PG: What objectives would you have on your trip to Scotland?
MM: All of us are starting the journey now. Lord knows where it's going to take us. The important thing is that we start with attitudes that are right. We've all watched along the Anglo-Irish axis where things went wrong, where they got very badly skewed.
Here's a great opportunity as a devolved parliament and a people now look at themselves with fresh eyes, and look at the world with fresh eyes, to build fresh relationships. We're very near neighbours, we all want economic well-being for our people, we're all members of the European Union. In scale and size we are very similar. There's a common and shared history which in the past has suffered from all sorts of inhibitions. We have a common experience of sectarianism. There's a common experience of language. There are so many things that we really need to befriend each other. I just see my visit as part of the building of the causeway to that.
PG: Looking again at Scotland Ireland, at the proposed British-Irish Council, and also to your visit to Aberdeen and the new research institute, does anything strike that you could float as to areas of co-operation?
MM: First of all I don't think that we should be hanging around waiting for the British-Irish Council. The Scottish-Irish axis needs to be developed whether the Good Friday (Belfast) agreement is implemented next week or next year. This work needs to be done now. I think what is marvellous is that there are people who are doing that. We've had things like the Columba Initiative, which has already been focusing on the shared linguistic experience. There has also been a growth of interest in Irish studies. That has been unfolding and developing anyway.
So it came as no surprise to me that Aberdeen had decided to establish a research institute looking specifically at the Ireland-Scotland axis. It always struck me as extraordinary that it was part of the landscape of my childhood, part of the warp and weft of my life, but nobody really seemed to have a fix on what it all meant. A year ago I was going to the airport from Messines in Belgium with Queen Elizabeth and we got into conversation. You'd hardly credit the conversation. It was about the relationship between hurling and shinty. She knows the whole story of shinty very, very well; knew that hurling was a first cousin of it; and we were talking about that shared heritage.
IB: As the first northerner to become president, do you feel completely integrated within the society of the Republic?
MM: I'm fully integrated. I don't think it's an either-or. I'm completely and utterly at home with every aspect of Irish life. But I think I carry with me a set of experiences and perspectives that are probably unique. My father-in-law, for example, lives with us now. Very strong Scottish connections. He's from north Antrim, big clan. If you were to talk to them now, they talk a language and with an accent people describe as very Scottish. They speak a dialect some people call it a language; there has been a huge debate about it in Northern Ireland of Ulster Scots. There has been no greater exponent of the Ulster Scots language/dialect than my father-in-law, Charlie. In fact, he's lived with us for 17 years and I've had an awful job trying to get my kids to speak language that is intelligible to others around them, because Charlie has had a hand in the giving of the language.
But when Donald Dewar was here a few weeks ago, for example, we were talking about Ulster Scots and about this new debate that has started in Northern Ireland about the language. One of the bodies envisaged as a result of the Good Friday agreement is a body that will start to develop the debate both about that language and the Irish language. And Donald Dewar has never heard of it, he'd never heard of this thing, Ulster Scots. I went and got him the dictionary and he was absolutely fascinated by it. We had a great conversation and I thought "Isn't it extraordinary that it should be a president of Ireland who is introducing Donald Dewar to this link with Northern Ireland?" And he was just completely fascinated by it. Again, that's just something that is peculiar to my own life experience, if you like.
IB: You marked the Twelfth with a reception last year and said that it was an attempt to recognise a tradition that is part of the Irish experience. Do you think trust can be built in Northern Ireland?
MM: That's what this is all about. It's the absence of trust, it's the building of trust: this is the really critical thing, rather than the delivery of things by deadlines. We've actually moved away from simple politics, from political constructs. The Good Friday (Belfast) Agreement was the shell of a building and it had to be furnished. A big part of the furniture is trust.
IB: If a devolved assembly is convened in the North, how close psychologically does Ire- land grow?
MM: North and south, I hope they become as close psychologically as is humanly possible because that it the healthiest way forward for all of us. Where there's bitterness, where there is contempt, where there's fear and there is ignorance. . . We've been that journey. We know what it does, we know what it's done to us, we know the life that it has robbed us of.
PG: The relationship with Scotland helps to build trust, doesn't it?
MM: Of course it does. But isn't it also going to do something important for the Ulster Unionists and for those who come from the Ulster Scots tradition? They felt very land-locked, very culture-locked before. Fear, cultural fear, has been one of the big issues to do with both trust and contempt in the past. Now there's a tremendous opportunity for something special to happen. As we start to open up doors and windows that have been shut down in the past, I think we're going to find a new fluency, a new cultural freshness, within the Ulster Scots tradition.
IB: How does the relationship with London and Westminster fit with all this? It is problematic for the Scots, for the Welsh, even for Unionists in the north of Ireland. How does it all fit?
MM: I'm as curious about that as you are. It's out there. It's going to develop. But I have to say I don't know how it's going to develop. I do think we are putting in place the right kind of structures to nurture it. For example, Scotland has got its own Scotland House now in Europe.
Scotland as a country, in scale and in size, is not unlike Ireland and Ireland is one of Europe's success stories. I don't think it will be surprising if you see a fairly easy path between the officials working in Scotland House and the officials working with the Irish. Those relationships make sense.
We've a lot to share. Twenty five years of membership of the European Union as a small entity fighting its own battles and fighting them successfully: I think the Scots, quite rightly, would be interested, more than interested, to watch the dynamics of our relationships.
The other side of the coin is that the small friends around us are going to be very important to us. It's not just one-way traffic. I think Ireland is going to be very glad of a special relationship with Scotland House, with our Scottish neighbours.
The collegial nature of Europe is something we are comfortable with. We also know that you have got to be eternally vigilant. Big will always conduce to vanity. That's why we need the small countries to be friends with each other.
