THE SHARED ISLAND UNIT
As he contemplated the prospect of a breakdown in the Brexit talks, Martin’s own political future was called into question by a Red C opinion poll held just weeks into his first term as Taoiseach: FF took just 25 per cent, compared to FG at 35 per cent and SF at 27 per cent. Martin’s personal ratings had also dropped by five points. In response, Éamon Ó Cuív, an open critic of the Taoiseach, called for him to be replaced and commented on Twitter that it ‘looks like my prediction of there being two large parties but FF not being one of them is coming to pass. The threat is existential. FF won’t survive if we persist with the myth that the decline is simply due to external factors and not the party’s direction.’
Internal bickering over the disappointing results for the party in the February 2020 election and the subsequent refusal of the leadership to engage in government formation discussions with SF did not diminish Martin’s very public and outright hostility to the now main opposition party over its relationship to the IRA and its role in the armed conflict in the North over 30 years. For many nationalists in the North, and not a few in his own party, FF policy and Martin’s focus were determined by the electoral threat posed by SF and the prospect of it becoming the dominant political force on the island following a successful referendum for unity, which Martin was accused of seeking to postpone for as long as possible.
In his online address to the MacGill school in late October 2020, Martin made an unrestrained assault on SF, accusing unelected people in the party of organising ‘behind the scenes’ a ‘political funeral’ to mark the death of Bobby Storey in Belfast in June. He claimed that there was a decision to defy public health guidelines in order to ‘make a very clear political statement around the war as they’d call it’. He said that ‘people were summoned from the length and breadth of the country to attend to make a statement.’ In response to questions, Martin declined to envisage any future alliance with SF in government until he was satisfied that it was run by elected representatives: ‘I have never been satisfied to this day that has been the case with the modern Sinn Féin party,’ he said while insisting that FF was ‘committed to a united Ireland; that has always been its position.’ He accepted that the thrust of the Shared Island initiative was to promote co-operation between North and South rather than to press for unification and that his ‘noble objective’ was to:
say to all persuasions on this island, how do we share this island?
We have done research on Northern Ireland ourselves as a political party over the last number of years. We have identified a very strong middle ground in Northern Ireland, that want to get things done for them, that want to create a future.
The formal launch of the Shared Island Unit (SIU) in late October 2020 provided more details on the range of its government-financed research and practical support for all-island co-operation and development. The SIU was to commission expertise from existing state bodies to deepen the comparative analysis of the economies and health systems, North and South. It envisaged the participation of the social partners, including employers and trade unions, in an organised forum to discuss the development of an all-island economy and intensified cooperation between both jurisdictions. Announcing the financial details of the initiative at the launch, Martin said that the government would make $500 million available ‘for the next five years’ to research ways of ‘deepening North–South co-operation’ and building a ‘shared island agenda’. He named Aingeal O’Donoghue – a former civil servant in the Department of Foreign Affairs – as head of the unit, assisted by principal officer Eoghan Duffy, with up to five other staff to be appointed. The key areas of focus would be the all-island economy, an all-island climate strategy, investing in the north-west and border regions and commissioning research to ‘support the building of consensus around a shared future on the island’.
He confirmed that the SIU would work in co-operation with the ESRI on commissioning the ‘comprehensive research programme’, particularly focusing on the economy, health and education on the island, and with the National Economic and Social Council which, he said, had already completed a scoping report.
The government was also committed, Martin said, to supporting cross-border, capital projects, including the long-awaited completion of the A5 motorway from Monaghan to Derry, the Narrow Water Bridge across Carlingford Lough and the upgrading to a higher speed rail connection between Dublin and Belfast. The plan also envisaged the development of a new university in the north-west, linking colleges in Letterkenny and Derry, as well as increased co-operation in existing cross-border health initiatives. The announcement was not particularly ground breaking, given that many of the funding proposals had already been mooted or, in the case of the A5 motorway, abandoned in 2011 during the financial crisis. Martin’s speech to an online audience of stakeholders also raised speculation among FF members as to whether the Taoiseach was distancing himself from the traditional commitment of his party to a united Ireland.
During his speech he said he wished to
probe some of the simplistic narratives about what we have all come through, which have emerged on both sides of the border. The persistence of identity politics, where a position on constitutional identity is judged to be of primary importance, hindering productive discussion about policy priorities or good governance, is a challenge that we must also recognise.
In his comments to the media following the launch at Dublin Castle, Martin said that his priority was to focus on the GFA instead of on territory or a border poll. When asked if he had abandoned a united Ireland, the Taoiseach replied, as reported in the Irish Examiner, ‘It depends what you mean by a united Ireland.’ Asserting his belief in the GFA, he insisted ‘it’s not territorial for me’. He made it clear that he would not be seeking a referendum on unity during the current term of government. Arguing that the immediate priority was to increase co-operation across the border in areas such as infrastructure, tourism, business and cultural projects, he said, ‘My focus is on building, on strengthening shared relationships on the island.’
While there was a positive response within the party to the Shared Island initiative, former minister and Laois Offaly TD, Barry Cowen, reiterated the core FF principle of a united Ireland and called for a referendum in 2028, the 30th anniversary of the GFA. ‘Fianna Fáil must and will still abide by our aims to peacefully secure the unity and independence of Ireland as a Republic and carry out the democratic programme of first Dáil,’ Cowen said, as reported in the Irish Times in October 2020.
The Taoiseach’s remarks prompted a hostile reaction from the DUP, which accused Martin of interference in the affairs of Northern Ireland. UUP leader Steve Aiken said his party would not be engaging with the Shared Island discussions unless an ‘s’ was added to make them about shared islands. Addressing her party ard fheis on the same day as the Taoiseach’s speech, SF leader Mary Lou McDonald noted that it was disappointing that:
Micheál Martin failed to address Irish unity today.
No longer is the goal of a united Ireland seen as an aspiration. It is seen as a common-sense proposition and necessary for the future prosperity of everyone who calls this island home. Of course, preparations and discussions about what a united Ireland should look like must include the unionist community as equals – it must be a process for them as it is for anybody else.
However, it’s a mistake to think we can unify the people of this island while retaining the division that the border has cemented for generations. It certainly won’t be achieved by pushing back against a referendum on Irish unity.
SDLP leader Colum Eastwood was quoted on the Derry Daily website as saying:
Our view has long been that those of us who want to see constitutional change have a responsibility to engage in a positive and respectful conversation with all of our neighbours. But we also have to demonstrate the benefits of co-operation and the potential we have to fundamentally reshape the lives of those we represent for the better. (derrydaily.net, 22 October 2020)
Not all unionists adopted a negative response, however. Peter Robinson used his column in the News Letter on 23 October 2020 to propose a new think tank to promote the union, as a more productive response: ‘Success at a border poll will be down to a steady and consistent espousal of the real value of the United Kingdom membership, not a three-week splash’.
Picking up the argument, former UUP communications director and commentator Alex Kane noted in an article for the Irish Times that, in his SIU launch speech, Martin had made it clear that a border poll was not on his agenda for five years. Kane warned that unionists could not afford to sit back and wait. Acknowledging the growing strength of SF across the island and the resurgence of civic nationalism in the form of Ireland’s Future, he warned that unionism was in danger of being left behind:
Right now – and I don’t think it’s just down to Brexit and demographics – all of nationalism and republicanism seem to be on the same page. Sinn Féin continues to promote the ‘unity project’ above and beyond all else and is strong on both sides of the Border.
A new form of civic nationalism has been organising and campaigning across Northern Ireland, pushing the case for a united Ireland. And Martin has pushed the issue up the agenda after last week’s speech. Interestingly, in a response to a question afterwards he said: ‘The Government has said that for the next five years a border poll is not on our agenda … I’ve made it very clear it’s not on our agenda for the next five years.’
Robinson knows that five years is but a blink in politics. He knows, too, that in five years it might be Mary Lou McDonald who is taoiseach. Any unionist who thinks that a border poll can’t or won’t happen is deluding themselves. All of nationalism is working on the basis that the poll is more likely than not. Key players within nationalism are preparing for that poll and making the case for unity every day and from every available platform. Unionists must do the same for the union.
Joining the rising tide of nationalist voices was Jim O’Callaghan, the emerging favourite as successor to Martin. In a none too subtle, but polite, rejection of Martin’s speech days earlier, O’Callaghan made a call for preparations to begin for a border poll and argued that it was incumbent on nationalists and republicans to put forward a vision for a united Ireland. In an interview with blogger Mick Fealty of Slugger O’Toole, O’Callaghan said that FF and the SDLP should collaborate in preparing for a border poll and put forward a constitution for a new Ireland. He also said that he would like to see a merger of the parties following their current partnership as ‘a couple engaged for years’.
In the interview, O’Callaghan put forward a contrasting set of priorities to his party leader, without making any overt criticism of Martin. Indeed, he claimed that the Taoiseach was not ‘shying away’ from a referendum and shared his goal for the reunification of the two jurisdictions. However, his own emphasis was on preparing for a border poll which, he said, ‘is going to happen’:
It will be for the secretary of state to decide, but we can’t simply wait around. My fear is that a border poll would end up the same as the Brexit poll, which was chaotic. Each side and various other sides should present their views on the preferable constitutional position. Let’s debate it, let’s prepare for it and let’s vote on it and let’s move on from it.
At a virtual meeting with IF in early November, Martin was pressed again to prepare for constitutional change. The Taoiseach was accompanied by Aingeal O’Donoghue and Eoghan Duffy, and the discussion was more constructive and less hostile than the meeting a year earlier between IF and the FF leader, according to those present. During their discussion, Niall Murphy and Professor Colin Harvey questioned the recent statement by the Taoiseach, which suggested that he was not pursuing constitutional change. According to Murphy in the Irish Times on 7 November 2020, the IF delegation:
impressed upon the Taoiseach that to say constitutional change is simply off the table is the wrong approach for him to take. The North has been forced out of the EU against the will of its citizens, and we watch as a shambolic government in Westminster plots a delusional political future in the international wilderness.
The requirement for planning and preparation and specifically for the establishment of an all-island citizens’ assembly is something the Taoiseach must implement as a matter of urgency. We outlined to the Taoiseach that there is a significant section of the population in the North that support re-entry to the EU via a unity referendum. The voices of these people must be heard and respected. We also made clear that we are living in a time when leading unionist political figures are saying unionism must prepare. He too must prepare the Irish people and nation for potential constitutional change.
Ten days later, the group reported a constructive meeting with the SF leadership, including Mary Lou McDonald, Michelle O’Neill and TDs Pearse Doherty and Matt Carthy. At the discussion, the IF delegation said it planned to exhaust the boundaries and limits of the SIU and to extend its campaign for a unity referendum to the diaspora in Britain, the US and beyond.
Within weeks of the SIU launch, SF published the discussion document, ‘Economic Benefits of a United Ireland’. At the launch, finance spokesperson Pearse Doherty explained the growing disparity in per capita income and in living standards between North and South as evidence of the failure of the NI economy and how the subvention from the UK showed ‘that it can no longer survive without fiscal transfers’.
The document posits that after removing the cost of pensions owed to NI workers by the British state, and the annual contribution of £1 billion by the North towards the cost of the security forces, the subvention comes down from the estimated and regularly-cited figure of between £9 billion and £10 billion to between £3 billion and £6 billion. This, Doherty summarised in his speech, amounts to between 1.3 and 3 per cent of modified gross national income of the economy in the South. He said:
Irish unity would allow for co-ordinated investment and development; something the border region has been missing for a century. Irish unity would utilise economies of scale, allowing one economy to develop rather than having two economies compete. The current trajectory of the all-island economy attests to these opportunities …
In 2018, sales between the North and Britain fell by 9 per cent; while in the same year, the North’s total exports to other markets exceeded exports to Britain.
He pointed to the growth in cross-border trade between the North and South to £7 billion each year:
Again, this is not to minimise the importance of Britain as a trading neighbour; but to highlight the growing importance of the all-island economy and the evolution of trading relationships. The greatest threat to trade, north and south, is of course Britain’s damaging decision to leave the European Union. … Irish unity would secure our place as an open, outward-looking, progressive island at the heart of Europe. … The role of the EU would be even more central in the event of Irish unity.
As nationalists and republicans continued to push the case for a united Ireland, notwithstanding the disagreements on the timing of unity referendums, the threats posed by Covid-19 and Brexit continued to dominate public affairs on the island in the final months of 2020.
A second wave of Covid-19 across the country, with case numbers surging in both jurisdictions, led once again to sharp differences between the medical experts and politicians. By the end of October, reported deaths from the virus since the start of the pandemic in the South totalled 1,915, while the number of coronavirus infections had reached 62,002. In the North, the death toll was 700 with 39,116 cases recorded, a figure described by Dr Gabriel Scally in the Irish Times as ‘shocking and disappointing’.
Once again, Scally warned about the failure to adopt an all-island strategy for confronting the virus and called for an external review by the NI executive to examine why the effort to control it wasn’t working. The Executive, he told the newspaper in mid-November, ‘should urgently review what their arrangements are for the control of the pandemic in Northern Ireland because at the moment, it certainly isn’t working.’ Dr Scally argued that ‘if there had been a unified approach, North and South, that had a well-thought-out strategy, the situation would be entirely different.’ An all-island plan should have been adopted from the early stages of the pandemic and as soon as the memorandum of understanding was signed by the Dublin and Belfast health ministers in June. It was the only way, he argued, to deal with the high number of Covid-19 cases along the border:
Certainly, I can see no harmonisation that has taken place as a result and very limited, if any, integrated working, whereas we should have had an agreed approach across the whole island. I am very disappointed that the memorandum of understanding between North and South hasn’t resulted in integrated action, an integrated approach, an integrated strategy.
Scally called for an emergency summit between politicians from Dublin and Stormont to ‘sit in a room and hammer out an agreement about how we’re going to control this virus.’ He added that:
we’re paying the price for the failure, and particularly the border counties are paying the price for that.
The Irish border has always been porous and people have always moved across it. It’s 310 miles of the most permeable border in Europe, probably … which is why it has always been a nonsense to have different approaches to responding to the virus between Northern Ireland and the Republic.
Although the population was older in the North, Scally suspected the reason the death rate was significantly higher there than south of the border was due to the slow pace of its testing and tracing system:
If it takes someone three days to get a test and five days to get the answer to that test, by that time other contacts will have developed the illness and also be infecting people. The whole thing is dependent on being fast. If you are slow, you are ineffective.
He described as scandalous that the opportunity to tackle the virus was not properly taken during the summer when deaths and cases were very low, and claimed that the failure to restrict incoming travel to the island with ‘some managed isolation on the ports and airports’ had contributed to the spread of the virus: ‘At that stage, the numbers were so small that they could have been got down to zero quite easily on the island. But there was no chance of that happening because cases were being introduced by people arriving from abroad’.
And while delays in testing and tracing were hampering efforts to deal with the virus in the North, there was criticism south of the border about the failure to scale up capacity.
Dr Mary Horgan, president of the Royal College of Physicians of Ireland and consultant at Cork University Hospital, earlier added her voice to those calling for a strengthening of the testing and tracing capacity in the South and a revitalisation of the public health and hospital infrastructure in a sustainable way. In an article for the Irish Times on 27 October 2020, Horgan called, in particular, for more detailed analysis of the data on the spread of Covid-19 to understand ‘how, where and why people get infected’ and ‘to link this to real-time data that shows how this impacts on the regional hospitals in terms of admissions’. She said:
Early assessment of those who require hospitalisation, using the interventions such as steroids for those who are severely or critically ill, saves lives. Forensically analysing this data can define Ireland’s vulnerable population, to access real-time data on Covid-19-related hospital and ICU admissions to inform our restriction levels, to provide data on where clusters happen so that chains of transmission can be broken.
This data-based approach is how we can manage outbreaks in a rapid, agile and focused way in the months ahead and ensure that we can continue to provide access to other vital health services. The public needs to feel safe to be able to attend hospitals for treatment for strokes, cancers and other illnesses that are as much of a risk to many people as Covid-19. Remember, Covid-19 is only a part of what our health service is treating.
With public finances stretched, the numbers on pandemic payments beginning to rise and the normally busy pre-Christmas spending period looming, some senior politicians and civil servants on both sides of the border were pushing against the health and scientific advice. The deficit in the South’s finances of over €9 billion by the end of September 2020, compared to a surplus of €38 billion over the previous year, was stressing senior government officials, and battle lines were being drawn between those seeking to defend the economy over the public health priorities of chief medical officer, Dr Tony Holohan and the NPHET team.
Leo Varadkar very publicly criticised Holohan and his colleagues for the sudden manner in which the Level 5 restrictions were announced in October when he reminded them that it was up to the government to make policy. As he pointedly told Claire Byrne on RTÉ:
I have confidence in NPHET to dispense public health advice. That’s what they do. They don’t advise the public, they advise the government and the government decides.
One thing that needs to be borne in mind is that these are very good people – 40 of them – but all coming from medical or scientific or civil service backgrounds. None of those people, for example, would have faced being on the Pandemic Unemployment Payment yesterday. None of them would have to tell somebody that they were losing their job and none of them would have to shutter a business for the last time.
As a six-week lockdown was coming to its end in late November, NPHET’s critics at the highest levels of government, and in the retail and hospitality businesses desperate to re-open for December, grew more agitated. A row erupted over international travel after Holohan advised of the substantial risks unless strict testing and quarantining measures were imposed on arrivals. Many countries across Europe, including Britain, experienced an even greater surge of Covid-19 deaths and infections and the pandemic reached one million cases in the US. This led to warnings that the usual Christmas homecoming of tens of thousands from across the globe into Ireland was clearly unsustainable.
Senior government figure Martin Fraser and his counterpart in the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform, Robert Watt, were dragged into the fray as the media was privately briefed on the deepening tensions between the scientists and the politicians. One report, clearly inspired by senior political sources and without irony, blamed NPHET for spinning against its political masters. It described how senior civil servants ‘went mental’ in their criticism of the doctors and scientists who, they claimed, were involved in an organised media campaign to challenge ambitious, and perhaps risky, government plans for lifting the Covid-19 restrictions and opening the economy in the run-up to Christmas. As Pat Leahy reported in the Irish Times:
People in Government believe this is a careful and deliberate strategy by the public health experts to push the Government towards a more restrictive and cautious reopening. Holohan is central to the team’s operation and that’s why the Government pushback has been personally directed at him. He is, say people who have worked with him, forceful and focused; they also say he is reluctant to take no for an answer.
‘He’s like Hizbullah, there’s no negotiating with him,’ laughs one official, who speaks highly of him.
During the winter 2020 lockdown, the Taoiseach confirmed more than once that the government intended to exit Level 5 restrictions on 1 December, while ‘taking into account’ the advice from NPHET. He told RTÉ’s News at One, ‘The fact that we are doing well gives us flexibility … I want a meaningful Christmas; we can’t be at Level 5 forever.’
The government advised against people travelling home from the US, Britain and other countries across Europe due to their high infection rates, but Martin and Varadkar were pushing for a greater relaxation of restrictions than the health experts were prepared to recommend.
NPHET warned of a fragile situation and that a rapid reduction of restrictions to Level 3 could quickly reverse the downward trajectory of the disease. The Irish Times reported that:
if restrictions are eased now to a similar extent but more rapidly than in the summer, from a higher baseline force of infection, in winter and over the Christmas period a third wave of disease will ensue much more quickly and with greater mortality than the second. NPHET is concerned that the disease trajectory could once again turn quite quickly.
In the North, the divisions were less evident between the government and the medical advisers than between the parties in the power-sharing executive at Stormont. In mid-November, the DUP used the contentious mechanism of a cross-community vote to veto proposals by health minister and UUP member Robert Swann, for an extension to the Tier 4 restrictions already in place. Eventually, a one-week extension was agreed by the DUP, UUP and Alliance and the UUP, despite SF arguing that it was inadequate, and a partial reopening of hospitality and other services was allowed in advance of the relaxation in the South in early December.
Covid-19 had stretched the capacity of the Health and Social Care (HSC) – Northern Ireland’s publicly funded healthcare system and part of the UK’s overall NHS – which was now facing lengthy and mounting waiting lists and a severe backlog in diagnosis and treatments for a range of medical conditions that made it the worst-performing health service across the UK. By late November, 327,000 people – or one in six of the North’s population – were waiting on a first appointment with a consultant, with 155,000 of those delayed access for more than a year. As with the situation south of the border, people were forced to wait for up to three, and even five, years for basic cataract, hip or knee surgery, unless they availed of private and costly medical care.
In a scathing analysis of the HSC, Brian Feeney wrote in the Irish News how, in England – with a population of about 55 million in November 2019 – just 1,398 people were waiting more than 52 weeks for their first outpatient appointment. In comparison, the referral-to-treatment time in the North registered 108,000 people waiting for their first appointment in a population of 1.9 million. Waiting lists were similarly atrocious in the South, with 612,083 people waiting to see a consultant for the first time in September 2020 in a population of almost 5 million. Echoing criticisms made of the HSE across the border, Feeney wrote of the HSC:
There is a vast bureaucracy with various superfluous layers of management and tedious managerialism with managers, who know zero about medicine, directing clinical staff around and allocating beds. There are too many trusts and too much contrived artificial competition.
Perhaps more important, HSC has failed to manage hospital staff. That’s polite language for saying they have consistently failed to employ enough nurses and doctors. Preferring to throw money at agency staff. At present there are at least 2,500 too few nurses who are run ragged by increasing demands. If you haven’t the staff, you can’t carry out procedures.
Feeney said that, despite the recommendations of the Bengoa report and:
the promise made in the New Decade Same Approach con job of, all together now, ‘a new action plan on waiting times’, the real problem is the secretive, rigid, irreformable HSC. Never mind hospitals and GP surgeries, any minister hoping to make progress needs to dismantle the HSC and completely restructure it beginning at the top.
The Covid-19 crisis contributed to the extension of waiting lists, North and South. Many urgent cancer and other treatments were not carried out, and ICU capacity came close to breakdown during the first two surges in infections, but the health services continued to function across the island.
A shortage of beds, nurses and doctors, an over-reliance on agency staff and a lack of consultants in key areas, including public health, were also blamed for the waiting list crisis in the South.
In both jurisdictions, however, it was evident that some of the fundamental weapons against the spread of Covid-19 – including rapid and widespread testing, well-resourced contact tracing, controls on movement and effective quarantining arrangements for international travellers – had either not been deployed or not quickly or sufficiently enough across the country. The warnings of an inevitable third wave were largely ignored in the rush for a ‘meaningful’ Christmas.