Irish Examiner view: Harness the power of compromise

Fine Gael TD Neal Richmond with his plan for United Ireland. He believes a border poll could be called within 10 years, and says Belfast and Dublin must be ready. Picture:  Niall Carson/PA Wire

The events marking the centenary of Northern Ireland's redesignation offers lessons not all confined to the Wee North.

 That most people south of the border, and a growing number north of it, chafe at the idea of calling those events celebrations underlines many things, many divisions. It also highlights an uncomfortable truth: Imposed solutions are finite while compromise facilitates opportunity and stability that last until the foundation compromise is withdrawn. And so it is with the North. It was established as a contrived entity to satisfy a singular objective. It remains so, but it would be dishonest, ungracious and unwise, not to embrace the progress represented by a mellowing of that objective.

However, that mellowing is not enough to placate those cajoling for a border poll, maybe others too. They seem deaf to the growing cohort in the Republic more than wary of a poll. Should such a poll seek reunification by a Brexit-scale margin —  52/48 —  it might presage nothing more than a new version of the drawbridge hoisting of 1921 and the cycles of horror that followed. 

That prospect, darkened by the need to replace London's NI subvention of almost €50m every working day, does not auger well. Just as many in NI no longer identify as Loyalist or Republican more and more southerners, political metrosexuals if you will, put real, active inclusion before inherited tribalism. 

The green flag is joined by the rainbow banner of inclusion — surely the ultimate objective of those pressing for a border poll. Surely. Well, maybe.

This winner-takes-all absolutism serves us so poorly that it is necessary to add another project to our increasingly burdened post-pandemic reset. It's time to reject the black or white options, it's time to empower and celebrate the grey in the middle.

There is an urgent need for this, but hardly any as pressing as environmental protection. One example will suffice. In February a coalition of environmental groups had to  “reluctantly withdraw” from the Agri-Food 2030 Strategy Committee as its draft strategy was “woefully inadequate to meet the social and environmental challenges we face”. 

The  Department of Agriculture committee was so heavily stacked with food sector representatives that it is not hard to see the role offered to EP as hollow tokenism. Yet, they represent many whose tax goes to support an otherwise unsustainable sector so compromise is inevitable. The urgent but long-fingered need to review airlines' fuel tax is another pressing question

Sustainability is another issue where absolutism prevails. Great work is being done, but progress is nebulous — especially as new data centres use, it has been suggested, all of the electricity we generate through renewable means. That the benefits accrued by using electric cars are cancelled by the popularity of inefficient SUVs is another. Sustainability is such a pivotal issue that this newspaper will focus on it, its obligations and potential, over the coming days.

Absolutism in education is underlined by an Alamo attitude on patronage and how sex education is delivered in church-managed schools. The housing crisis is rooted in many failings but our blind loyalty to private property rights is so central that it is difficult to see how the crisis might be resolved with a fair compromise on these issues.

All of this boils down to power, how it is used and shared. Like many other things in our world, we need to reset that dynamic.

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