The Good Friday Agreement

1998: The settlement that ended the Troubles, agreed on Good Friday 1998 and voted on in both jurisdictions.

The Agreement was reached in Belfast on Good Friday, 10 April 1998, after two years of talks and a great deal longer than that of quiet groundwork. It is built in three strands, and the shape matters, because each strand answers a different claim.

Strand One set up a power sharing assembly and executive inside Northern Ireland, with ministries allocated by party strength rather than won outright, so that no community could govern without the other. Strand Two created North South bodies linking Belfast and Dublin on matters of common concern. Strand Three created East West bodies linking both of those to London, Edinburgh and Cardiff.

Underneath the institutions sat the harder bargains. The Republic amended Articles 2 and 3 of its constitution, giving up the territorial claim to the North and replacing it with an aspiration to unity by consent. The principle of consent was written in on both sides: Northern Ireland stays in the United Kingdom while a majority there wishes it, and if that majority ever changes, both governments are bound to give effect to it. Prisoners were released on licence, policing was to be reformed, and paramilitary weapons were to be put beyond use.

Both jurisdictions voted on 22 May 1998. In Northern Ireland 71.1 per cent voted yes on a turnout of 81 per cent. In the Republic the vote was on the constitutional amendment rather than the Agreement itself, and it passed with 94.4 per cent. The headline figures conceal the tighter one: unionist support in the North is generally estimated at somewhere just above half.