Sir, – Your article “Pharmacists to prescribe prescription-only medications for common conditions under new scheme” (News, August 13th) informs us that “a number of countries have initiated prescribing by pharmacists including England, Scotland, Northern Ireland, Canada and New Zealand”.
The inclusion of Northern Ireland in a list countries may be a lapse in editing. I hope so and hope you have not succumbed to a very recent trend in British media, and British officialdom also, to refer to Northern Ireland as a nation or country, one of four countries or nations in the UK. Northern Ireland, unlike England, Scotland and Wales, is neither; it is constitutionally a part of the UK as described in the Belfast Agreement 1998 and remains so until and if in a future border poll a majority votes for inclusion in a united Ireland. Region was the official term used in Great Britain until very recently and still is though less so. Before the Anglo-Irish Agreement of 1985, province was officially used, which status Northern Ireland has not either, there being no usage of province in Great Britain and Northern Ireland forming only part of the ancient Irish province of Ulster.
The point is not minor. Acceptance of the description country or nation for Northern Ireland may be thought to imply Northern Ireland, like Scotland, has a right to self-determination and independence; and it may be recalled there was in fact a movement for independence in loyalist circles in the 1970s. Under the Belfast Agreement 1998, approved in referendums North and South, self-determination is for “the people of the whole island of Ireland alone by agreement between the two parts respectively”. Northern Ireland is part of the United Kingdom and may become part of a United Ireland.
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DECLAN O’DONOVAN,
(Former ambassador,
former head of Joint Secretariat, Belfast),
Dalkey,
Co Dublin.