Taoiseach Micheál Martin delivering the Seamus Mallon ‘Shared Home Place’ Lecture

Taoiseach Micheál Martin delivered the annual Seamus Mallon ‘Shared Home Place’ Lecture in the Navan Centre & Fort in Armagh this evening.

You can watch back the full event which was chaired by Hume Foundation vice-chair Dawn Purvis. Allen McAdam, Dr Kate Clifford and Deirdriú McQuaid joined the Q&A after the lecture.

Some snippets from the Taoiseach’s speech:

This year, I also announced a new dimension to the Shared Island Initiative that is directly inspired by Seamus Mallon – the ‘Shared Home Place’ programme. This is inspired not just by Seamus’s words, but by his life-long commitment and work to deepen a shared connection to place and to community.

This new participative programme will be launched later this year with a range of ways for communities, and our diaspora abroad, to explore and celebrate the diverse layers of heritage that are a part of every town on this island and of what make us the people and communities we are today.

This is about all of us having more context, more points of connection and more confidence to acknowledge that Irishness and Britishness – in all of their varieties and continuing evolution – have shaped the heritage of every county on this island. And to recognise more the contributions of Irish, Anglo-Irish and Ulster-Scots traditions across the island of Ireland, and those of ethnic minority communities.

All are a source of richness and strength in our society. Each is a valued part of the heritage of this island, and crucial to how we approach and build our future together.

Seamus Mallon practiced a politics and lived a life that was inclusive, inquisitive, honest and unflinching in the pursuit of a reconciliation of all of the people who called the same place home – in Markethill, in Armagh, and across the entirety of the island of Ireland. Seamus’s spirit, confidence and force of intellect can and will guide us in how we take the next steps in reconciling how we look to the future on this island.

The Shared Home Place programme will foster a space in our society for telling the multiple versions of the stories of Ireland that are and always will be a part of who we are. It will be a part of how we honour Seamus’ legacy and work every day so that our Good Friday Agreement stands as the “beacon of hope” he knew it could be – for us and for the generations to come.

Earlier in his address, Micheál Martin listed some of the achievements of the government’s Shared Island Initiative:

As Seamus said in his address to his Party Conference in Belfast in 1999, “We know each other […] We belong together. We sink or swim together.”

What does that mean in real terms?

It means, for instance, €25m in resourcing from the Government to introduce an hourly-frequency rail service to Dublin and to Belfast from Portadown in County Armagh. Multiplying business, work, community and education connections all along the eastern seaboard. Passenger numbers increased by 50% in the first 6 months.

It means that the iconic Narrow Water Bridge is now under construction, thirty minutes from here at Carlingford Lough, to connect communities on the Cooley Peninsula and the Mourne Mountains and open up the huge sustainable tourism potential of the region.

In February, we also announced a new €23m Shared Destinations tourism programme to resource tourism agencies and local authorities to invest in new amenities and international promotion of Carlingford Lough, as well as the Cuilcagh Lakelands Geopark and the Sliabh Beagh region – three spectacular destinations that straddle the border.

Similarly, with a major drive from Government, Phase 2 of the Ulster Canal restoration at Clones was finished last year, and we are resourcing and working for Phase 3 to commence next year.

Alongside strategic investments like these for communities and tourism development throughout the border region, as part of the Shared Island Initiative, we have introduced new island-wide and Ireland-UK programmes that are about delivering more for both jurisdictions.

For instance, through the North South Research Programme, the Government has so far provided €50m to resource new cross-border collaborative research projects, hubs and institutional connections, to deepen and grow the university sector across both jurisdictions. Similarly, the Co-Centres programme – co-funded with the Executive, the UK Government and with industry – is enabling world-leading research on Climate, Biodiversity and Water and on Food Sustainability issues, to deepen knowledge and identify solutions for common challenges.

Major new island-wide enterprise, bioeconomy and biodiversity programmes are also now well underway, with agencies North and South working together in more substantive ways that ever before. These have been enabled by over €55m in Government of Ireland resourcing and through funding contributions from the Executive.

We are putting a sustained, strategic focus on new opportunities for people to connect, through the Shared Island Civic Society Fund, Creative Ireland and Community Climate Action programmes. With over 150 new projects funded to date, creating new communities of practice, common interest and common cause across this island.

This is what building a shared future means in real terms.

With the renewal of Ireland-UK relations that Prime Minister Starmer and I marked at our first, in what are to be annual, summits in March and our sustained engagement with the Northern Ireland Executive, including through the North South Ministerial Council, we are able now to really scope the full potential of both North/South and East-West relationships under the Good Friday Agreement.

With this momentum, energy and potential, I announced a new phase of the Government’s Shared Island Initiative in April. This is backed with a doubling of our resource commitment to the Shared Island Fund, with €2 Billion out to 2035, to foster reconciliation, mutual respect and growth.

This will deliver our enhanced commitments and objectives on Shared Island, as set out in our Programme for Government and revised National Development Plan. Like establishing a new air connectivity route between Derry and Dublin and building up the island-wide provision of specialist healthcare services. And, developing the all-island skills agenda and harnessing the full benefits of the island-wide labour market, working with the Executive, UK Government and through the Labour Employer Economic Forum.

Our Ireland-UK 2030 partnership includes a focus on infrastructure and energy, and we will pursue coordinated, strategic investment in offshore wind and support an all-island supply chain to realise the full potential of the sector and create new jobs both North and South.

I have also introduced targets for every Department to bring forward new investment cooperation projects, working with counterparts in Belfast and London. And, in April, I announced a new phase of my Department’s Shared Island research programme with the Economic and Social Research Institute with a focus on strategic policy and cooperation opportunities, to deepen the evidence-base and analysis of the island as a whole.

Our focus on fostering people-to-people interaction is also now moving to a higher level. To meet the scale of the demand and the potential there is now, to foster connections in every domain, and to involve and benefit every town and community on this island.

We are continuing and expanding the Shared Island Civic Society Fund and island-wide Creative Ireland programming. We are this year initiating major new arts and cultural heritage programmes, backed with more than €20m from the Government of Ireland out to 2030. This will see more island-wide productions, tours and exhibitions across all arts spheres and a new Ireland-UK cultural partnership for institutions and audiences to engage more with the culture and heritage of both our countries.