Building all-island relationships requires “a hard slog” and not “rhetoric, slogans and soundbites”, Taoiseach Micheál Martin has said, just days after Minister for Justice Jim O’Callaghan’s declaration that the next government should plan for unity.
In words that could be interpreted as a criticism of his Cabinet colleague, Martin said: “I believe in the hard slog of working to build relationships, and, you know, I read a lot about the history of this island.”
“One thing I’m absolutely certain about is that rhetoric, slogans, soundbites will achieve nothing and won’t achieve a Border poll,” the Taoiseach told a Shared Island conference in Dublin.
The Government’s €2 billion Shared Island Fund, which is spending money on cross-Border bridges, roads and railways and a slew of other projects, has succeeded because it has not become embroiled in the constitutional debate, he said.
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“It has basically enjoyed the support of every aspect of political tradition in communities around Ireland, and that should not be underestimated or underappreciated,” he told his audience.
His words come just days after O’Callaghan told an SDLP-organised unity conference in Belfast that the next Irish government should begin preparing for unity, partly because the timetable for a Border poll could be set by English politicians for English interests.
Some Fianna Fáil members have been irritated by Martin’s more cautious instincts on Northern Ireland, and this criticism has intensified following O’Callaghan’s intervention, and an earlier one by Fine Gael leader and Tánaiste Simon Harris who has said his party would have “a blueprint for unity” ready by November.
Pointedly, however, Martin, speaking at the fifth Shared Island forum in Dublin, said people should read the recently-published memoir of former Fianna Fáil leader and taoiseach Seán Lemass, who first opened a dialogue with Northern Ireland prime minister, Terence O’Neill.
Saying he believed in unity, Martin went on: “I encourage people to read it and look at the pragmatism, but also the frustration of Lemass in the late 1960s when he was saying to himself that all the rhetoric of the previous three decades had achieved nothing.”
For the last five years, Martin said he had called for the rules governing the operation of Stormont to be changed because they are “failing”. The rules should ensurethe Assembly and Executive cannot be collapsed by one party quitting.
However, everyone on the island must understand that the three-stranded relationship outlined by the Belfast Agreement – relations within Northern Ireland, between North and South and between Ireland and Britain – will have to continue, even after unity, Martin said.
“Those three strands will always be part of whatever happens in the future. There will always be a British dimension, there will always be a North-South dimension,” he told the forum.
Irish Ministers and their Stormont colleagues are now working closely together on major policy questions in the North South Ministerial Council: “Who would’ve thought that possible six years ago?”
There should be far more co-operation between the Industrial Development Authority and its Northern equivalent, Invest NI, the Taoiseach added. “I’ve said this to the IDA, in particular, they need to really think on an all-island basis.”
Questioned about weekend opinion polling which suggest that a third of people in the Republic now want a hard border with Northern Ireland to curb asylum seeker numbers, Martin said he wondered if such people know what a hard border means.
“It’s only when it would manifest itself that a lot of people [would] oppose it – when they would find out that movement impeded,” he said, adding a hard border would “actually injure and impede a lot of the basic rights that we take for granted”.
