something that is imposed from Brussels via Dublin on Ireland, we see that alignment is about sensible cooperation so that we have equivalence, compatibility and comparability ourselves using the structures of the Good Friday agreement because the fact is when some of the sectoral meetings have taken place at the North-South Ministerial Council, essentially that's what they've been doing. The environment sector, for instance, has been about making sure there's alignment in how various EU directives and standards are transposed North and South. They're not done identically. They're not done the same for all sorts of administrative and other legal reasons, but they are done in ways that are consistent with the directive and sufficiently compatible and comparable for a North-South basis. So we should be looking at using the institutions of the agreement as being the potential channels of alignment in the future. And that's one of the things that we need to do, and Mary has mentioned the issue of language, and of course one of the issues of language over the moment is backstop. And of course there are very different reflex attitudes to the whole question of backstop. And some people seem to think, well, if the DUP don't like the backstop, it must be a very good thing, and therefore it must be a great thing, and therefore go for it. I think we need to be looking at the issue of backstop. One, I say this, given experience of the Good Friday Agreement, we were promised a backstop in the Good Friday Agreement that never happened. The backstop we were promised. When the list was being whittled down and the words were being watered down in Strand 2, was the backstop was that everything would be up and running. All the institutions would be up and running by the 31st of October, 1998, that our fears, the SDLP fears, about being led on a pub crawl of preconditions after the agreement about getting the institutions and particularly Northside set up, we were told the pre-assurance against that was a backstop. So that backstop, of course, never happened. So I maybe have a chance to view about backstops which are sometimes used to give yourself ephemeral assurance during negotiations, but maybe don't have a lot of reliability post-negotiation. But I think we need to be looking at the backstop to ensure, to look at it differently, so that we're saying the backstop is about making sure that the thing that the Brexit here has promised us that the Brexit wouldn't diminish or damage any part of the Good Friday Agreement, we're about making sure that the backstop means that. We want to make that a reality. We want to show how the Good Friday Agreement will work and will settle and that its structures will resolve a lot of these issues into the future. It also helps if we're seen to talk about the backstop as the guarantee that Democratic Ireland is looking for around the Good Friday Agreement, not just as something that is there to leverage or condition British government behavior either now in negotiations or subsequently, but that it is there as an assurance not just against possible capricious policy moves by Britain in the future, but also against any kind of capricious decisions that might come from the EU in the future that might give rise to the need for borderism in Ireland, that we won't be subject to EU decisions which will in turn impose requirements on the South that will in effect cut across the framework of cross-border cooperation. And I think if we were seen to be talking about the backstop in that sort of all-rounded way on behalf of all Democratic Ireland, people in Britain maybe might be less hostile that it is something suspicious or sinister that has been imposed on them. It might make Unionists maybe less reflex resentful of it and have to address really the substantive issue of what we want the backstop to be for. And particularly when we hear language like that backstop is there unless and until there's a better alternative. Well, if it's only unless and until there's a better alternative, we also have to be guarded against the fact that the alternative might fail, the alternative might be subject to some sort of manipulation or undermining in the future. So again, you want to know that the backstop kicks in in that event as well. And so I think there are too many different and confused points of discussion so far around the backstop and maybe if we addressed it in those terms, we could show then that we could answer the sort of questions that Mary has set out in the book because when she sets out the Unionist sensitivity around the language of special status well, she also reflects why there could be different considerations as to why that's a position that people would hold until the broader Brexit picture is available. It's also the case that she's pointing out that some of what Unionists are saying they want in terms of reflecting the unique status of the unique circumstances of Northern Ireland and reflecting some of our specific realities aren't completely counterposed to what the rest of us are saying we want when we say we want special status to guarantee particular circumstances. So it's about how we frame the dialogue. And one of the good things about this book is that a lot of points and arguments that normally brush off each other are actually sat down beside each other in this book. And I think when people read it, they will have a pause for thought and maybe even cause for hope.