CONTROVERSY AND PRAYER
In response to the continuing and unsettling effects of the protocol, the calls for a referendum and the instability within political unionism, a string of initiatives were unveiled to combat the perceived threat of a unity vote: Uniting UK, a pro-union lobby group, was formed by UUP councillor Philip Smith and others; another group, We Make NI, brought civic unionists together in a campaign to make the case for the North remaining within the UK; and former DUP leader Arlene Foster took on the role of chairperson of the Castlereagh Foundation, a British government-funded body agreed in the New Decade, New Approach deal which was aimed at creating ‘a civic voice for those of us who are British’, as reported in the Belfast Telegraph of 23 September 2020. Foster also joined arch-Brexiteer Nigel Farage as host of a show on the GB News television channel in order, as reported in the Metro in July 2021, ‘to bring Northern Ireland politics into the mainstream’.
In the Irish Times, civil rights activist and commentator Emma DeSouza questioned the claim by the Taoiseach and others that discussion on Irish unity was premature and divisive given the preparations by unionism to defend the North’s constitutional status:
Voicing support for the preservation of the United Kingdom is not condemned as ‘divisive’ or ‘unhelpful’ by political leaders, it is accepted as a legitimate position embedded into political discourse across these islands. So too should support for Irish unification be considered equivalently legitimate. There exists, at many levels, a real need to normalise the holding of and vocalising of such a position. The call to silence such views under the veil of ‘not now’ is no more than an attempt to undermine and delegitimise a key principle of the Belfast Agreement that confirms and recognises divergent political aspirations.
The ‘others’ or ‘middle ground’ in the North so often left out of the conversation are now set to be the kingmakers in any vote, and unionism knows it. While political leaders hold the line that a border poll is not imminent, unionism is clearly subscribed to the age-old adage of ‘fail to prepare, prepare to fail’ and by any measure, they are ahead of the curve. (Irish Times, 20 July 2021)
As the summer of 2021 came to a close, a fresh surge of infections from the Delta variant of Covid-19 generated 2,000 cases a day in the South and 1,500 in the North. Only the extensive roll out of vaccinations across the population averted a new wave of hospitalisations and ICU admissions in the South but a similarly successful programme in the North did not prevent serious pressure on hospital emergency facilities. Almost a year to the week of its traumatic Golfgate experience in August 2020, when a minister, other politicians, a senior judge and an EU commissioner were among 81 guests at a golf dinner in Galway, in breach of public health restrictions, the government fell victim to a similar Covid-19 related debacle. Tánaiste Leo Varadkar and other notables attended a function in the Merrion Hotel in Dublin hosted by former minister Katherine Zappone; more than 50 people were in attendance, in apparent breach of Covid-19 guidelines. A week after the event, Minister for Foreign Affairs Simon Coveney nominated Zappone for the position of special envoy on ‘freedom of expression’ at the United Nations. Unfortunately for Coveney, he had not informed the Taoiseach of the planned appointment of his former cabinet colleague (Zappone was the former minister for children in the previous FG led government). In the controversy that followed, embarrassing information surrounding the event in the Merrion Hotel emerged. With memories of the Galway golf dinner still fresh, the government sought to assure the public that the gathering at the exclusive hotel across the road from Leinster House was permitted under the health guidelines, which, it said, allowed up to 200 people to attend outdoor functions. The Attorney General was consulted and confirmed this position, even though much of the hospitality industry across the country was under the impression that the guidelines prevented such large outdoor parties or celebrations.
Fine Gael was further damaged when it transpired that one of its ministers had alerted the media of the cabinet discussion on the matter and that the Taoiseach had expressed his concern about Coveney’s failure to inform him of the appointment in advance. Following the uproar, Zappone said she would not accept the job, Varadkar said he regretted his attendance at the hotel event and Coveney accepted that the Taoiseach should have been informed in advance that he was bringing the proposal to cabinet. The controversy refused to go to bed and for weeks fresh details emerged which undermined Coveney’s explanation to an Oireachtas committee of the background to Zappone’s job offer and the manner in which it had been apparently fast tracked through the highest levels of the Department of Foreign Affairs. Some of the shine surrounding her Dublin Bay South by-election victory wore off new Labour Party TD, Ivana Bacik, when she confirmed that she had attended the event. However, her party supported a motion of no confidence in Coveney, which was tabled by Sinn Féin for the day the Dáil resumed following the summer break in mid-September.
The inquiry into the cabinet leak that, as party leader, Varadkar was obliged to carry out, only served to remind the public about another scandal: that Varadkar was still under investigation by the Garda for a possible breach of the Official Secrets Act and the Criminal Law (Corruption Offences) Act 2018. In November 2020, Village magazine revealed that in April 2019, the then Taoiseach had given his friend, Dr Maitiú (Matt) Ó Tuathail, access to a confidential document relating to government negotiations for a GP contract with the Irish Medical Organisation. Ó Tuathail was president of the National Association of GPs, a rival organisation of doctors. A Garda investigation began within weeks of the Village piece, but by September 2021, the investigation was still ongoing and there were questions raised by opposition parties as to whether there were ‘political’ factors influencing the delay.
The government and the long-promised Sláintecare project suffered a blow when two leaders of the project unexpectedly resigned in early September. Executive Director Laura Magahy and adviser Dr Thomas Keane, left their positions amid allegations that senior department officials and the government had obstructed the programme, including the key proposal to decentralise health services to six regional and autonomous agencies and the failure to address the waiting list crisis.
They also complained that a key recommendation – that Sláintecare be directed by the Department of the Taoiseach and removed from the remit of the health department and the HSE – was never adopted. Their resignations raised questions over the commitment at the highest levels of government to the ambitious plan endorsed by all parties in the Dáil. The Sláintecare committee of health professionals added its voice to the claim that Minister for Health Stephen Donnelly had supported the delay in the funding and implementation of key targets for the health reform project, apparently due to the competing demands arising from the Covid-19 crisis. The government meanwhile denied claims from Social Democrat TD Róisín Shortall and Independent TD Catherine Connolly that there was institutional resistance to implementing Sláintecare within the health department and HSE.
A further resignation in protest at the delay in radical health reform came when Professor Geraldine McCarthy of University College Cork stepped down as chair of the South/Southwest Hospital Group. In her letter of resignation to Donnelly, published in the Irish Examiner, she said:
Despite the excellent care delivered at the frontline by committed staff, it is regrettable that much of the needed reform of the health service has not been delivered.
This includes the establishment of regional health authorities with autonomy over decisions, budgets and capital spend. It also includes free GP services for all and elective hospitals to address waiting lists and ensure rapid and equitable access to services. I have waited for a long time for developments led by successive ministers for health, and government. However, recent information and my own experiences tell me we are no nearer to the required reform than we were six years ago.
There were also calls for a public inquiry into the state’s handling of the Covid-19 crisis, and for those with any responsibility for the more than 5,000 deaths to be held to account. Details of significant overspending and wastage by the HSE in its acquisition of PPE, masks and other emergency medical supplies at the outset of the public health crisis were also revealed at the Oireachtas health committee.
Another unexpected controversy erupted when President Michael D. Higgins declined an invitation to attend a religious service organised by the main Christian churches to mark the centenary of partition and the formation of Northern Ireland that was due to take place in Armagh in late October. President Higgins said that he had alerted the organisers several months earlier to his concern that the event would commemorate partition and suggested that they might alter the title. As President of Ireland, it was not appropriate, in his view, to grace an occasion that marked the tragic division of the country with his presence.
The church leaders, including Catholic Archbishop Dr Eamon Martin, claimed that they had only recently learned of the president’s decision to decline the invitation, notwithstanding the insistence from Áras an Uachtaráin that its concerns had been notified to the organisers months previously. The dispute escalated when former Taoiseach John Bruton complained that the president had not complied with his obligations under the Constitution to consult the government in relation to such an invitation. When it emerged that there were extensive communications between the Áras and the Department of Foreign Affairs on the matter, Bruton withdrew his more serious claim but insisted that the president was wrong not to attend and, along with other commentators, said it was an insult to unionists and those of a British identity.
Peter Sheridan, chief executive of Co-operation North, of which Bruton was vice-chair, joined in the chorus of those who were upset by the president’s decision to decline the invitation. In contrast, many ordinary members of the public, North and South, agreed that it was inappropriate for the head of state to engage in any commemoration of partition, however well-intentioned or spiritual. The row provided an opportunity for Jeffrey Donaldson to accuse the Irish government of influencing the president, a claim that was rejected. That Higgins was on a visit to the Vatican to meet Pope Francis when the controversy erupted added a certain irony to the affair and an amount of discomfort for the Catholic archbishop. The Irish Times reported on 17 September that during the audience in the Vatican, Pope Francis praised the Irish president as ‘a wise man of the people’.
In a defence of the President in the same newspaper, Diarmaid Ferriter, a member of the expert advisory group on commemorations, explained that its role was to try ‘to ensure that significant events are commemorated accurately, proportionately and appropriately in tone’, but ‘there should be no attempt to contrive an ahistorical or retrospective consensus about the contemporary impact and legacy of divisive events’. He added that, in its commemoration of the years leading up to partition, the formation of Northern Ireland and civil war, ‘the state cannot be expected to be neutral about the events that led to its formation’. Ferriter said:
Historian Brian Hanley has rightly raised the problem of ‘shared history leading to commemorative trade-offs that ignore questions such as imperialism, power and inequality’. Soft-centred aspirations to please everybody are not conducive to honest confrontation with difficult historical legacies. Discussion about these questions needs to be vigorous and uncomfortable, and in making his decision, the President has acknowledged that, and continues to engage in historical deliberation. Perhaps we should see this controversy as a vindication of an independent presidency, a reminder of the limitations of ‘shared history’ and a measure of the divisions, historic and contemporary, that we still must confront with debate rather than prayer.
Other questions remained unanswered, including why the NIO in Belfast and the Department of Foreign Affairs in Dublin appeared to assume that President Higgins would eventually agree to participate in the event and did not engage with him from March, when he first expressed his reservations, until the row erupted in the autumn. There was no discussion over whether Queen Elizabeth was invited in her role as head of the Church of England as well as monarch. Given the friendship she had developed with the President and her often-stated commitment to a lasting peace in Ireland, the fact that no other royal family member was asked to go in her place when ill health forced the queen to cancel may not be altogether surprising.
As the debate over the cancelled Armagh visit subsided, Brendan O’Leary suggested that unionists should recognise the ‘significant opportunities’ they would have in a united Ireland where they would represent a sixth or seventh of the population on the island. He was speaking at a forum organised by the UCD Institute for British–Irish Studies in late September, where he revealed findings from the latest in the series of consultations about Irish unity that he and his colleagues had carried out with groups of citizens across the island. In April 2021, they convened a participatory forum with a ‘cross section of 50 citizens of the Republic, broadly representative of the wider population’. This found that:
a super-majority of participants strongly favoured Northern Ireland uniting with Ireland rather than staying in the United Kingdom. Given the choice between two feasible models of Irish unification most preferred an integrated model in which Northern Ireland would be dissolved to a model in which Northern Ireland becomes a devolved entity within a united Ireland.
Our participants favour broader, inclusive, and all-island conversations on Irish unification. There is overwhelming support for North–South co-operation. Reconciliation in the North is similarly backed. Both are combined strongly with support for starting ‘detailed preparation for a possible referendum on Irish unity which may be held by 2030’.
Addressing the online forum, O’Leary said the model of the integrated Ireland that was put to participants in the forum ‘was clearly not a majoritarian one because the electoral system used for both chambers would be proportional representation. … It would be overwhelmingly unlikely that a single-party government would be formed. Therefore, unionists would have significant opportunities to play a role in voluntary coalitions.’