Belfast Agreement anniversary should mark ‘new dawn’, Ahern to tell Westminster committee

The 25th anniversary of the Belfast Agreement should mark the start of a “new dawn”, the former taoiseach Bertie Ahern is expected to tell a Westminster committee on Monday.

Looking back, he will say, “should not prevent us from looking forward to the promise that a perpetual peace can deliver even more for our island and all its children”.

“We can assess the successes to date and acknowledge what did not work in the manner we might have hoped, but most of all we can use this opportunity to consider this 25-year marking as the start to a new dawn, a dawn which rather than simply appreciates peace, that this is a generation dedicated to demanding a perpetual peace from all of us as civic leaders”.

However, he will also say that Northern Ireland “still has to realise the full potential dividend” of peace and there remain “further opportunities of mutual benefit which Northern Irish and the Irish business community will continue to pursue in the coming decades”.

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“Peace on the island underpinned by the Belfast Good Friday Agreement has been central to prosperity and the success of many businesses.

“Business must therefore play a central role in the further development of an all-island economy which has the evolving principles of the Belfast Good Friday Agreement at its core,” the former Taoiseach will say.

Mr Ahern is due to give evidence to the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee on Monday. He is the first witness to do so as part of the scrutiny committee’s investigation into the effectiveness of the institutions of the Belfast Agreement.

He was taoiseach from 1997 to 2008 and played a key role in the negotiations which led subsequently to the signing of the agreement in 1998 and the end of the Troubles.

Mr Ahern is expected to reflect on the achievements of the past and “highlight the important potential that remains to be explored for the people of Northern Ireland”.

He will hail as “our greatest triumph” the generations who are “now growing up in an environment of an imperfect but perpetual peace” as “the real treasures that this agreement can point to”.

“Far from criticising them as a generation who ‘do not remember’ and therefore will ‘never understand’ ‘the Troubles’, we should celebrate them as our singular success.”

“We all have an ongoing responsibility to continue to ensure that this generation’s pathway in life is a perpetually peaceful one,” he will say.

Mr Ahern will also reflect on the “scale of the peace dividend” and its “clear” results: “The peace and consequent stability which has followed the Belfast Good Friday Agreement allowed for greater prosperity across the island.

“The growing commercial, cultural and social ties across the island of Ireland continue to offer the promise of an all-island economy which is not only politically stable but economically strategic.”

The Northern Ireland Affairs Committee is examining how effective institutions such as the Northern Ireland Assembly and Executive have been in enabling cross-community, stable and effective government in the North and exploring what changes could be made to enable them to work better in future.

The committee is expected to ask about the circumstances and events that led to multiparty agreement and how the institutions of the agreement were formulated.

It will also ask to what extent those institutions have delivered stable, effective and cross-community government in Northern Ireland.