It’s good to talk

The British Irish Council meeting at Dublin Castle, which concluded yesterday, has been decried as a talking shop.

It is, but just meeting and talking can be invaluable for leaders.

By getting together regularly in normal circumstances they frequently find that they have similar problems in common and are therefore better able to understand each other.

For too long British and Irish leaders only met in crisis situations. In those circumstances the meeting sometimes only contributed to further misunderstandings. Even within this island the leaders of the two jurisdictions could not meet without being surrounded by controversy, with someone throwing snowballs or insults at them.

When then prime minister Margaret Thatcher famously came to Dublin Castle in 1980, it set off a virtual political firestorm in the North, where hysterical unionists’ fears were roused with reckless talk of a sellout. Yesterday First Minister Peter Robinson was present at the talks, which were probably most remarkable for its air of normality.

The warm manner in which the Taoiseach and the North’s First Minister greeted each other was enough to lift some of economic gloom. It seemed like the biggest differences of the day were between the British Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg and the Scottish First Minister Alex Salmond.

Martin McGuinness, the North’s Deputy First Minister, had his tongue firmly in his cheek when he suggested that the Scots and English could use Stormont Castle for peace talks to settle their differences.