Instead of celebrating the failed 1998 deal we should be saluting the fact that it is long gone, writes Peter Robinson
THEY CAN'T be serious! What is all this talk about the 10th anniversary of the Belfast Agreement? Why is a celebration being organised? Has nobody told them it crashed years ago?
The Belfast Agreement failed. Its failure was painfully evident each time its structures collapsed and each time violence and criminality occurred - as it repeatedly did - during its lifetime. Its end was declared democratically at the ballot box. Its collapse was attended by the removal from high office of the UUP leader David Trimble. Its demise was heralded by the passing of the UUP from the leadership of unionism.
I can understand how some poor souls who invested heavily in this failed enterprise might want to fool themselves into believing there is some blood relationship between the Belfast Agreement which failed and the successful agreement which followed St Andrews. The architects and cheerleaders of the 1998 agreement unsurprisingly seek to perpetuate that it persists.
The Belfast Agreement was the product of Ulster Unionist incompetence. Its provisions were greeted with horror and incredulity by unionists who saw it as facilitating the republican agenda.
In it the UUP agreed to the release of terrorist criminals and the destruction of the Royal Ulster Constabulary, which had served the community with distinction during 30 years of bloody violence. It lamentably failed to nail down the issue of decommissioning and invited republicans into government while the IRA continued its terrorist activities and maintained its criminal empire.
The Belfast Agreement did not make even the least demand of republicans to support the police, the courts or the rule of law, and allowed government departments at Stormont and North-South bodies to be run without accountability.
Such an unstable system could never be sustained. Ministers acting as they chose against the wishes of the Assembly and their ministerial colleagues did not provide good government for the people of Northern Ireland.
The province's position within the union was insecure while nationalist ministers could pursue a party political agenda on North-South matters without reference to unionists.
This was the era of daily concessions to the IRA. Unionism was on its back-foot and everyone knew another year of this type of rule and the union would be beyond repair. Everything changed when the electorate granted the DUP the mantle of leading the unionist community. Republicans were no longer allowed to ride the two horses of politics and terrorism. Only a complete end to paramilitary and criminal activity would suffice for the DUP.
The Belfast Agreement did not bring peace. It institutionalised the obscenity of the "ballot box and the Armalite". The IRA was permitted to continue as before while Sinn Féin was allowed to pursue its political aims through the Assembly.
Since we were entrusted with the leadership of the unionist community, the DUP has been about the business of dismantling the Belfast Agreement and replacing it with a fair deal. That process culminated in the negotiations in St Andrews. At St Andrews we made North-South arrangements accountable and we ensured that unionists would have controls to ensure that no decisions could be taken in Northern Ireland departments which were against the interests of our community. We have expanded the East-West axis to increase co-operation between Northern Ireland, the other constituent parts of the United Kingdom and the Republic.
We made it a legal obligation on all political parties to support the police and the courts. We insisted on the decommissioning of IRA weapons and required a total end to IRA criminality.
Today Northern Ireland can have normal neighbourly relations with the Republic of Ireland based on practical co-operation, where our constitutional position is accepted and not threatened.
Of course those who conceived the Belfast Agreement would like to think that the stable structures we operate today are the selfsame structures they invented. That is like saying a monkey is a human being because some of its genetic make-up is similar. The structures are different, the conditions for entry into the Executive are different and the accountability of decision taking is different.
The DUP has buried the Belfast Agreement. Does this period of devolution since May 8th bear any resemblance to the last? Unionism is now in a much stronger position. We have laid the foundations for peaceful, stable devolution based on the application of democratic standards for everyone.
The new political arrangements are delivering for the electorate in a way that the old dispensation never did. We have an agreed programme for government, investment strategy and budget. Let's celebrate success, not failure.
We have had the first period of stable local government for decades and it will last. Nobody has a better attainable alternative and people will not listen to those who offer Utopia but can deliver nothing.
The Belfast Agreement has gone and Northern Ireland is the better for it.
Peter Robinson, deputy leader of the DUP, is Minister for Finance in the Northern Ireland Executive