Good Friday Agreement

Issues relating to sovereignty, governance, discrimination, military and paramilitary groups, justice and policing were central to the agreement.

The Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) was the only major political group in Northern Ireland to oppose the Good Friday Agreement.

[3] When the Irish Free State was established in 1922 (under the Anglo-Irish Treaty of December 1921), six of the island's northern counties remained part of the United Kingdom.

[9] The vague wording of some of the provisions, described as "constructive ambiguity",[10] helped ensure acceptance of the agreement and served to postpone debate on some of the more contentious issues.

For the first time, the Irish government accepted in a binding international agreement that Northern Ireland was part of the United Kingdom.

The Northern Ireland political parties who endorsed the agreement were also asked to consider the establishment of an independent consultative forum representative of civil society with members with expertise in social, cultural, economic and other issues and appointed by the two administrations.

The conference takes the form of regular and frequent meetings between the British and Irish ministers to promote co-operation at all levels between both governments.

The British–Irish Council is made up of ministerial representatives from the British and Irish governments, the UK's devolved administrations (Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Wales), as well as from the Crown dependencies, the Isle of Man, Jersey, and Guernsey.

In the opinion of analyst Brendan O'Leary, the institutions established by the deal "made Northern Ireland bi-national" and reinforced "imaginative elements of co-sovereignty".

This took two aspects: The participants to the agreement comprised two sovereign states (the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland) with armed and police forces involved in the Troubles.

The process of normalisation committed the British government to the reduction in the number and role of its armed forces in Northern Ireland "to levels compatible with a normal peaceful society".

Establishing statutory obligations for public authorities in Northern Ireland to carry out their work "with due regard to the need to promote equality of opportunity was set as a particular priority".

Article 1 (vi), commonly referred to as the birthright provisions, states that both governments, "Recognise the birthright of all the people of Northern Ireland to identify themselves and be accepted as Irish, or British, or both, as they may so choose, and accordingly confirm that their right to hold both British and Irish citizenship is accepted by both Governments and would not be affected by any future change in the status of Northern Ireland."

The fragility of cross-community enthusiasm for parts of the agreement helps to explain subsequent difficulties in maintaining the power-sharing executive.

This amendment both permitted the state to comply with the Belfast Agreement and provided for the removal of the "territorial claim" contained in Articles 2 and 3.

[24] The British government agreed to participate in a televised ceremony at Iveagh House in Dublin, the Irish department of foreign affairs.

Shortly after the ceremony, at 10:30 am, the Taoiseach, Bertie Ahern, signed the declaration formally amending Articles 2 and 3 of the Irish Constitution.

Aside from the decommissioning issue, ongoing smaller-scale paramilitary activity by the Provisional Irish Republican Army—e.g., arms importations, smuggling, organised crime, punishment beatings, intelligence-gathering and rioting—was also a stumbling block.

Paisley retired from the office of First Minister and from the leadership of the DUP on 5 June 2008 and was succeeded in both functions by Peter Robinson.

An election was called by Secretary of State for Northern Ireland James Brokenshire, whereby the DUP and Sinn Féin were returned as the largest parties, and so began a countdown of talks between both leaders before devolved government could be restored.

The former stated that "there are ... significant differences between them [Sunningdale and Belfast], both in terms of content and the circumstances surrounding their negotiation, implementation, and operation".

[29] The main issues omitted by Sunningdale and addressed by the Belfast Agreement are the principle of self-determination, the recognition of both national identities, British-Irish intergovernmental cooperation and the legal procedures to make power-sharing mandatory, such as the cross-community vote and the D'Hondt system to appoint ministers to the executive.

Because the Good Friday Agreement binds the British government on several points of law in Northern Ireland, it has de facto become part of the constitution of the United Kingdom.

Legal commentator David Allen Green described it as "a core constitutional text of the UK, and of Ireland ... of more everyday importance than hallowed instruments such as, say, Magna Carta of 1215 or the 1689 Bill of Rights".

Consequently, the Agreement was a significant factor preventing the repeal of that Act and its replacement with the proposed British Bill of Rights that Prime Minister David Cameron had promised.

During the negotiations on Britain's planned 2019 withdrawal from the European Union, the EU produced a position paper on its concerns regarding the Good Friday Agreement.

The paper identified a range of issues including the avoidance of a hard border, North–South cooperation, citizenship, and the Common Travel Area.

[45][46] In September 2020, while negotiations with the EU over future trading arrangements continued, the Internal Market Bill was introduced in which the Northern Ireland secretary Brandon Lewis told the House of Commons that the British government planned to break international law in a "specific and limited way", by introducing new powers through notwithstanding clauses that would circumvent certain treaty obligations to the EU as set out in the withdrawal agreement.

[47] The Bill was criticised in the UK and internationally, with the First Ministers of Scotland and Wales both describing the Conservative government's proposals as an attempt to seize power and undo devolution.

The DUP and other Brexit supporters have criticised the British government for erecting a trade border "down the Irish Sea"—in other words, between the island of Ireland and Britain.