Debate contribution: St Andrews Agreement: 20 Years On
Debate contribution by Dr Steve Aiken OBE on .
- MLA
- Dr Steve Aiken OBE
- Party at the time
- Ulster Unionist Party
- Date
- 13 October 2026
- Type
- Debate contribution
- Business
- Opposition Business
- Heading
- St Andrews Agreement: 20 Years On
- Assembly identifier
- Official Report component 5789551
Read the official Assembly record
Text
In October 2006, a deal was done at St Andrews to which the Ulster Unionist Party and the SDLP were strongly opposed. It was designed to "appease the extremes". Those were the words of Jonathan Powell, who was very much involved in the negotiations. The deal was done behind the backs of the UUP and the SDLP and was designed specifically to undermine the middle ground while bringing the "extremes", as he called them, into the political process. Although the deal contained a significant number of changes to the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement, the most far-reaching change was to the mechanism to be used to identify who would fill the office of First Minister. The original mechanism, which was negotiated by the Ulster Unionist Party in 1998 and subsequently approved by 71·1% of those who voted in the referendum on 22 May 1998, stipulated that the First Minister was to be drawn from the largest party in the largest designation and ratified alongside the deputy First Minister in a joint resolution of the Assembly by a cross-community vote.
Not just yet. The designations were "Unionist", "Nationalist" and "Other", and, under the Assembly process, it was clear that the First Minister and the deputy First Minister drew their power from the Assembly and were answerable to it. That process was destroyed in 2006 in favour of the mechanism that we have now, resulting in the catalogue of failure that we have seen since. Jonathan Powell has a lot of issues, but he did say that he accepts that the British Government sought to build a process from the extremes rather than from the centre. He also accepted, however, that, while doing so, he deliberately undermined the centre. He seemed to view the deal as some kind of success story, but like his other success stories — Iraq, Afghanistan, the Chagos Islands and various other places — it has been very far from successful. Indeed, the lack of strategic thinking that occurred at St Andrews is demonstrated by the fact that it is one of the reasons that, 20 years on, we are still dealing with some significant problems. In fact, we have not moved on to dealing with the most important issue, which is to make Northern Ireland work for everyone. Time and again, we get wrapped up in issues because of the failures that happened at St Andrews. Such comments have not miraculously appeared out of nowhere. The approach was very well understood at the time, but David Trimble and Séamus Mallon were deliberately undermined in order to ensure that the change occurred. That was done not only by the British Government but by the Irish Government. There was a sense that they needed to bring in, as they themselves said, the "extremes", because, in some way, doing so would make Northern Ireland a better place. I do not know whether Members have ever studied the "great successes" of the Tony Blair Administration and what they did in peacebuilding around the world, but there are not many examples. Indeed, every one of them seems to work on the basis of undermining the basic principles from the beginning. The beauty of the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement was that it was designed to be a careful balance to make sure that the people of Northern Ireland had a representative form of government that dealt with all the pieces in a particular way in order to deliver for them. The St Andrews Agreement fundamentally undermined that principle. To anybody who spent any time talking to David Trimble or Séamus Mallon — I spoke to both — and has been to the various so-called peace conferences around the world and listened to people expound on how great the St Andrews Agreement was and what it was going to deliver, I point out that it has failed, and failed considerably. What we are talking about is clearly a strand one issue. It is nothing to do with the Irish Government. We will not support the amendment. We will support the motion but not the amendment.
678 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.
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