Cross-Border co-operation should be significantly expanded into a broader number of subjects, even if that happens outside of the institutions created by the Belfast Agreement, former taoiseach Bertie Ahern has said.
Speaking in Belfast at a conference held by the Irish Association to mark 25 years of the operation of the North-South Ministerial Council (NSMC), Mr Ahern recognised “the significant progress” made since 1998.
The negotiations that led to the agreement were nearly scuppered following the presentation of a joint Irish-British paper late in the talks that proposed the creation of 40 cross-Border bodies with executive powers.
“We rightly don’t need to upset anybody producing a list of 40 bodies now, but I think we can take areas where it makes sense for co-operation to take place,” he told the conference held in Queen’s University Belfast.
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The co-operation could take place informally outside of the NSMC, he said, but it is now self-evident that more issues should be dealt with cross-Border to deliver better results, Mr Ahern said.
Emphasising that progress does not threaten the constitutional settlement, Mr Ahern said such co-operation “at its core is about delivering better outcomes for the people on the whole island in practical ways that impact on their daily lives”.
The NSMC has been frequently stalled by the number of collapses of the Stormont institutions since they were set up, while unionist politicians of all hues have been wary about encouraging actions by the body.
Significant cross-Border co-operation is already taking place in health, including all-island paediatric care in Dublin, he noted, but the opportunities for more of it should now be clear to all.
The number of medical centres of excellence that the Republic or Northern Ireland will ever be able to have on their own will always be limited since it is “unlikely that we’d be able to get the money to have them, either north or south”, the former taoiseach said.
“But maybe if they worked together, co-operated together,” he said, adding, “in so many of those areas we could help our citizens by having co-operation on an all-island basis and I don’t think it would upset anybody.”
He hoped that the suspension of the NSMC’s work that has happened too often in the past is now at an end in a time where it is hoped that Stormont will bed down and offer political stability.
However, he emphasised to the audience that North-South co-operation – known as Strand II in diplomatic terminology – was a key factor in persuading voters in the Republic to abandon Articles 2 and 3 of the Constitution in the 1998 referendum.
Urging everyone involved today to be more ambitious, however, Mr Ahern called on people to abandon the “paranoia” so often displayed in communiques about North-South co-operation where everything is scrutinised “down to the last word”.
“I think the paranoia should stop, to be honest. It’s not necessary to do a communique and have half the bloody world checking whether it’s word perfect, or not. It would be better off to do no communique and just say we agree on everything and get on with it,” he said.
It is now 26 years since the agreement was signed. “We’re all grown-ups, and we know it goes on behind the scenes, but we should stop it. We should stop it. And that applies to everybody,” he said.
“So, let’s try and get on to the spirit and the substance of it rather than having people getting offended. I don’t think anybody would be offended now,” the former Fianna Fáil leader told the gathering.
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