Editorial: ​Irish declassified papers seem exaggerated yet also believable

Scepticism is needed when reading the newly declassified Irish cabinet papers.​

They are usually more conversational than the British or Stormont papers, which will also be released in the coming days.

A feature of the Republic of Ireland documents is an indiscretion that – surprise, surprise – often presents British figures in an unflattering light. Another feature is the way that Irish officials relish a UK official or politician perhaps agreeing with an Irish assessment of events, or disparaging unionists. They want unionists to think they are disliked.

Today we report several of the Irish papers which have elements of those traditional Dublin memos – eg, our report on page 6 in which the Irish justice minister is presented as a rather heroic figure in the face of a charming-to-the-point-of-weak John Major and NI secretary Patrick Mayhew. Sadly, the latter characterisation is believable. On page 5 we have the Irish officials and the UK negotiator Jonathan Powell tut tutting about the IRA Northern Bank robbery, but hoping nothing will be derailed. On page 6 an Irish justice minister has the nerve to lecture the UK for failing to co-operate with Ireland in 1992, seven years after an Anglo Irish Agreement that the Republic failed to honour by getting tough on the IRA (a naive UK thought they would).

In fairness to London, particularly under Margaret Thatcher, there was a realisation within weeks of the 1985 deal that they had been duped. The UK adopted a light touch approach to cross-border contacts, and – rightly – pursued its own at times robust security response to the IRA (for which it is now letting itself be dragged through the courts).

The UK ploughed its own furrow in these years, but these latest documents do reaffirm an instinctive weakness towards Dublin, even if the memo writers are exaggerating their accounts.