Can Martin’s coalition show what purposeful bridge building can offer the island?

I see Jay has beaten me to the punch on today’s announcement in the Republic’s budget of a Shared Island fund. I generally agree with his headline that north-south cooperation finally has a budget, but I would also point out it has a lot of bases to cover.

However, the point is to use this money to foster new investment and development opportunities on a North/South basis. And the Belfast Agreement (more observed in the breach than followed) is to be the strategic gold standard in order to “strengthen links across society on both parts of the island”.

Much of the things that can be done through cooperation can garner much higher sums for projects that (unlike the A5) can bring much broader agreement. That’s a key principle here. Incidentally, it’s also why the idea that anyone could produce a useful white paper without cooperation is just a wee bit mad.

Whilst the idea for A Shared Island Unit may have come as an idea from Northern Irish Green party leader Claire Bailey, this substantial resourcing is a vindication of the Fianna Fáil Taoiseach’s long criticism that Northern Ireland had been left largely to its own devices by previous administrations.

According to Martin, the new half-billion Euros will complement existing all-island commitments...

…including to the North/South Bodies, to cross-border health services and the Reconciliation Fund, as well as the significant support for peace and progress on the island that will be delivered through the EU PEACE PLUS programme.

It’s a good start, and there is still much to be filled out. Some of its objectives are pretty broad and aspirational. The named projects are almost all cross border and relevant mostly to nationalist border communities in the south and west of Northern Ireland.

To some extent, its long term success (or otherwise) will depend on the degree to which it is seen to benefit all the people of Northern Ireland, not just those living on or near the border. Post-Brexit, it will need to work right across the community and the Irish Sea.

This is nothing new. In fact, it is something that Martin has been talking about for most of the last ten years.  And even when things looked at their bleakest just after his party’s rout in February 2011, Martin was laying out for Northern Irish audiences his own pluralist Republican unity of the people arguments.

So unafraid has he been to call out Sinn Féin on undermining partners in government (nationalist as well as unionist) and bad mouth wider unionism, even when it brought him no electoral advantage, that he has a level of trust with Northern Irish Unionists unrivaled by almost any recent Taoiseach.

In the context of the biggest spending budget for many years, aimed at reflation of health education and housing budgets, the Shared Island Unit is a key part of the vision thing for Martin, a Republican who point blank refuses glory in many hundreds of (relatively recent) deaths of Northern Irish countrymen.

Few in the south these days factor northern matters into their political calculations. However, the relative silence from the previous administration over the collapse of Stormont by Sinn Féin was seen by northern unionists as a tactic endorsement of that party’s coercive approach to the 1998 settlement.

Contrary to the border poll line pushed by Mary Lou McDonald and others, they misconstrue the effects of such aggressive lines on those leaving political unionism for more liberal (and less strident) alternatives, like the Greens and Alliance, which is to put them on the defensive over the union.

Political Dublin’s views Brexit as desertion, and in its wilder moments, Sinn Féin’s three-year desertion of Stormont as a quid pro quo and the very least Unionism deserves, forgetting of course that scratching an itch to dump southern ‘civil war politics’ it may buying into a new all-island version.

And yet, in the sort of polarised Ireland SF propose, there is no border poll, and no reconciliation, other than conversion to their own fundamentalist, unrepentant and bloody version of the truth, that they were right and the Prods were wrong. An odd sort of nativism to sit so primly beside modern Ireland.

Micheál Martin’s predecessor as Taoiseach, Brian Cowen prefigured Martin’s vision of the future in fairly concrete terms, but I think it fairly represents the mainstream Fianna Fáil view of island politics, post the Belfast Agreement…

We have now all decided: let’s go on a journey and forget about the destination – the destination isn’t really important in that respect. We can all work for what it is we would like ideally to see, but this is not something that can be forced or imposed upon people on either side of the island.

The dangerous (if wromantic) abstractions must end. Good and moral people vote for populists out of frustration with the empty talk and promises from the mainstream. But tackling the real problems that people face (like income inequality and social mobility dropping like a stone) can carry weight.

Given the ideas, resources and a broad buy-in by people on both sides of the community in Northern Ireland and across the border, real change will change real hearts and minds over time. But first, there’s a lot of scorched earth out there to try and make fertile again.

The fundamentalists have had their chance (bringing us little more than tokenism, rows over flags, parades and other culture war items) now it is up to pragmatists like Martin (and his FG Finance Minister Pascal Donohoe) to show what focus and determination is capable of offering instead.

 

Photo by Pixabay is licensed under CC0

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