New Ireland Forum

The New Ireland Forum was a forum in 1983–1984 at which Irish nationalist political parties discussed potential political developments that might alleviate the Troubles in Northern Ireland. The Forum was established by Garret FitzGerald, then Taoiseach, under the influence of John Hume, for "consultations on the manner in which lasting peace and stability can be achieved in a new Ireland through the democratic process".^[1][2] The Forum was initially dismissed, by Unionists, Sinn Féin, and others, as a nationalist talking-shop.^[3] The Forum's report, published on 2 May 1984, listed three possible alternative structures: a unitary state, a federal/confederal state, and joint British/Irish authority. The British Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, dismissed the three alternatives one by one at a press conference, each time saying, "that is out", in a response that became known as the "out, out, out" speech. However, Garret Fitzgerald, who described the Forum's report as "an agenda not a blueprint",^[4] valued it as establishing a nationalist consensus from which the 1985 Anglo-Irish Agreement could be framed.