There have been suggestions from some quarters in Britain that the European Union’s role in relation to the Northern Ireland peace process has been exaggerated. The evidence strongly suggests otherwise. The Downing Street Declaration of December 1993 and other seminal documents that advanced the peace process refer explicitly to the EU context. Moreover, beyond such formal acknowledgment, the impact of Europe in bringing peace to our small island was profound and manifold. That it is often taken for granted does not mean that it should be taken as read.

There are numerous ways in which the EU contributed to reconciliation between our islands and created the context for bringing an end to the years of tragedy in Northern Ireland.

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The joint accession of the UK and Ireland to the EU in 1973 fundamentally improved political relations between us. For the first time in history, the EU provided Ireland and the UK with a structured context for our relationship.

Our shared membership helped to nurture many important and lasting personal friendships. Before EU membership, such friendships at political and official level between our islands hovered between minimal and nonexistent.

The experience of addressing the important issues arising in EU negotiations then taught us how much we actually have in common and how much we can achieve together when we work towards common goals. It also helped us to recognise that, even when we disagree, we share a way of doing business.

By its very nature, the EU was an important reminder of the potential for reconciliation between peoples, as John Hume always emphasised.

It ingrained in us the habit and language of compromise.

It taught us to live with shared and overlapping identities.

The EU, reflecting the generosity of our partners and their taxpayers, has provided financial support over many years for peace in Northern Ireland. Although I doubt it has been mentioned even once in the British media, the EU has promised in the Brexit negotiations to continue to provide such support after the UK leaves.

Above all, along with the US, the EU provided the wider context for reconciliation.

As Monty Python’s John Cleese might say: “All right, I grant you all that. But apart from that, what else has the EU done for Northern Ireland?”

The friendship between Britain and Ireland will remain important whatever happens with Brexit

The wider context provided by the EU is particularly crucial. I can testify to one illustration of that. I was Ireland’s ambassador to the EU when Ian Paisley took the historic but sensitive step of entering government with Martin McGuinness. Paisley immediately contacted the Irish authorities to ask if the president of the EU commission, José Manuel Barroso, could visit Belfast as soon as possible. I conveyed the request and Barroso, who was on a visit to Washington, readily agreed and flew to Belfast the following day. Many will recall the photos of Paisley and McGuinness smiling and laughing together the day after they entered office. Probably few will recall that Barroso was also in those photographs. Paisley had had the political intelligence to realise that, even visually, the wider EU context was crucial.

At a recent Oxford seminar which I attended on the origins of the peace process, British and Irish veterans of the Northern Ireland negotiations offered their personal insights into the complexities of those negotiations. It occurred to me that these insights and their legacy could provide much needed guidance on Brexit.

There is a crying need today for the statesmanship which came to characterise the peace process. There is a need for political leadership with a similar sense of history, which understands that the stakes are far more important than the next soundbite or tabloid headline or internal party bloodletting. There is an urgent need for people who can handle infinite complexity; who understand that compromise is not a dirty word and that diplomacy is not surrender.

The experience of those peace process negotiators also has important lessons for the future friendship between Britain and Ireland, a friendship which will remain important whatever happens. If Brexit goes ahead, we will need negotiators for a new era who can make friendships when the winds are adverse, not just when they are benign. Above all, despite the coarse rhetoric used by some in recent weeks, we must maintain the mutual respect which has now for so long characterised the Anglo-Irish relationship.

• Bobby McDonagh was Ireland’s ambassador to the UK from 2009-2013