Ben Lowry: Keir Starmer had no answer to my question about Ireland suing the country of which he is prime minister, the United Kingdom

Rarely over the last century has London paid so much attention to Dublin. I do not just mean the times when relations were poor, such as during the World War II and the Troubles, I mean the good times too.

One reason is that in interaction between Ireland and the UK is so long entwined that there was seen to be little need for such a summit. But as our report shows, the head of the UK government was in Cork yesterday to emphasise his respect for Ireland.

You would not know the Republic is in fact suing the UK.

In fact, outside of this newspaper the legal action at the European Court of Human Rights at Strasbourg gets so little publicity that many people even here in Northern Ireland will have no idea it is taking place. In the rest of the UK, the overwhelming bulk of the population would have no notion of the case.

The Irish legal action is breath-taking for three key reasons.

The first is that the case is against the last government’s now shelved plans for conditional amnesty for Troubles killings. Set aside whether you think that plan was a good or bad one – reflect instead on how the ex Irish justice minister Michael McDowell in 2021 revealed that Dublin gave the IRA a de facto amnesty after its 1990s ceasefires.

The second reason the legal action is audacious is that Ireland has been allowed to exempt itself almost entirely from its obligations with regard to legacy. Previous unionist and UK government negotiators let this happen. We hear much about the fact that it has evaded scrutiny over the Omagh bomb atrocity, except insofar as it is now helping the current inquiry on its own terms. It also escaped scrutiny over the Kingsmill massacre.

But the situation is far worse than that. Ireland refused to extradite people to Northern Ireland all through the Troubles. Out of 110 extradition requests between 1973 and 1997, 103 were refused. These refusals continued after the 1985 Anglo-Irish Agreement, later causing Margaret Thatcher to regret that foolish deal – as I reported on its anniversary in November, when I interviewed her close aide, Lord (Charles) Powell.

These refusals made the IRA campaign far easier and contributed to hundreds of deaths of Protestants along the border in a long sectarian onslaught. Yet there has been no scrutiny of this, and there is no indication of such scrutiny.

At Stormont this week, the Ulster Unionist leader Jon Burrows, in response to a question from the News Letter, said – after meeting the Irish foreign minister Helen McEntee – that far from Ireland suing the UK, the UK should be suing Ireland.

The third reason the Irish legal action is contemptible is that Ireland ‘freeloads’ off the UK for defence, as influential British conservative voices describe it. And this will continue to be so after the memorandum of defence unveiled yesterday – I see no mention of an Irish financial contribution to the vital service that an ever-generous UK is giving it.

So, when Sir Keir Starmer was in Lisburn this week, hours before he travelled to the major summit with the Irish in Cork, I asked him about the Irish legal case. As you can see, this web story has a video that shows his response, and you can see how British and Irish leaders similarly ducked my question about the Irish legal action when I asked it las year, if you click on this link.

On Thursday to Sir Keir, I pointed out the inconsistency of the Irish position and said that he appeared not to have even criticised the Irish legal case against the country of which he is prime minister. Would he use the summit to begin to push back, I asked? He simply did not answer that point. I do concede that he is under huge pressure on multiple matters and I think that was clear in his body language.

Even so, he should be intimately aware of the legal action and able to speak about it. His feeble reply began: “Well, I'm in the business of building structural relations, and solving problems and that is the approach that I take to all the issues between the UK and Ireland.”

Then he gestured to the Northern Ireland secretary Hilary Benn, who made the point that the last government’s conditional amnesty had no support among the parties, saying that I “well know” that.

This comment once again shows how unionists have long let their opposition to an amnesty be depicted as a joint position with nationalists, when they should have been making clear they have no shared position on legacy and instead resent the ongoing gross imbalance in how the past is examined.

Ben Lowry (@Benlowry2) is News Letter editor