Mixed progress

Building cross-border roads and drawing down EU funding have been two of the North/South Ministerial Council’s recent successes. But progress on parliamentary and consultative forums has been much slower. Meadhbh Monahan reports.

Established under the Good Friday Agreement, the North/South Ministerial Council (NSMC) is the “lead institution” in developing North/South co-operation and bringing together Ministers from Northern Ireland and the Republic.

Since the Agreement was signed on 10 April 1998, the NSMC has held 11 plenary meetings, which are led by the First and deputy First Ministers and the Taoiseach. Plenary sessions take an overview of co-operation on the island and look at the work of the six North/South implementation bodies:

• the Food Safety Promotion Board;

• the Foyle, Carlingford and Irish Lights Commission (including the Lough’s Agency)

• the Language Body (Foras na Gaeilge and Tha Boord o Ulstèr-Scotch);

• the Special European Union Programmes Body;

• InterTradeIreland; and

• Waterways Ireland.

Five institutional meetings have also been held. At these, the Executive is represented by the First and deputy First Minister and the Irish Government is represented by the Minister for Foreign Affairs. Institutional meetings look at EU- related issues and any problems with the operations of the NSMC.

Sectoral meetings are held more regularly to oversee North/South co-operation in the 12 agreed sectors. The 12 sectors are the six implementation bodies (above) and six areas of co-operation: agriculture, education, environment, health, tourism and transport. There have been 142 sectoral meetings between 1998 and 2011, including 77 since 2007.

The Good Friday Agreement states: “The North South Ministerial Council and the Northern Ireland Assembly are mutually inter-dependent, and one cannot successfully function without the other.” Therefore, when the Assembly was dissolved between 2002 and 2007, the NSMC also ceased to operate.

The council is supported by a joint secretariat, staffed by members of the Northern Ireland Civil Service and the Irish Civil Service. In January 2011, the secretariat’s new Armagh office was opened by Brian Cowen. Prior to that, the northern meetings were held in hotels or colleges. The Dublin meetings are generally held in Farmleigh House (the former home of the Guinness family, now owned by the Government). The meetings rotate between jurisdictions and costs are met by the host jurisdiction. Joint Secretariat staff are paid for by their respective government.

A review of the North/South implementation bodies and the areas for co-operation began in 2007 and reports are due at the June 2011 plenary meeting, after several delays.

The review has been examining the value for money of the implementation bodies, the case for additional bodies and areas of co-operation within the NSMC where mutual benefit would be derived, and a suitable substitute for the proposed ‘lights agency’ which had been intended to look after lighthouses.

During an exchange in the Assembly on 6 December 2010, Tom Elliott asked Martin McGuinness, whether the existing implementation bodies are part of the review, and, whether the terms of reference of the review would allow for some of those bodies to be closed.

The deputy First Minister insisted that “when commitments to agreements are made, whether it is the Good Friday Agreement, the St Andrews Agreement or the Hillsborough Castle Agreement, those agreements have to be implemented.”

When further pressed by Jonathan Bell, who asked if McGuinness agreed that the implementation bodies are of limited value given the Republic’s economic problems, he said he did not agree and referred to InterTradeIreland as an example of “a roaring success.”

McGuinness defended the implementation bodies, adding: “Whenever I hear people talking about the cost of those institutions, I hear the insinuation that a case should be put forward for their abolition because those people are opposed to them in principle. That is a huge mistake, and that approach is very short-sighted. We must recognise, as Ian Paisley correctly said in the aftermath of the first North/South Ministerial Council meeting, that we have to bring down all the old barriers and all the old obstacles and remove all of the old hatreds.”

The creation of a North/South parliamentary forum and a North/South consultative forum were encouraged in the 2007 St Andrews Agreement. Neither have made much progress due to opposition from most unionists and a general lack of enthusiasm.

However Dawn Purvis has called for a forum to be implemented because “the only way to secure the union is to have good relationships with our neighbours in the Republic of Ireland.” It would be “a recognition of partition and of this devolved institution.”

On 8 October 2010, a conference on the creation of a parliamentary forum was held in Newcastle. Working groups from both jurisdictions are now looking at the possibility of a further conference and an inaugural meeting of the forum.

Progress on the North/South consultative forum, which would be appointed by the two administrations and represent civil society, has been even slower. Micheál Martin sounded exasperated as he told the Dáil on 27 May 2010 that since 2007, the matter has been discussed at every plenary NSMC meeting but nothing can be done because the Executive had said that the consultative forum could not be established until after a review of the Civic Forum for Northern Ireland. That review started in June 2007 and the forum is expected to be abolished.

Meanwhile, the Irish Government consulted with its social partners and cross-border and North/South groups on the establishment of the consultative forum in 2008. In October 2009 and May 2010, it held consultative conferences involving the social partners and civil society groups from across the island. Martin said the Government would: “press strongly to have the matter brought to an early conclusion.”

Progress

The main progress since devolution has been the opening of the Newry by-pass in July 2010 and the continued work on the A5 (Aughnacloy to Derry) and A8 (Belfast to Larne) routes. The January 2011 joint communiqué cited the development of a new satellite radiotherapy unit at Altnagelvin (where approximately one-third of patients would be from County Donegal) as progress. However, this project has now been stalled.

The mutual recognition of driving disqualifications became operational in January 2010. However, despite discussions about having the same drink- drive limit in both jurisdictions, the Republic’s is still lower at 50 mg of alcohol per 100 ml of blood as opposed to the UK’s 80mg.

Between January 2009 and 2010, Peace III funding had been approved for 126 projects worth €207 million and Interreg IVA funding had been approved for 49 projects worth €153 million. In addition, InterTradeIreland is focusing on gaining as much funding as possible through the EU’s Seventh Framework Programme, which rewards innovation initiatives, particularly between business and academic institutions.

Approximately 200,000 tonnes of illegally dumped waste in Fermanagh and Tyrone was repatriated to the Republic last year, however the NSMC’s communiqué does not refer to the €36 million cost to the Irish tax-payer.

In terms of animal health, a 2010-2011 action plan for all-island animal health and welfare strategy is in place. A new website, www.borderpeople.info, has been launched with information on working and living in the border counties.

A child protection hub – an internet resource showing research, policy, serious case reviews, court judgements, news articles and other material relevant to child protection published in Northern Ireland, the Republic and Great Britain – is now available to health and social care staff in both jurisdictions.

The opening of the Middletown Centre for Autism as an all-island centre of excellence for children with autistic spectrum disorders was hailed as a success by the NSMC as it had supported