As important as the detail of the welcome deal done on a whole series of contentious topics, and the close-to £2 billion cash settlement conjured up by David Cameron, was the fact of agreement in the North. There had been a very real prospect that not only would failure jeopardise the promised and jealously sought transfer of corporation tax-setting powers to the Northern Ireland Executive, but also a virtual certainty that failure would have brought down the Northern Assembly itself with a return to direct rule.
Such a retrograde step would have been a blow not only to the North’s parties but to the peace process, incontrovertible evidence that despite fine words the North’s leaders were not actually able to work together, that the cross-community majority vote required for major decisions at the heart of the institutional deal was an unworkable mechanism in a society so divided. The price of failure was very substantial.
The British prime minister’s understandable frustration with the brinkmanship of the parties perhaps reflected an underestimation on his part, and of many observers, of the degree to which the necessary, difficult compromises still genuinely have to be sold to party bases. A deal which failed to compensate those who would lose out in welfare cuts would have left Sinn Fein’s leaders badly exposed in working class communities, while the agreement to transfer to the Northern Assembly powers to deal with on flags and parades may still leave the DUP exposed – serious ambiguities remain. The Alliance Party’s Justice Minister David Ford, criticised that arrangement, saying it lacked detail and was “storing up problems for the future”.
But the agreement on dealing with past is important and welcome. It establishes a new framework that includes an oral history archive; a dedicated historical investigations unit which will investigate Troubles-related deaths; and an independent commission on information retrieval to enable victims and survivors to seek and receive information about the death of their loved ones.