DeSouza ‘court’ ruling confirms Good Friday Agreement isn’t worth the paper it was written on, says Lasair Dhearg.
Emma DeSouza, an Irish woman who was born and resides in the Six County state, had taken a case against the British Home Office and initially won, after it had deemed her ‘British’ when applying for a residence card for her US-born husband.
Emma, who has never even held a British passport, was rejected in her application as the Home Office had reached its decision. Challenging this, Emma had taken the case citing the text of the Good Friday Agreement, and won. The British Home Office then appealed her initial victory to the Upper Tribunal court.
Lasair Dhearg spokesperson Pól Torbóid said that “according to the upper courts decision, regardless of the content of the Good Friday Agreement” which supposedly enshrines the right of people in the Six County state to be Irish or British, “it is defined as an International Agreement that does not supersede ‘British national law’.”
“Effectively, the Good Friday Agreement is not a legal document and, as such, isn’t worth the paper it was written on. Regardless of its content, the court’s decision now means that Irish people within the state now have an imposed identity of ‘Britishness’ and must revoke it in order to be only ‘Irish’.”
“To compound this, they must now also pay a fee to do so and, according to British Government websites, the total cost is now £372 – the outcome of which they state that your right to live in the ‘UK’ would be affected.”
“The beauty of the Good Friday Agreement, from a British perspective, is that the language used is so ambiguous, broad and meaningless that it allowed open interpretation of its conditions and intent. This is now overshadowed by the fact that it doesn’t matter what the document states at all, according to British courts.”
“What the Agreement did do though was secure the economy, laws, infrastructure, taxation and social structures within the Six County state under the control of the British Government. It also led to a British controlled process of decommissioning of Irish weaponry, while they disposed of none. All of this was achieved in return for seats on the British administration in Stormont, which hasn’t even sat for a number of years now.”
“The Good Friday Agreement brought to an end three decades of intense struggle for Irish national and economic liberation. The British Government is now confident that it can do whatever it likes in Ireland and not have to worry about the repercussions.”
“Never before in Irish history was so much lost with so little gained.”
ENDS
