IOL

AHERN: REFERENDUM WILL NOT AFFECT AGREEMENT

19/04/2004 – 11:02:44

The Taoiseach Bertie Ahern has insisted that the Government’s planned citizenship referendum poses no threat to the Good Friday Agreement.

Mr Ahern was responding to a request from the SDLP for the referendum to be postponed until its implications for the 1998 peace deal can be properly debated.

In a letter to the Taoiseach last week, SDLP leader Mark Durkan said he was extremely concerned that the referendum would alter the terms of the agreement.

However, Mr Ahern said today: “There is no difficulty with the British-Irish agreement. We have taken legal advice here and in Britain and there is no difficulty whatever about the changes.”

Justice Minister Michael McDowell echoed Mr Ahern’s comments in a separate interview with journalists today. Mr McDowell said the changes contained in the proposed referendum were “wholly consistent” with the Good Friday Agreement.

He also said Democratic Unionist Party leader Ian Paisley was wrong to suggest that the referendum represented a unilateral alteration of the agreement by the Irish Government.

“Mr Paisley is wrong in relation to this,” the minister said. “The two governments have conferred closely on this matter and, in the next 24 hours, I will be indicating the position of the British and Irish governments. Manufactured arguments, either here or in Northern Ireland, suggesting that it is inconsistent with the agreement are wide of the mark.”