A secret study carried out by the attorney general’s office in Dublin at the height of the Troubles in the 1970s explored asking the United Nations to make Northern Ireland a trusteeship, policed by UN soldiers.
The confidential 1975 study by the attorney general’s legal adviser, Mahon Hayes, was so secret that one government memo warned that it be completed without consulting the UN, or even with Irish diplomats at the UN in New York.
Once completed, the report was sent “for his eyes only” by the attorney general, Declan Costelloe, to the minister for foreign affairs, Garret FitzGerald, who later told the AG that he had found it “very helpful”.
The decision to scope out the possible involvement of the UN illustrates the scale of the crisis then caused by the Troubles, which saw nearly 250 people killed in 1975, and almost 300 the following year.
RM Block
However, the report cautioned that UN involvement could only take place under limited circumstances, such as a British withdrawal, a threat by loyalists to take over Northern Ireland, or where sectarian killings exploded in number.
A UN trusteeship could only happen, too, if the British agreed, Mr Hayes’s’s study advised: “It is possible to envisage circumstances in which it might be desirable to place Northern Ireland under the Trusteeship system.”
The study examined whether Northern Ireland could apply for UN trusteeship under Chapter XII of the United Nations Charter, suggesting “[it] might be considered the only practical way of dealing with an actual or threatened illegal loyalist takeover”.
“Or it might be considered the best way to minimise loss of life in the event of a major breakdown in law and order. Or in the context of a British decision to withdraw from Northern Ireland,” Mr Hayes went on.
[ From The Irish Times archive: Government wanted UN in North in 1969 - papersOpens in new window ]
The arrangement could last for a decade, backed up by a UN military force, though the study warned that such a course could bring the possibility of the unwanted outcome of Northern Ireland becoming an independent state.
The file released to the National Archives repeatedly emphasises the need for secrecy, driving home the clear direction of the minister for foreign affairs that the work be done with as few people as possible knowing about it.
In a letter to Dr FitzGerald on June 19th, 1975, the attorney general, Mr Costello, wrote that such studies aided government decision making but he emphasised that no action could happen without cabinet approval.
Northern Ireland’s nationalist community was already concerned about the growing violence and some elements had begun to think of imaginative ways to break the deadlock, Mr Costello noted.
The possibility of a United Nations intervention was not rejected by the SDLP’s John Hume and Austin Currie, and “they showed much greater interest in the idea when a possible role for the Irish Army was raised”, Mr Costello stated.
The Hayes report led to the writing of a draft trusteeship agreement for Northern Ireland that could have been tabled to the UN in New York if both Dublin and London agreed on a temporary UN administration.
Such an arrangement would be “in the interests of the maintenance and furtherance of international peace and security”, the draft text went on, though it never went beyond that stage.
