International obligations
From Dr Garret FitzGeraid, Minister for Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Ireland.
Sir: My friend Patrick Cosgrave, says that foreigners, and I in particular, utterly fail to grasp the British constitutional principle of the power of Parliament te abrogate international treaties ratified by an earlier Parliament — a principle which, he says, he recently tried to demonstrate to me. However, he underestimates his own persuasiveness, or (as I would prefer to think!), my. grasp, as a foreigner like himself, of the British Constitution. While not actually suckled on that Constitution, I have been aware of this aspect of it from a very early age and of the contrast with the Irish Constitution which, as he has recently been shown by the Irish members of the Common Law Enforcement Commission, incorporates the principles of International Law, thus precluding, for example, extradition for political offences in defiance of an International Convention.
The real problem seems to me to be that I, in my turn, have failed to persuade Patrick that British constitutional theory is irrelevant to International Law under which treaties are legally binding on those who signed and ratified them and may be abrogated unilaterally only at the risk of encouraging the penalty that may flow from a breach of International Law. Despite this intra -Irish exercise in mutual incomprehension, I look forward to many other stimulating conversations with your political commentator!
Yours on holidays, Garret FitzGerald Parage, 83 Les Arcs en Provence, Var, France
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