Etain Tannam* (Trinity College Dublin)
The North-South Ministerial Council (NSMC), provided for by Strand Two of the Good Friday Agreement, met on April 8, just two days before the 26th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement, and nearly 3 years since its last meeting. It was an historic occasion in many ways: a nationalist, Michelle O’Neill, is First Minister in Northern Ireland for the first time in the jurisdiction’s history. It was also Leo Varadkar’s last time attending the NSMC and his last official event as Taoiseach – Simon Harris took over as Taoiseach the next day, following Varadkar’s resignation in March.
There was something historic too about O’Neill and the Deputy First Minister, Emma Little-Pengelly, (DUP), meeting amiably on a North-South institution, after nearly eight years of turbulence. The DUP opposed cross-border cooperation completely in its early days, famously illustrated by its founder, Ian Paisley throwing snowballs in 1967 at the then Irish Taoiseach, Seán Lemass, and the then Northern Ireland Prime Minister, Terence O’Neill, when they met to discuss practical cooperation. Even after the Agreement, the DUP appeared to have a begrudging attitude to the NSMC. In contrast, as Sam McBride reported in the Belfast Telegraph, on Tuesday, Little-Pengelly welcomed ‘the constructive discussions that we’ve had this morning”, and stated that several of the discussions would ‘strengthen relationships’ across the island, between Ireland and Britain, and within the UK, and that it was important that ‘we are good neighbours to each other’. Michelle O’Neill said the meeting was a chance to ‘work collaboratively across the island’, describing the body as ‘a crucial part of the jigsaw’ around the Good Friday Agreement. The period 2016 to 2023 saw the worst acrimony in many decades between the UK and Irish governments, between unionists and nationalists in Northern Ireland, and between unionists and the Irish government, so the NSMC’s positive atmosphere seemed symbolic of a new era beginning.
But how important are the NSMC and Strand Two of the Agreement? Strand Two is part of John Hume’s ‘three strands’ approach to resolving the conflict in Northern Ireland: relations between the parties in Northern Ireland, between Northern Ireland and Ireland, and between the Irish and Uk governments and both islands. The three strands became central to the 1998 Agreement and are described in the Agreement as being ‘interlocking and interdependent’ Hume was inspired by the EU’s post-war model of reconciliation, whereby economic interests formed the basis of economic and political cooperation between former enemies, France and Germany. Emphasis on pragmatic cooperation also was also visible in the Lemass-O’Neill talks cited above. However, the failure of those talks as the conflict erupted, and Paisley’s vehement response, showed that rather than practical functional cooperation contributing to political cooperation, in ethnically divided societies political division can scupper economic cooperation. Peace in Northern Ireland, the EU’s creation of the Single European Market and the EU’s funding of North-South projects in its Peace Packages, all meant that by 1999 there was an open Irish land border, with easy North-South travel, communication and trade. The economic and political context implied North-South practical cooperation had far more potential than in the past.
More recently, Brexit and the Windsor Framework mean that the NSMC is a vital means of communicating Northern Ireland’s political parties’ preferences on practical implementation issues. In addition, Brexit’s implications for North-South co-operation are of obvious relevance to the principle of North-South cooperation that underpins Strand Two, whether Brexit’s positive impact on North-South trade, a sector covered by Strand Two, or its negative impact on, for example, cooperation in services.
However, to date, Strand Two has not fulfilled its potential for various reasons: Firstly, under the Agreement, if the Executive in Northern Ireland collapses, Strand Two also collapses. Secondly, although there were some landmark examples of DUP support for North-South cooperation – for example it supported the designation of Our Lady’s Hospital Crumlin in Dublin as the centre of paediatric cardiac surgery for the island – its ministers on the NSMC were generally slow to adopt a pro-active approach to Strand Two. In other words, the political divide affected the NSMC’s performance. Thirdly, politicians in Northern Ireland and on both islands focused most attention on Strand One – on power-sharing in Northern Ireland. Strand Two (and Strand Three) were the ‘poor relations’ despite their stated interdependence under the Agreement, and despite Hume’s emphasis on these strands as crucial to peace and stability. Fourthly, Strand Two was a core bone of contention in the Agreement’s negotiations, given unionists’ suspicions of North-South cooperation as a slippery slope to a United Ireland. Therefore, a list of over 140 areas of possible cooperation was whittled down in the Agreement’s negotiations to six policy areas under the NSMC and 6 other areas under non -executive bodies. This gap was highlighted by the Covid-19 pandemic, where Strand Two had no remit to frame a cross-border approach to disease control.
The final reason for the NSMC’s weakness is also a reason for weaknesses in the Agreement as a whole: the UK and Irish governments let the three strands approach drift, particularly after the St Andrew’s Agreement in 2006. As a fledgling post-conflict polity, more supervision and dynamism were required by the governments to implement the Agreement successfully.
For example, under Strand Three, a review of the operation of the Agreement was meant to occur after four years, under the aegis of Strand Three’s British-Irish Intergovernmental Conference (B-IIGC), comprising the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, the Minister for Foreign Affairs in Ireland, and also on occasion, both prime ministers. However, the review never occurred and in fact the B-IIGC did not meet at all from 2007 to 2018.
What now for the NSMC? Monday’s meeting was encouraging. The Irish government from 2017-18 gradually recognised the B-IIGC’s importance and secured a commitment from an unenthusiastic UK government to meet regularly. The Irish government’s 2020 Programme for Government (PgG), devoted a large section to the Agreement, emphasising the need for robust implementation. The PfG also provided for a new Shared Island Unit to develop North South functional cooperation so as to serve citizens’ practical needs on both sides of the border, with funding worth 500 million euro to be allocated to North South projects, for the period 2021-2025.
However, a potential caveat is that the Shared Island initiative operates outside the Agreement’s institutions. Therefore, caution must be exercised that it does not make Strand Two redundant or further weaken its relevance. In addition, the task of reconciliation must be to engage those who were previously opposed to cooperation, as opposed to ‘preaching to the converted’. Instability in Northern Ireland and on the island of Ireland, if it occurs, will be primarily caused by those most deeply opposed to cooperation and to a United Ireland, not by the ‘persuadables’.
Overall, the NSMC’s meeting on Monday provided signs that 2024 might be a good year for cooperation on the islands, but the success of the NSMC will depend on the stability of the Northern Ireland Executive and the Assembly (Strand One), in the years ahead. Fundamentally the success of the NSMC, and of the Northern Ireland Executive, will depend on both governments providing pro-active guardianship of the Agreement in the year ahead.
*Etain Tannam is Associate Professor of International Peace Studies, Trinity College Dublin. Her main area of expertise is Irish/Northern cross-border cooperation and British-Irish intergovernmental/diplomatic cooperation, with emphasis on Brexit’s impact. She has just completed a book British-Irish Relations in the 21st Century: The Good Friday Agreement, Brexit, and the Totality of Relations (Oxford, OUP), 2024 forthcoming.
The views expressed in this blog post are the position of the author and not necessarily those of the Brexit Institute blog.
Photo Credit – Pacemaker