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Volume 9 1948~1951

Doc No.
Date
Subject

No. 204 NAI DFA/5/305/93

Extract from a memorandum by the Department of External Affairs
'Council of Ireland'

Dublin, 30 November 1948

[matter omitted]

  1. There could be no question, of course, of reviving at this stage the Council of Ireland provided for in the Government of Ireland Act, 1920. Such a proposal would not even merit serious discussion. What might be worth considering, however, is the idea of a new body, directly representative of the Six County Government and the Government of the Republic, which at the outset might be broadly on the lines of the Council envisaged in the Act of 1920 but to which there would be gradually transferred, bit by bit, all the powers in respect of the Six Counties reserved to the British Government under the 1920 Act.
  2. The adoption of such an arrangement might perhaps be open to some criticism as amounting to an acceptance of something less than the full unity of Ireland. On the other hand, even if the scheme were to start on quite a modest scale, there would be cogent arguments in favour of its adoption, if only the British Government could be got to agree to it. Among these arguments are the considerations:-
    • that the inception of such a scheme at this stage would constitute an obvious and immensely important admission on Britain's part of the desirability of the union of Ireland;
    • that the scheme would give us possibilities of direct contact with the authorities in the Six Counties, the present lack of which is doing much to solidify Partition, particularly from the moral and psychological points of view;
    • that such a scheme would furnish us with a base of operations for the conduct, as regards Partition, of a 'nibbling' policy similar to that which has proved so effective as regards our constitutional advancement;
    • that the inception of such a scheme would be generally regarded abroad as the beginning of the end of Partition and would give new life to our national hopes of ending Partition, which, of recent years, have tended to languish;
    • that, once the new body got on its feet and began to work in any way satisfactorily, the refusal of the British Government to transfer the powers reserved under the Government of Ireland Act would become increasingly difficult to sustain in the eyes of foreign countries, particularly the U.S.A.
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