Diarmaid Ferriter: The North-South incoherence in facing Covid-19 is ridiculous

It seems ironic that €500 million was announced in this week's budget for the Government's new "Shared Island" unit when that same island cannot manage a united approach to dealing with Covid-19. All-Ireland health projects have been earmarked for this unit and why wouldn't they be? How many times have we heard this long year that viruses do not respect borders?

One of the challenges of North-South relations for decades was to generate dialogue on non-contentious issues. When he became taoiseach in 1959 Seán Lemass sought to give momentum to this, culminating in his meeting with Northern Ireland prime minister Terence O’Neill in 1965. CJ Bateman, secretary to the Stormont cabinet, composed a memorandum revealing what transpired between the two men: “It was fully accepted by both PMs that political and constitutional questions were not at issue. The theme was the possibility of co-operation on purely practical matters.” Tourism, cross-Border trade, waterways and agricultural research came up in the talks. The account by Bateman concluded: “The discussion was purely in the nature of a preliminary tour d’horizon.”

Follow-up

There were inevitably flies in the ointment when it came to follow-up. Northern Ireland’s minister for health William Morgan made it clear “so far as his department is concerned, there are really no questions upon which he would himself wish to initiate discussion with his opposite number. Our social services generally are so far advanced in relation to the Republic that our main concern over the years has been to protect them from the incursions of the inhabitants of Éire.”

A zero foot-and-mouth policy was declared and a total ban on cattle, sheep, pigs and goats coming from Britain to Northern Ireland

As this pandemic has revealed, Northern Ireland does not have the money now to sustain that type of swagger and complaints have been made that heels have dragged because they cannot afford a lockdown. But even with the new stricter measures North and South, there is insufficient uniformity which, given the size of the island, is absurd. Cross-Border travel for work and school is a daily reality and we’ve had weeks of Northern Ireland with greater numbers of cases but fewer restrictions.

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In recent decades shared EU membership has facilitated a well-developed sphere of cross-Border healthcare activity in Ireland, including Co-Operation and Working Together which was established in 1992, its mission “to improve the health and wellbeing of the Border populations by working across boundaries and jurisdictions”. Subsequently, as required by the Belfast Agreement, the North-South Ministerial Council agreed six formal areas of co-operation, for which common policies and approaches are agreed but implemented separately in each jurisdiction, including in health and accidents and planning for major emergencies.

‘Fortress Ireland approach’

The island of Ireland is a “single epidemiological unit” for disease control relating to animal health. In 2007, we learned of the “Fortress Ireland approach” when there was a cross-Border consensus on dealing with foot-and-mouth disease, with both taoiseach Bertie Ahern and Northern Ireland’s first minister, Ian Paisley, on the same page. A zero foot-and-mouth policy was declared and a total ban on cattle, sheep, pigs and goats coming from Britain to Northern Ireland. Consider Northern Ireland agriculture minister Michelle Gildernew’s words from that year: “We have acted very quickly to close the ports to ensure that we batten down the hatches and ensure we took whatever precautions we could to try and stop the spread of the disease … there is a barrier of water there, the Irish Sea, to try and ensure we keep the disease at bay.”

Where is such resolve now? At the end of April, the Irish Medical Times reported “North-South co-operation on Covid-19 is to build on collaboration across cancer, ambulance and congenital heart services on the island of Ireland”. This was on the back of an agreed memorandum of understanding signed by Ireland’s chief medical officer, Dr Tony Holohan, and the chief medical officer of the North’s Department of Health, Dr Michael McBride, and agreed by then minister for health Simon Harris and his Northern Ireland counterpart, Robin Swann, “to promote co-operation and collaboration in response to the Covid-19 pandemic”.

Share information

Both departments of health signed up to weekly teleconferences in addition to “regular agile arrangements for communication” in order to “ensure mutual ongoing understanding”. They agreed to share information, co-operate on the procurement of medical supplies and communicate “consistent common messages where appropriate, such as on hand washing, hygiene and social distancing”.

But there has been no joint Covid strategy for the whole island. Northern Ireland reopened its economy more quickly, school and retail outlet policies are not aligned and while North and South have staged roadmaps, they are not integrated.

Weekly teleconferences in the face of a pandemic? Swift, co-ordinated action in facing foot-and-mouth disease in 2007 but North-South incoherence in facing Covid-19 today? How ridiculous it is, given the gravity of what the whole island faces, that we are still at the “preliminary tour d’horizon” stage.