The statistic derives from the British Embassy, and is construed from the fact that each year, on average, 70,000 passports are either renewed, changed, or issued, to people resident in the Republic of Ireland. The life of a British passport is ten years, giving a multiple for the overall result from the total turnover.

It is not an active list on which the Embassy relies. No overall record is kept by the British Embassy of all the passports, the ownership of the first of which could go back for many decades. The Embassy works on current requirements, not on history. But the regular, on going nature of the demand is a reliable and valid expression of the reality. And it means that around 15pc of the population of this independent, sovereign, Irish State see themselves as "British".

Since only 2pc-3pc of the population of the Republic is Protestant, a huge number of those holding British passports are Catholic. Since you cannot have a passport until you are sixteen, and cannot get a British one if Irish born in Ireland after 1949, the overwhelming majority of these British passport-holders are voters. We have to allow, in this analysis, for extreme and eccentric cases, where nationalists or republicans hold British passports for "political" reasons, as others might hold them for commercial or economic reasons.

But there still remain huge numbers who, by definition, belong to this remarkably substantial and on-going "minority" in the State, who favour "Britishness" as part of their make-up.

I present the main statistic in the context of current issues that are of importance. These concern the Irish Government and its policies in the South over the thorny question of minority status. They also concern the Irish Government and its policies over Northern Ireland.

Irish Government policy, in this particular field, is largely shaped at present by Martin Mansergh, the Taoiseach's Special Advisor. He has not been shy in putting forward his views, which in summary try to suggest that the Republic of Ireland has a kind of seamless political, social and religious homogeneity, with everyone "loyal" to the State because they are part of the State. As a result, we have no parallel needs to those in Northern Ireland for special terms recognising minorities in this part of the country.

He writes often and widely on this and its related arguments. Indeed, so much does he seek this "political publicity" that one might be excused for thinking he will perhaps be a Fianna Fáil candidate in the next election, standing possibly in "Mansergh Country" in the west midlands, and presenting more on the hustings of this quite trite and user-friendly material.

It is clever stuff. He is not averse to loading the arguments he makes with references to British "attempts over centuries to hobble this nation" (Church of Ireland Gazette, 29 September, 2000). At the same time he dismisses the past 80 years with their bitter and painful "decontamination" of the "real" Ireland from British, Anglo-Irish, Protestant and most notably of all, Unionist, culture. That, he claims, is all over. Ireland mercifully now has "a liberal and pluralist society, mercifully free of sectarian rancour, violence or segregation". And he sees it as unified, and indeed seamless.

He is wrong in what he claims. He uses the very recent Irish Celtic Tiger enlightenment, which has been largely promoted by the collapse of the Roman Catholic Church's authority, and the rise of a new God, that of materialism and wealth, in order to dismiss any claim from the British minority in the Republic that recognition of their needs is important. In an uneven way, the Irish Government is obsessively concerned to raise the profile of the Northern Ireland Nationalist and republican minority, and its needs, while making no effort at all to address the parallel needs in the South.

Indeed, Martin Mansergh, in much more detailed correspondence with the Reform Movement (of which I am a patron), has teased out, in the context of current Government policy though speaking personally, this issue of minority status. Undoubtedly unaware of the 500,000-plus holders of British passports in the Republic of Ireland, he dismisses the very idea of "a British minority" in the South. He denies the role of Southern Protestants in a Northern Ireland context, in giving support to the Northern Protestants. And he asserts that Protestants in the South have no interest in supporting any British or Unionist identity in the Republic, and nothing to gain from it. He goes even further in suggesting that, where some of these views emerge they are supposedly Northern Ireland in their inspiration.

Most notably of all, perhaps, he claims "The Government is not persuaded that there is, in the meaning of the Convention (on the Protection of National Minorities) any obvious identifiable group of its citizens, that by reason of clearly distinguishable ethnic, linguistic or religious criteria would at the present time constitute a national minority."

No criterion in the world is more clear-cut or compelling than the ownership of a passport. Yet this has not only been completely ignored, it has been denied. Mansergh claims that no "self-respecting sovereign Government is going to permit...any of its citizens to hold an allegiance at the same time to another country." Yet half a million do. They demonstrate that the conditions on dual citizenship in Northern Ireland need to be replicated down here unless we continue living with a ridiculous piece of hypocrisy.

Having written for years along lines completely contradictory to those so forcefully and wrong-headedly pursued by Martin Mansergh, I now find myself distressed at how many generalisations seem to be founded on so little evidence. Leaving aside how big or how small the "British" the "Unionist" the "Protestant" and the "Anglo-Irish" in the political sense traditions may be, there is first of all the existence of this broad "minority" in our society, and then the question of its needs.

Whether "personal" or related to Government policy, the Taoiseach's advisor espouses views which are fully represented in Government policy. In one letter, the most strongly-worded of all (already quoted from above), they are stated as such. Under the present Government, we recognise no British minority in the Republic, research no British need for identity, discover no desire to ameliorate Unionists' fears about our society, and we do little to encourage greater Unionist acceptance of our point of view. And all this is carried forward in the absence of one of the most basic pieces of research. Passport ownership has been entirely overlooked.

The Taoiseach has an unbending view of Patten, while his view on decommissioning is endlessly flexible and weak. He talks in riddles about Sinn Féin and its relationship with the Provisional IRA, thereby leaving open Fianna Fáil's future liaison in power with that party.

He has made far too little effort to reach out towards the concept and the reality of an all-islands context for better relations, almost certainly, or so I suspect, because of the greater degree of "Britishness" which this would inject into the future of all of us.

It does not suit Martin Mansergh, any more than it suits Bertie Ahern or the Government as a whole, to envisage a sizable minority in the Republic of Ireland who voted for the Good Friday Agreement, not because they were Irish, but because it offered peace and an exclusive pursuit of democratic politics free of the bomb and the gun.

Many of those voters wanted the South to embrace the Unionist demands for the same broad reason, of getting the peace made permanent but at the same time fair.

These supporters accepted that the amendment of Articles 2 and 3 was a de jure and de facto recognition of Northern Ireland's majority wish. They accepted that the Northern majority wanted to remain within the United Kingdom, and they had no wish to coerce them into an all-Ireland State.

Since 15pc of those who voted, in the South, on the Good Friday Agreement, were also part of the United Kingdom, this diversity of interpretation becomes more understandable than the ludicrous concept of a "seamless society."

Both Martin Mansergh and his team in the Taoiseach's office need to get back to the drawing-board as a matter of urgency, and do a bit more practical research.

It may be too late. David Trimble has already suffered attack, humiliation, endless difficulty in sustaining his position, and now may be toppled from the leadership of his party, bringing down the Agreement and the Assembly. A good part of the blame for this will reside with the Government down here. It is glib and smug about the society we display towards Northern Ireland, strident in its demands over Northern Ireland policing. Above all, it is sanctimonious about the pure, unsullied, harmonious society in the South that recognises no other face than its own.

© 1998 Irish Times

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