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SOPHY RIDGE: Another border that is causing concern to the government is in Ireland where Brexit is one part of what pushed power sharing to the brink.  Our Ireland correspondent David Blevins sat down with the President of Sinn Fein Gerry Adams and began by asking him about Article 50 and what Brexit might mean for the border.  

DAVID BLEVINS: Gerry Adams, we are sitting in a hotel right on the Irish border which will in due course be the place on tarmac where the European Union ends and the United Kingdom begins.  How do you police that without some kind of border control?

GERRY ADAMS: Well you can’t and we’ve been saying from day one of the referendum result that the only outcome if the frontier between the European Union and the non-European Union is on the island of Ireland, then it’s going to be a hard economic frontier and we are sitting on the border as you say and if you go to the other side here, you can just see how it snakes.  Even as you look here, one foot will be on the border and the other will be on the other side of the border and that’s the nature of it.  We have argued in Sinn Fein and the Irish Parliament has voted in support of this and all of the parties elected, the majority of them, their MLA’s to the Assembly in the north support the proposition of a special designated status for the north.  That’s the only way to stop a part frontier being erected here.

DB: But why would a British Prime Minister accept special designated status for Northern Ireland within the European Union given that that really would be a united Ireland by the back door?

GERRY ADAMS: Well it wouldn’t be because it wouldn’t infringe on the constitutional issues, that can only be sorted out if a majority of people in the north and in the south both want a united Ireland and want the same and nothing else.  I just think it’s sensible, it isn’t just an emotional thing, I just think that in a small land mass like this with such a small population, unity means a good economy, unity means good health services, it means a decent environment, good energy and all the rest of it.  We have to think of what is essentially an English problem, the English government because they are ignoring what the people of Scotland want, they are ignoring what the people of the North of Ireland want, it isn’t up to them because the European Council or the Commission or the Parliament, in other words the other European, the 26 or 27 states, they will decide what’s going to happen.  

DB: You talk a little bit about Scotland there.  Scotland’s First Minister has sent a letter to Downing Street demanding a referendum on Scottish independence, if you believe people here would vote for Irish unity at this point, why have you not sent a similar letter demanding a referendum?

GERRY ADAMS: Well we’re exploring, the situation in Scotland is slightly more advanced than it is and the two aren’t the same anyway so we’re exploring the context in which we may do that with the two governments.  I’m content that we should have a debate, that we should look at the merits as I would see it or the demerits as maybe a Unionist might see it and I am also very, very conscious that Republicans should not be seen as in any way exploiting the consequences of Brexit because the type of Ireland we want has to be one in which Unionism, in which decent Unionists are content.  That needs to be agreed, that needs to give them their piece, it needs to respect everything that they want in terms of the way forward.  I can’t be putting the shoe on the other foot, we don’t want, I don’t want, as someone who was born into a state that didn’t want me I don’t want a new Ireland to be anything other than a harmonious fraternity of all the people that live on this island.

DV: It’s not too harmonious at Stormont right now and the absence of a devolved government is just a complication in terms of what’s going on with the Brexit.  How has Sinn Fein come from a position of being willing to share power with Unionists, to being reluctant to do that over what many people would say are relatively minor issues like an Irish Language Act?

GERRY ADAMS: Well you’re right insofar as the issues we have to deal with are not as difficult as issues which we have dealt with in the past and resolved in the past and I put that to our Unionist partners in the course of the recent talks and it isn’t that we’re reluctant to share power – I believe fully and we’re wedded to the Good Friday Agreement and to the political institutions but as Martin McGuinness said, there can be no return to the status quo so what went wrong was that the terms of previous agreements and accords were not implemented, were not delivered and when you’ve somebody as big and as strong and as formidable as Martin, he could carry that to a certain degree for the rest of us. Martin’s gone, so even if we were able to cobble together something tomorrow, it wouldn’t last so I want it to be sustainable.  

DB: One of the other issues on the negotiating table of course is legacy and for Sinn Fein that’s about getting British soldiers in the dock but many people would say what about the victims of IRA violence, what about their right to justice?   

GERRY ADAMS: Well it isn’t about getting British soldiers in the dock, it’s about the victims of British soldiers being treated exactly the same as the victims of the IRA or any other combatant force.  Our position has been for an national independent truth commission that everybody can make use of but we compromised on this issue.  Yes, I believe that the victims of the IRA or at least their relatives have the right to truth and I believe that those who are victims of British army violence or state violence also have the right to truth and the British government is holding that back.  The Lord Chief Justice has said in terms of legacy inquests for example, that the funding should be made at the end of it, there is funding set aside under that agreement but the British government is refusing to issue that funding and some of these families have fought for an inquest, and I know in one case for 43 years, so that’s not fair.  

DB: Gerry, you talk about those mechanisms perhaps for truth and reconciliation. Six months ago Martin McGuinness told me if those mechanisms existed he was quite prepared to talk about his past.  If they existed would Gerry Adams find it easier to talk about his past and his long alleged involvement in the IRA?

GERRY ADAMS: Yes, I have said and Martin and I said this together and we said it quite a few times, that we would both do our best and we would also encourage other Republicans to come forward if there was a satisfactory arrangement put in place and that’s my commitment.  Martin’s not here but that’s still my commitment.

DB: In his eulogy, President Clinton said Martin McGuinness had been married to Gerry Adams for nearly as long as he had been married to his wife, Bernie.  You must miss him terribly.

GERRY ADAMS: Yes, I do.  I miss him in terms of the daily grind of the work that we’re doing, this is the very first – and this is from 1972 – the first talks process that he and I haven’t been together but I miss him also at a personal level deeply so and I sort of reconciled myself to that because you have to go through a grieving process.  So many people who knew Martin McGuinness, he was a fixture for decades, he is more affable than me, he is more outgoing than me, he’s not as shy as me so you find that, you know, getting Martin out of a meeting or out of a venue or out of an event was like trying to get a drunk man out of a pub because he would want to have the craic and talk and shake hands with and swap stories with every single person there, that was his nature and that’s one of the reasons why people think of him so fondly.  

SR: Sinn Fein President, Gerry Adams, there.