Shannon just the first stop on way to new all-Ireland economic order

In some respects that might be so, but it will only come about if we in the South are prepared also to endure a lot of pain along the way

LAST week, when I was writing about the Shannon debacle, I said there was a bigger picture that had to be considered. The bigger picture I had in mind was the all-island dimension to the decision. That bigger picture has huge implications for all of us, and I want to explain what I mean in a minute.

None of what I intend to say should disguise the fact that the people of the mid-west have every right to feel betrayed by what happened when Aer Lingus was privatised, and effectively told to go and make whatever decisions were in the commercial best interests of the company.

The handling of the decision and the lack of preparation to enable Shannon and the mid-west to put viable alternative strategies in place were both a disgrace. The region is lucky, I think, that there are business people there who have the capacity to come up with alternatives, but the blow to confidence has been, and will be, profound.

The fact remains, though, that the Shannon decision may be the first of many similar decisions. And here’s why. It has been an understated part of the strategy of both the British and Irish governments for many years that they should take every opportunity to develop any situations that have an all-Ireland dynamic to them.

Some of the unionist and loyalist parties in the North might have professed a complete lack of interest in the north-south dimension in the past, but now they are in government they too will seize any opportunity for economic investment and growth. Just look at how they reacted to the Aer Lingus decision, and especially how they reacted to any talk that pressure might be exerted to have that decision reversed.

The Anglo-Irish Agreement of 1985, the Sunningdale Agreement before that, and the Downing Street Declaration in 1993 — all of them contained a north-south element. Initially, the emphasis in the all-island aspect of all these agreements was on security, but little by little the emphasis began to switch to economics and to move beyond economics to embrace shared societal ideas. The language of successive agreements has moderated and changed. Initially, the idea of a presence from the Republic within Northern Ireland was seen as something that had to be imposed — and therefore as something that had to be resisted. Now, north-south co-operation is always couched in the language of practicality and mutual benefit.

But north-south co-operation is critical — much more important in the longer term than the institutions of government within Northern Ireland that have generated all the fuss in recent years. If we all wake up some morning, some time in the future, and realise that a virtually united Ireland has come about almost without any of us noticing, it will be because the all-island potential of the peace process has been finally realised.

And that won’t happen, can’t happen, without us down here facing a lot of difficult decisions. We tend to think that any move in the direction of greater unity on the island of Ireland will involve pain and surrender by unionists. In some respects that might be so, but it will only come about if we are prepared to endure a lot of pain along the way.

Some years ago, when I was involved in the Anglo-Irish process, I served on a committee of senior Irish civil servants. They were charged by the then taoiseach Albert Reynolds with drawing up a list of the things that we (the Irish Government) felt could be run and managed on an all-Ireland basis. That list, in a highly modified form, found its way into the joint framework document published in February 1995.

The document was highly controversial at the time because it divided the things that could be devolved to an all-Ireland approach into three categories. The first was consultative — things we would guarantee to consult each other about. The second was executive, and these could be things like approaches to the EU, and areas like, for instance, the development of an all-island road and rail network. The third was areas of activity that could be harmonised.

It was the harmonising category that raised the most hackles at the time because it clearly implied that both governments were suggesting that a huge range of activities would be brought together, north and south.

And the governments went on to list the headings where harmonisation could occur: agriculture and fisheries, industrial development, consumer affairs, transport, energy, trade, health, social welfare, education and economic policy.

Of course, unionists shouted from the rooftops that this would happen only over their dead bodies. But little by little, without being listed in the same specific way, all the key elements of north-south co-operation have found their way into every subsequent agreement. It is now an agreed part of the way forward on this island — and a key to unleashing the entire dynamic of the peace process — that anything that can be run and managed on an all-island basis, sooner or later will be. Aer Lingus building a base in Belfast, and sacrificing its Shannon-Heathrow slots to do so, is only the start. Inevitably, the day will come when an Irish government will have to decide whether it is in the interests of the island as a whole for industrial investment to go into Dundonald or Drogheda.

SOONER or later, key decisions will start to be made about the logic of having, for instance, big healthcare investments in Derry and Letterkenny, with duplication and waste of resources caused by the fact that both places are separated by an artificial border.

Eventually, there will be agonised debate about whether to invest huge amounts of money in competing universities in Belfast and Cork, or whether it would make more sense to turn one of them into an international centre of excellence.

All of these decisions will involve winners and losers. If the losers are the people of Drogheda or Letterkenny, or Cork, will they understand that Ireland’s overall future is being served? Or will they feel betrayed, as the people of Shannon do now? These are all tough choices, and there are many more one could think of.

Harmonisation within the area of education, for instance, could be about a lot more than investment. The development of an all-island curriculum could make sense — and it could drive us all wild. How are we going to agree, for instance, on the historical treatment of Oliver Cromwell? How are we going to decide the place of Irish in the Leaving Cert, or indeed whether it should be the Leaving Cert that determined the future at all?

We’ve never really discussed this, have we? And yet, if we are to do more than pay lip service to the idea of developing a real sense of unity, we must face an enormous array of difficult decisions. A lot of them, just like Shannon, we won’t like one little bit. But they’re coming down the tracks.