The London gathering between the most senior Irish and British civil servants last month began with a pleasant dinner in a culinary school in Westminster followed by an all-day meeting at offices near St James’s Park.
Almost everybody invited is said to have attended, despite nearby No 10 Downing Street being engulfed with chaos over allegations about the relations between Labour’s Peter Mandelson and the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
Contacts between Irish and British officials have not always been like this, particularly in the past decade. The attendance of high-level officials shows how good relations have resumed after the turmoil of the Brexit years.
Just days after he took up office in 2024, British prime minister Keir Starmer hosted then taoiseach Simon Harris at Chequers – the first foreign leader he met – where they agreed to hold annual summits to “reset” relations. This structure has been key to the improved relations.
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The latest summit takes place on Thursday and Friday in east Cork between Starmer and Taoiseach Micheál Martin and will focus on co-operation in the areas of energy, digitalisation, education and, especially, maritime security and defence issues.
An established structure matters in the work of officials. A summit date in the diary forces a timetable for preparations for the summit. Then there is the summit itself, with the necessary follow-ups afterwards, before preparations begin for the next meeting.
Before the exit of the UK from Europe, Irish politicians and officials across most departments had close ties with their British counterparts built up from contacts on the margins of meetings in Brussels.
“The British were nearly always the ones that we shared views with; they were always the ones to whom we gravitated, unless it was one of those moments when we didn’t share a common view,” recalls one veteran official, now retired.
The closeness was lost after Brexit, bar established contacts between the Department of Finance and HM Treasury, and between officials in the Department of Justice and the UK Home Office.
[ The Irish Times view on EU/UK relations: repairing some of the Brexit damageOpens in new window ]
Today, the ties are growing back, helped by a greater understanding on the British side that relationships with Dublin are not just about Northern Ireland; the relationships are useful for them.
“We are quite a successful country, and they’re interested in learning from us. I don’t think that would have been true back in the old days and we’re their nearest neighbour,” said one senior official.
The relationship has had to be rebuilt post-Brexit.
“Being outside of the EU meant having to start from scratch to create a sort of a systematic, structured engagement between ourselves and the UK,” said another Irish official.
The engagement was possible because, in the wake of the Starmer-Harris Chequers meeting, British officials understood that “they had permission to engage in a way they probably wouldn’t have had during the whole Brexit thing”, said one source.
After the two leaders met, civil servants began poring over the areas where co-operation could bring better results, quickly realising that the challenges facing both were the same, or similar, in the areas of defence, energy and maritime security among others.
The size of the UK – 16 times the population of Ireland with a world-ranked financial centre behind it – lays open the possibility of “huge economies of scale, if we get it right”, said one official.
The work is led on the Irish side by the Secretary General to the Government, John Callinan, and on the British by the newly installed Antonia Romeo, who has taken over as cabinet secretary following Chris Wormald’s ousting by Starmer. The arrangement is unusual for the British, but not so for the Irish system which is well used to the Department of the Taoiseach taking the lead on cross-departmental issues. However, the Cabinet Office lead on the Irish co-operation is proving important.
The memorandum of understanding between Dublin and London on defence issues, which was signed in 2015 but never published, is due to be updated this year, though not in time for this week’s summit. The agreement includes a clause that the air defence of Irish skies would be carried out by the Royal Air Force in a time of crisis because the Air Corps does not have interceptors to defend them.
Even if the updated agreement is not ready to be signed off fully, big progress has been made between the two countries over the measures needed to protect energy interconnectors and sub-sea cables.
A joint exercise involving the Irish Naval Service and Air Corps and the Royal Navy and the Royal Air Force, among other bodies, will take place later in the year to iron out remaining problems and “fix things that show up to be issues”, one source said.
The long-standing and developing co-operation between the Department of Justice and the UK Home Office is becoming ever more important as both countries deal with the numbers seeking asylum. Information is shared daily, though last December’s so-called “adequacy agreement” between London and Brussels ensured that the exchange of confidential personal data could continue.
Despite the evident improvement in relations, the question remains about how much they would survive the departure of Starmer from Downing Street – an outcome that could happen as early as May following local elections in England.
There is doubt among some on the Irish side that it would thrive as well without Starmer.
“There will be a post-Starmer era. So, getting this stuff started and embedded matters. He is genuine about his interest in the British-Irish relationship, but his successors might not be,” said one Irish official.
Speaking from London, a senior figure on the British side agrees: “Having been through the dark days of Brexit, it does feel that the relationship is pretty much back to where it should be.
“Yes, a new prime minister could upset things, but he or she would have to deliberately disrupt things, if there is something in place that is working well, and that is showing that it is working well.
“There are always risks about making sure that things stick, and that the systems will keep going when people move on,” said the senior British official.
“The more that things can be embedded in the system before anything happens the better.”
