Balancing the Shared Island: safeguarding Protestant and Dissenter heritage…

According to the Irish government’s Shared Ireland Initiative (SII) website, “The new Programme for Government agreed in January 2025 commits a further €1 billion to the Shared Island Fund up to 2035 to foster reconciliation, mutual respect and growth”.

The Shared Island Initiative has contributed to economic development in many areas of Northern Ireland. Examples include: the Ulster Canal, Narrow Water Bridge, the A5, Casement Park, Battle of the Boyne site, Carlingford Greenway, and the UU campus in Derry. These flagship projects have rightly been welcomed by most people.

However, as Professors Emeriti Joseph Ruane and Jennifer Todd recently wrote (in an excellent short paper), the Irish government’s Shared Island Initiative’s “largely organisational focus neither engages directly with grass roots diversity nor broadens discussion to the problematic constitutional issues”¹. It is difficult for Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael – both of whom claim to desire reunification – to argue that they are helping to unite Catholic, Protestant and Dissenter, when most of these geographically-specific projects are located in mostly Catholic areas.

So, how could the Shared Island Initiative diversify its grass-roots engagement? There are two beautiful Belfast buildings that are both in a sorry state of disrepair. Craigavon House in Sydenham, home of Sir James Craig (first Prime Minister of Northern Ireland), is a place and person revered by many Protestants and probably all unionists. The Assembly Rooms in Waring Street hosted a meeting in 1786 at which the abolitionist Thomas McCabe and others successfully prevented a slave-trading company from being set up. It also hosted the Belfast Harp Festival in 1792, a seminal moment in the nurturing of Irish music. And many of the United Irish radical Presbyterian leaders, such as Henry Joy McCracken, were tried and sentenced to death here. (See a recent article by Reclaim the Enlightenment in Slugger.)

These two buildings are monuments to unionism and radicalism: two strands of island politics that do not feature in the make-up of the Dublin government. SII funding for their restoration would send a message that Dublin respects, perhaps cherishes, grass roots diversity on this island. One can imagine radical secularists would unreservedly welcome SII funding for the restoration of the Assembly Rooms. It would be fascinating to watch how unionists would react to such an SII funding offer to rescue Craigavon House from ruin.

REFERENCES:
¹“Contested Categories, Changing Meanings and Identity Disjunctures on the Island of Ireland”, Studies, Spring 2025, No. 453, p.92 (endnote 7). (online version.)

Philip McGuinness

Philip McGuinness taught at Dundalk Institute of Technology, plays mandolin with the Oriel Traditional Orchestra and loves to walk around and over the wee perfect hills of the Ring Of Gullion.