Irish people need to challenge themselves more in how they view their identity and their history if they are to better reflect values of inclusion and reconciliation in relation to other traditions on the island, Tánaiste Micheál Martin has urged.
Mr Martin said that it was a harsh fact that many people in the Republic frequently fail to include events and personalities from other traditions on the island when it comes to considering what it means to be truly Irish.
“In fact, efforts to promote a distorted, sectarian and inflexible view of our history is a reality ... the fact is that there is growing evidence that we do not know each other well enough on this island ... we have many views about each other but they are not backed up by engagement or understanding.”
Speaking at the opening of the West Cork History in Skibbereen, Mr Martin said that research in the past year had shown that the level of knowledge among people in the Republic’s 26 counties “about life or even basic issues in the six counties is low and not rising”.
“And a quarter of a century after the Good Friday Agreement, we keep missing opportunities to engage and work together to benefit all the communities on this island,” he said. “That’s why the Shared Island Initiative is so important – for the first time ever, there is an effort under way to go beyond speeches about co-operation and understanding and to actually do something lasting to build them.”
Mr Martin said a programme of independent research was looking at public services, north and south, as well as looking at educational disadvantage in both jurisdictions and coming up with strategies to build infrastructure and vital health services to benefit the most marginalised.
“If we are to talk about how we learn from our history about how we engage with each other and how we build a lasting peace and reconciliation, then this work is absolutely essential,” said Mr Martin adding he was determined that issues of disadvantage would be addressed.
Paying tribute to Belfast writer Glenn Patterson for his book The Last Irish Question, Mr Martin said Mr Patterson had done something which Irish people need to do a lot more of, namely examine the constitutional question of Irish unity on a purely human level.
“Glenn shows the complexities and the often straightforward reference points central to how Irish people consider the future and what confronts us if we are to unite the people of this island in a manner which breaks the cycle of division and misunderstanding which has grown since partition.”
At the West Cork History Festival, which continues on Saturday and Sunday, Mr Martin said the recent Decade of Centenaries and its various commemorations had shown that it was possible for a modern international democracy “to balance reflection, questioning and celebration in a way which is positive and not exclusionary”.
He said that the Decade of Centenaries had won broad public support and was commendable for not seeking to impose a fixed narrative but rather providing a space for alternative perspectives, unlike what has happened in recent years in some other European countries.
In such countries, foundational events were being used by those in power or by political movements to promote an orthodoxy about what constitutes the nation and who belongs to it while in some cases history was being used to reinvigorate past controversies to create new divisions, he said.
“As a state, we did honour key events and a generation of men and women who achieved remarkable things, but we never attempt to make agreement with this agenda a requirement for being viewed as fully Irish or to exclude minority voices.”
