Did they? The Blair government wanted to bring in the HRA, and this could be added in as part of the deal without it costing anyone anything. I doubt the Irish government gave a fig about it, but it was cosmetically attractive.
Replies
But, of course, what the parties would have said at the time if you'd asked them just isn;t the same as the meaning of the words they actually agreed, so that doesn't really matter.
sep 1, 2025, 2:30 pm • 1 0 • view
'Cosmetically attractive'? Are you aware of the significance of Ireland v UK, and the political importance in Ireland (and to the Nationalist minority in NI) of having an external source of rights protection? As Tim says, this stuff matters & is seen to matter.
sep 1, 2025, 2:37 pm • 3 0 • view
I think your argument then should be with the people responsible for the drafting of the GFA. Shockingly bad if they really did have this concern in their minds. Why not draft it like the UK-EU Trade and Co-Op Agreement?
sep 1, 2025, 2:39 pm • 0 0 • view
My argument is with people trying to wriggle off the hook of a moderately clear treaty commitment (as these things go).
sep 1, 2025, 2:53 pm • 1 0 • view
And by all means repeat the mantra about what bring written down being more important than what parties thought they were doing...The point is that it is written down, in plain text. 'ECHR' used, as distinct from 'ECHR rights'.
sep 1, 2025, 2:40 pm • 0 0 • view
And "Democratic Institutions of NI" and not "UK". The text really does not say "The ECHR shall apply [in or to] NI" as you want it to do.
sep 1, 2025, 2:42 pm • 0 0 • view
I fear you are the text torturer in this context. I am simply saying that the GFA recognises ECHR compliance as a key safeguard, and that the provisions related to domestic rights protection supplement that underpinning commitment. Exactly as the plain text indicates...
sep 1, 2025, 3:06 pm • 2 0 • view
This is just loose. You have to look at the words. The important part is 5(b). Most of the analysis doesn't get beyond counting the number of times the ECHR is referred to. As if people don't want to believe the words used.
sep 1, 2025, 3:11 pm • 0 0 • view
I am looking at the words! You're the one trying to wriggle off the hook of the literal meaning of 5(b), namely that ECHR compliance is a safeguard for the good functioning of the institutions - while gesturing towards loose arguments allegedly made by others.
sep 1, 2025, 3:50 pm • 2 0 • view
Far be it for me to wade into this discussion on an otherwise totally quiet day for legal opinions, but if we're reading the ECHR to apply only to the devolved institutions at Stormont, is it plausible that the GFA parties ignored the police? 1/
sep 1, 2025, 3:19 pm • 2 0 • view
If not, then we have a problem: because the police were never (from 1972) envisioned to be under devolved institutional control. And if the ECHR was contemplated as a safeguard in a policing context, it would necessarily draw the UKG 2/
sep 1, 2025, 3:19 pm • 1 0 • view
Which was legally responsible for it until the devolution of policing and justice in 2010. And the police is just one example of a context where ECHR violations in the context of NI history aren't *explicitly* a part of Strand One. 3/3.
sep 1, 2025, 3:19 pm • 3 0 • view
Indeed. So badly drafted. Such a shame. I do think however we should look at the words of 5(b) in context, and not what the parties should have agreed if they'd thought about it.
sep 1, 2025, 3:46 pm • 0 0 • view
I suggest, respectfully, that the rest of us are looking at the words in context. The important part (again, with all due respect) is to actually understand that context. None of us are imagining or speculating. We are referencing the facts which surrounded a decade long negotiation.
sep 1, 2025, 3:50 pm • 7 0 • view
No because Strand Five of the MPA explicitly requires that the ECHR be incorporated into NI law, which unless I’m missing some significant quirk of NI law, would bind the police?
sep 1, 2025, 3:53 pm • 0 0 • view
The ECHR referenced in Strand Five has much wider implications on the human rights front from for both the UK and Irish states than Strand One, which is what you would expect from the section titled “Human Rights”.
sep 1, 2025, 3:56 pm • 0 0 • view
If you're referring to the Rights, Safeguards and Equality of Opportunity section, then that particular incorporation obligation makes no distinction between devolved and non-devolved institutions in so far as NI is concerned.
sep 1, 2025, 3:58 pm • 0 0 • view
I didn't mention that. But the PE report does indeed seem to claim that policing functions back in 1998, and non-devolved national security functions to this day, were not covered by any of the human rights provisions of the GFA. Which IMHO is a manifestly implausible conclusion!
sep 1, 2025, 3:38 pm • 1 0 • view
I think Sister Michael is an appropriate reaction to that.
sep 1, 2025, 3:46 pm • 1 0 • view
As a voter in one of the referendums, I am chuckling at how that argument would go. 'Hooray, huge support for the peace process! Oh did we not make clear that none of the rights provisions applied to national security? Oops, our bad, maybe we should have mentioned that...'
sep 1, 2025, 3:42 pm • 2 0 • view
Hugo, have you ever *met* anyone from the Irish government of the time? Because I have, Colm has, and we can tell you: the Government here did and does care about it as part of the deal.
sep 1, 2025, 2:31 pm • 4 1 • view
I mean its not as if the Irish Government realised that the European Court was the one that banned torture in the Hooded Men case or that Denning concluded in the Birmingham 6 initial appeal that the prospect of the police torturing suspects was so appalling the appeal could not be considered at all
sep 1, 2025, 4:07 pm • 3 0 • view
Not like there had been decade long campaigns about it, even a top 10 pop song, nah, can't be that that the Irish government ever gave any consideration too...
sep 1, 2025, 4:07 pm • 1 0 • view
All that is no doubt true. But I don't think anyone in 1998 had in contemplation that the UK would leave the ECHR, but they did in 2021, which is why the terms of the agreements are so obviously different.
sep 1, 2025, 4:11 pm • 1 0 • view
You said "I doubt the Irish government gave a fig about this" - well they absolutely did
sep 1, 2025, 4:14 pm • 1 0 • view
You mean in the same way that they passionately cared (and care) about the creation of a Northern Ireland Bill of Rights?
sep 1, 2025, 4:20 pm • 1 0 • view
whats a Northern Ireland Bill of Rights?
sep 1, 2025, 9:12 pm • 0 0 • view
Indeed. Have a read of the Good Friday Agreement.
sep 1, 2025, 9:47 pm • 1 0 • view
Not sure what you are suggesting here - the UK government hasn't brought forward a Bill of Rights (supplemental to the ECHR) as they are entiteld to do. But the Johnson government did propose a Bill of Rights which would have taken the UK out from oversight of the ECHR
sep 2, 2025, 2:20 am • 0 0 • view
It's pretty clear to me before, during and after the couple of years I spent in Belfast in NI politics 30 years ago that Northern Ireland scarcely exists in UK politics - no thanks to the efforts of Ireland to the contrary
sep 2, 2025, 2:20 am • 0 0 • view
Why would anyone care about that? The deal is what was agreed, which is contained in the meaning of the words used in their context. What the individuals thought as a matter of psycholigical fact or they would have said if asked about this situati is just irrelevant. No?
sep 1, 2025, 2:36 pm • 1 0 • view
ah c’mon why would Ireland’s leaders take the opportunity to tie UK to ECHR.
sep 1, 2025, 2:35 pm • 4 0 • view
Indeed *why* would they have done that? in 1998 the concern that the UK would leave the ECHR wasn't a cloud as large as a man's hand. Nobody at all thought that possible. Compare the completely differently drafted UK-EU Trade Co-Op Agreement.
sep 1, 2025, 2:38 pm • 1 0 • view
because good leaders think long term.
sep 1, 2025, 2:39 pm • 1 0 • view
Presumably Blair and Ahern are the "bad leaders " then for failing to draft the GFA in the way the UK-EU Trade and Co-Op Agreement was.
sep 1, 2025, 2:44 pm • 1 0 • view
The threat of cancellation of the GFA would have been counter-productive...
sep 1, 2025, 3:38 pm • 1 0 • view
The very, very obvious historical context, that I keep pointing out, was that the ECtHR had ruled against the UK in a number of cases involving the Troubles, and there had been a number of miscarriages of justices. But sure, in the Anglosphere Cinematic Universe, Ireland didn't care
sep 1, 2025, 3:37 pm • 12 1 • view
(I realise your version of this claim was sarcasm, Simon)
sep 1, 2025, 3:39 pm • 5 0 • view
No doubt all true. Which leaves why, if the parties really had thought about it as you claim, the wording is so very different from the crystal clear EU-UK Trade and Co-op Agreement.
sep 1, 2025, 3:47 pm • 1 0 • view
If Ireland was as indifferent as you claim, why mention it at all? Never mind mention it several times, incorporation etc
sep 1, 2025, 3:52 pm • 7 0 • view
The claim is not that the incorporation of the ECHR was not important. 5(b) is there for a reason. The claim is that people are sloppily not reading what 5(b) in the context of paragraph 5 actually says.
sep 1, 2025, 4:04 pm • 0 0 • view
Indeed, you could argue that it was very sloppy of the UK not to include express provision for a unilateral ECHR exit - so sloppy in fact that it must be presumed not to have been intended, if you are applying @spinninghugo.bsky.social's arguments.
sep 1, 2025, 3:57 pm • 3 0 • view
Well, that of course is premised on the words "the UK undertakes to be a party to the ECHR" or equivalent, expressly or impliedly, appearing. 5(b), the important bit, doesn't say that. Nor does it say what GP claimed it does in the first post, or anything like it.
sep 1, 2025, 4:02 pm • 0 0 • view
I’m going to throw in a little googly here. The GFA is both an international treaty and an expression of the welter of still extant side-deals with paramilitaries. Binding the UK to the ECHR is *highly* important to some of them. Unilaterally breaching that obligation would be seen as perfidy.
sep 1, 2025, 5:43 pm • 0 0 • view
I mean, it’s not like there was anything like Ireland taking the UK to the ECHR over rights abuses during the Troubles, now was there?
sep 1, 2025, 2:39 pm • 1 0 • view
Indeed there was. But there was nobody who thought there was any prospect of the UK leaving the ECHR. Because, at the time, there wasn't. Which is why in 2021 the Trade and Co-Op Agreement looks so different.
sep 1, 2025, 2:41 pm • 0 0 • view