Page 4 - State Papers News Today

The new year is a special time for Irish historians. It’s the only date in the calendar when the ones who aren’t called Diarmaid Ferriter are allowed by law to make their annual appearance in the Irish media.

State papers: Ahern viewed riots and disturbances around Holy Cross school in 2001 as sign of a ‘deeper malaise’ in Northern Ireland

British prime minister David Lloyd George admitted in a private letter to an Irish politician in 1919, before the War of Independence had escalated to include attacks on British troops, that he was pessimistic of any peaceful negotiated settlement to “the Irish question” because of intransigence over the status of Ulster.

A senior unionist leader warned the government that Northern Ireland faced the threat of a civil war with the potential for loyalist attacks to be mounted in Dublin.

Irish officials were so embarrassed by the condition of the Irish embassy in London they were reluctant to bring foreign diplomats or dignitaries to the premises.

The Irish Government drew up a secret plan during the 1970s to examine the prospect of redrawing the Northern Irish border and integrating up to two-thirds of present-day Northern Ireland into the Republic, according to recently released State Papers. 

An African embassy contacted the Department of Foreign Affairs in the 1970s to raise concerns over racially- motivated attacks on its citizens in Dublin and to ask why gardaí were called to the home of one Nigerian man for allegedly bringing Irish girls back there.

President Patrick Hillery and President Mary Robinson both raised the prospect of a return visit to Ireland by Pope John Paul II in the 1980s and 90s.

Embarrassed Irish officials acknowledged the logistical demands of a state visit to Ireland by French president Francois Mitterrand would require the hiring of heavy-lift helicopters as the Air Corps did not have any.

State papers: Justice minister sought ‘pre-emptive round-up’ of 150 dissident republicans