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I RECALL CLEARLY my first day in Northern Ireland, 17 years ago. I saw for the first time the huge wall which physically separates the communities in the heart of Belfast. Thirty feet high, topped in places with barbed wire. It’s a stark reminder of the intensity and the duration of the conflict. Ironically, it’s called the Peace Line.
On that first morning I met with Nationalists on their side of the wall; in the afternoon with Unionists on their side. The messages had not been co-ordinated, but I was struck by how similar the messages were.
In Belfast, they told me with charts, graphs, maps and very powerful testimony, there is a high correlation between unemployment and violence. They told me that where men and women have no opportunity, no hope, they are more likely to take the path of violence.
As I sat and listened to them, I thought I could just as easily be in Chicago or Calcutta, or Johannesburg or in the Middle East. Despair is fuel for instability.
Hope is essential for peace and stability. Men and women everywhere need incomes to support their families and they need the satisfaction of doing something worthwhile and meaningful in their lives.
The conflict in Northern Ireland obviously was not exclusively or even primarily economic; it involved religion, national identity, territory. Unionists tend to identify with and want to remain part of the United Kingdom; Nationalists tend to identify with, and want to become part of, a United Ireland.
The Good Friday acknowledges the legitimacy of both aspirations – but it requires that advocacy for either position be exclusively through peaceful and democratic means, and it commits all to the democratic principle that a change in status can occur only with the freely-given consent of the people of Northern Ireland. And the agreement makes the possibility that economic prosperity will flow from, and contribute to, lasting peace.
Economic growth, the creation of jobs, opportunity for every member of society – no matter what his or her background, no matter his or her family’s status or wealth – is the most important element in building strong and peaceful societies.
I’m not objective: I favour the people of Northern Ireland. Having spent years with them I’ve come to like and admire them. While they can be quarrelsome, and often very quick to take offence, they’re also warm and generous, energetic and productive.
The very first day of the meetings, when David Irvine – a wonderful man and a powerful contributor to peace – said to me: “Senator, if you are to be of any use of us, there’s one thing you must know.” I said, “What is it?”
He said, “We in Northern Ireland would drive 100 miles out of our way to receive an insult.” I thought he was kidding, but nobody else in the room laughed. So I took it seriously.
When the agreement was reached, at about 6 o’clock on the evening of April 10, 1998, we had been in negotiations for nearly two years and continuously for the last few days. We were all elated and exhausted.
In my parting comments to my colleagues, I told them that the Agreement was, for me, the realisation of a dream that had sustained me for what up until then had been three-and-a-half years, the longest and most difficult years of my life.
Now, I told them, I have a new dream – and it was that I hoped to return to Northern Ireland some day with my young son, Andrew, who had been born during the negotiations.
I told them that I would take my son and travel the country, taking in the sights and sounds of a beautiful land, and then on a rainy afternoon we would drive to Stormont and sit quietly in the visitors’ gallery in the Northern Ireland Assembly. There, I hoped, we would watch and listen as the members debated the ordinary issues of life in a democratic society: education, healthcare, agriculture, tourism.
There would be no talk war, for the war would long have been over. There would be no talk of peace, for peace would by then be taken for granted. On that day – the day on which peace is taken for granted in Northern Ireland – I will be fulfilled and people of peace and goodwill everywhere will rejoice.
I spoke those words 14 years ago, and I’m happy to tell you just a few weeks ago I made that journey with my son. We spent a week travelling all across Northern Ireland; we sat in the visitors’ gallery at the Northern Ireland Assembly – the only thing different is that for a week it didn’t rain, which I found extraordinary, given all the time I had spent in Northern Ireland – but as we sat in the gallery, listening to the Northern Ireland Assembly debate, we heard a calm, a peaceful, and a democratic debate.
We heard a minister report to the assembly on a conference he had just attended. It was as dry and dust, and as boring as only a government report can be.
But it was music to my ears, and I thought it wonderful to hear.
And it made it, truly, one of the best days of my life.
Adapted from a speech given to the Oireachtas all-party committee on the Implementation of the Good Friday Agreement.
George Mitchell was a Democratic senator representing Maine from 1980 to 1995, serving as Senator Majority Leader for the last six of those years. He oversaw the negotiations which led to the signature of the Good Friday Agreement in Belfast in April 1998. He later served as Chancellor of Queen’s University Belfast, and as the US envoy to the Arab-Israeli peace process.
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The abolishment of upwardly only rent reviews was yet another broken promise from FG when they got into power..
Not sure if it was this goverment or the last but they can not be included in new leases.
Maybe if everyone quit their lease and rented next door the new rules would be useful. A kind of national high street side step.
Or the powers that be could just fix it.
I think the problem is that the Supreme Court said that a lease signed in the past cannot be altered now. It would be an interference in the property rights of the owner. This is the same reason why the Supreme Court ruled that rent controls were illegal. We need a referendum on property rights but as Irish people are fairly obsessed with their property rights, even though most people would agree that upward only leased should be illegal, this does not mean that people would vote in a referendum to qualify their property rights
Yet again Jack the horse has bolted, go lock yourself in the stable, your useless.
Upward only rent should definitely be illegal. Rent should always represent current market prices. Upward only reviews are the reason for so many empty shops around the country
A statement from SIPTU just ever so slightly too late, that should solve everything.
Forget the Constitutional ban on retrospective legislation ! Do the populist thing. One , and only one , upwards review was denied solely on account of the wording in the lease. What is lawful , is lawful , sometimes wrongly.
Eh……OK.
These upward only leases bleed funds from business into greedy landlords pockets. Many businesses have closed due to these leases, which belong to a bygone age. Jobs and investment are curtailed to feed landlords “property rights”.The government need to legislate or hold a referendum on this issue before even more jobs and businesses are lost.
The market should decide if it’s a viable rent, not Siptu or anyone. They entered into the lease thinking they would make money, it’s as simple as that.
The tenants signed those review clauses , stupidly. However , at the time , if they didn’t sign then they didn’t get the keys. Short term needs or no business ?
So making money is a sin? Get a grip and live in the real world. You obviously get paid whether you work or not. Profit comes from work, the exception being the greedy Property classes who leech off ordinary people who happen to run businesses.
Lots of more intelligent business people did not sign those costly leases. If we change the law retrospectively then we are opening a Pandora’s box. Why should we subsidise the weaker businesses and disadvantage the better business people? We are either a capitalist country or not – let’s make our minds up.
So the owners Nexts and the Debenhams and all the other international multiples are not intelligent business people? Everyone of these companies signed upwardly only leases because if they wanted a premises in a good location, they had no choice. You cannot justify these leases. Not only were the increases at the mercy of the landlords, most of the time, they have no idea what the new rent was going to be. Another use of upwardly leases was that property company regularly used these rent reviews to put businesses to the wall if they didn’t want them as tenants. It’s completely immoral.
The UK chain stores muscled in on our “boom” (and the UK Banks) and often at a severe cost to smaller Irish family businesses in medium sized towns all over the country. It’s immoral to change the rules of a game just because you have a loosing hand. I wish they would man-up, take their beating and stop trying to push their mistakes on our tax payers who ultimately are left carrying the can.
It’s the family business I am concerned about, not the British multiples. True, they set the benchmark for the rent reviews but you are contradicting yourself now. The family businesses and other SMEs were the largest employers during the boom. The leases are illegal but unfortunately the inertia in getting rid of them stems from the fact that the property classes and the political establishment have always been connected. Turkeys voting for Christmas and all that. …….
good to see the old familiar developer names been bandied about….thought rohan owed nama billions obviously mistaken…..funny kenny and fg forget this election promise and get a blank when it comes to who draws up laws etc…….
@Martin, Johnny Rohan is one of a handful of developers who is paying back Nama unlike most of the others like Sean dunne… McNamara etc etc. Bewleys entered into a binding contract and agreed to upward only rent reviews. This is called business and is how Mr Rohan is going to pay back the tax payer im sure the rent roll from bewleys is in his business plan and nama and government are well aware of it There are 10′s of 000′s of leases like this one. The government cannot force all of these leases bound by legal contract to be torn up. That’s unconstitutional. It cannot be done unless the government tears up the law books. Then you would be complaining about how much money lawyers and solicitors would be making drawing up new contracts while charging large sums to do so. Enda and Gilmore made an unkeepable promises and they knew that when they made it. They get free legal advice from supporters at the bar and in the courts. The whole situation is unfair but it’s the one that is there. The only way the rent can be reduced is by johnny rohan and I doubt he would be let by Nama, government and the banks. If you as a tax payer wish to pay rohans debts by decreasing Bewleys rent roll be my guest. I do not wish to partake, I’m being screwed enough by this government and their social partners who make stupid statements like the ones in this story. And they know it.
Sure maybe Siptu could use some of their slush fund to pay the rent and prop up the wider economy
i doubt their statement brings any comfort to the 140 people that will now be jobless come February!
Someone deserves a kick in the ” Bo####ks over this !
Another broken promise from the SIPTU leaders political masters. In their manifesto prior to the last elections Labour promised to abolish upward only rent reviews. Not a peep from them since, the only sound coming from Labour is the one of James Connolly spinning in his grave. SIPTU members need to break from Labour, a starting point would be stopping the annual €98,000 donation of members money to the Labour party.
Bewleys seems to be more well known for its rent problems than it’s coffee these days. Small and medium sized businesses who can’t avail of tax loopholes have been crippled with job losses and under investment through these Dickensian laws, don’t people in authority want a recovery or not. Fine Gael promised an end to this and so far nothing. Another lie.it’s just greed from the wealthy who care damn about their fellow citizens.
Only country I know of with rent upwards only. What a farce. Only a fool would take a lease with these terms.
Well they do say a fool and his money are easily parted!
Makes little sense , to enforce upward only rents, for the landlord, unless others are willing to fill the gaps left behind, and I guess there are other companies waiting in line,,
This is market forces at work, stay out of it government ,and it will resolve itself
Who if anyone will take over the place? Suspect another boarded graffiti covered facade. Place staying empty no rents being paid, jobs gone, loss of revenue for Bewleys. Sensible lets stick to the original agreement and everyone loses out. Or am I seeing this wrong?
Landlords Max Your Rent … Banks Max Your Debt …. Political Parties Max Your Tax.
“Demand the change you want …. Bring Your Brains to the Polling Booths”
SIPTU…now that’s a joke….lie down with dogs(gov) get up with fleas….
Alas Jack the horse has bolted again, go lock yourself in its stable. your useless.
“Siphoned off by property owners” the Unions are a mouth piece they seem to forget also the allowing of the poxy wages they allow big business to siphone off from workers backs allowing these companies employee the proliteriate with none stable conditions of employement with rolling contracts, i know people in the real world who’ve had 5 plus contracts of 11 months broken in between “where is the unions there ?” The comments serve only as a spinless media grabbing headline or how about reduced shift rates at weekends, non volunterry wage reductions? The unions say nothing of real backbone, them and their labour cronies, partnership with government my arse as for the media’s focus or input? who really gives a tose about them poor workers and there conditions.
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