The Irish Times view on the State papers: echoes of historical events continue today

The annual release of State papers by the National Archives provides a depressing reminder that politics in Northern Ireland has been stuck in the same groove since the beginning of the 21st century. While some of the leading participants from 20 years ago may be no longer with us, the bitterness and distrust that characterised relations has hardly changed.

Back in 2000 the then Unionist leader and first Minister David Trimble was described by British officials to their Irish counterparts as being “despairing and hysterical” while the deputy first Minister Séamus Mallon was deemed to be “as brittle and difficult as ever”.

A more hopeful development was that a small group of senior Sinn Féin and Ulster Unionist Party politicians set up secret meetings in Stormont during 2001 at a time when there was deadlock over the decommissioning of IRA weapons, demilitarisation and policing reform.

The Northern Ireland minister for enterprise Reg Empey told the head of the Department of Foreign Affairs, Dermot Gallagher, that he and fellow UUP MLA Chris McGimpsey were meeting privately each week with Martin McGuinness and Gerry Kelly in Stormont.

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Empey told of his good personal relationship with McGuinness despite the UUP and Sinn Féin being embroiled in a prolonged dispute over IRA decommissioning.

Another interesting insight is that Sinn Féin leader Gerry Adams raised the issue of the early release of the four IRA men convicted of killing Detective Garda Jerry McCabe with taoiseach Bertie Ahern just a little over a year after they were convicted for the offence.

Traditionally the confidential documents were not released for 30 years but in recent years the British moved to a 20-year release date and the Irish have followed suit to ensure that the papers dealing with major Anglo-Irish developments are made available at about the same time.

However, the documents dealing with domestic affairs lag a way behind. In fact some departments are far behind the old 30 year rule in what they have transferred to the National Archives.

One of the obstacles to implementing the 20-year rule for all State papers has been the lack of resources. While the National Archives and some Government departments have employed more archivists over the past 12 months, it has barely made a dent in the backlog and apart from the Departments of the Taoiseach, Foreign Affairs and Justice the release of official documents has fallen hopelessly behind.

Years of understaffing is just one aspect of the problem. The National Archives are confined to a cramped space in the centre of Dublin city and there is simply not enough room to store all of the documents that by law should already have been transferred.