Newton Emerson: Money talks and waffle walks in Shared Island initiative

Money is the underappreciated element in the Taoiseach’s Shared Island initiative. Attention has focused instead on a Border poll, with debate steered into the sort of binary terms the shared-island approach is meant to avoid.

There is not as much of a difference on this between both sides as at least one side is trying to pretend. At the initiative’s launch last week, Micheál Martin said a poll was not on his Government’s agenda for the next five years. During the general election campaign, Sinn Féin dropped its demand for a poll within five years as a condition of entering coalition. Five years is, of course, the maximum period an Irish government can rule out anything.

A Border poll in Northern Ireland is not within Dublin's gift and the Belfast Agreement does not strictly require a poll in the Republic – only in the North, with "consent, freely and concurrently given" in the South. Although the Constitution adds this should be "democratically expressed", that could be derived from the next government's mandate. Multiple referendums on amending the Constitution are what unity would mainly require from the Republic's electorate.

In total, perhaps half of the €500 million could end up north of the border, equivalent to 3 per cent of Stormont's capital budget

So let us return to the money, from which this article has also been too easily distracted. The Shared Island initiative has been allocated €500 million over five years, an apparently trivial sum compared to Stormont’s £13.8 billion annual budget.

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However, the funding is mainly for capital projects and is equivalent to 6 per cent of Stormont’s capital spending – a substantial and valid comparison. Nobody is expecting Dublin to contribute to Northern Ireland’s everyday running costs, yet.

In many instances, the initiative's contribution to cross-Border projects will stop at the Border, with Stormont or the UK government required to match funding on the other side. Examples include the Narrow Water Bridge across Carlingford Lough and the Ulster Canal between Clones and Upper Lough Erne.

Other projects are not so simple to split up into northern and southern costs. High-speed rail (or higher-speed rail, any rate) is seen as the initiative’s infrastructure flagship. It is unworkable without bypassing the Dart and commuter rail line through North Dublin, at astronomical expense and little benefit to the Republic alone.

About €100 million should be spent directly in Northern Ireland on the A5 dual carriageway, on the basis of connecting Dublin to Donegal. It appears that Derry will get most of the bricks and mortar investment in third-level educational co-operation. In total, perhaps half of the €500 million could end up north of the border, equivalent to 3 per cent of Stormont’s capital budget. This is a great deal more than has ever been seen before.

The only significant southern financial pledge in Northern Ireland’s history was the £400 million Dublin promised Sinn Féin and the DUP under the 2006 St Andrews agreement, to pay for half the cost of the A5. This offer was withdrawn in 2011 due to the financial crash, causing particular embarrassment to Sinn Féin, which had promoted it as a political landmark.

Investing in infrastructure, education and other forms of cross-Border development could reduce the North's need for regional funding

The crash was too understandable a reason for the withdrawal to be resented. Some of the pledged funding did dribble in over the subsequent decade. However, there is a sense of the shared-island budget merely getting back to where we started, and of the North not counting on it until it sees the colour of Dublin’s money – an appearance of ingratitude that might cause southern resentment.

This renewed first attempt at a major fiscal transfer could once again be seen as a political landmark. Money talks: it says the Republic’s aspiration to unity is more than painless waffle.

It is a sharp correction to the nonsense that has so far passed for debate on all-Ireland economics. Some advocates for unification have claimed Northern Ireland requires little or no subsidy if mysterious British accounting tricks are disregarded, a denial so ignorant it feels disreputable even to engage with it. Other advocates claim Northern Ireland only needs a subsidy because it is an inevitable failure, as if regional funding is a unionist vice rather than a feature of every developed country.

Above all, money pays for real work to get on with while waiting for the two monoliths of the constitutional argument to shift very slightly in any direction. It is presumably the most effective pitch to Northern Ireland’s growing unaligned bloc, the decisive voters in any Border poll, who should prefer pragmatism to nationalism by definition. Investing in infrastructure, education and other forms of cross-Border development could reduce the North’s need for regional funding, or change the terms in which it is viewed.

The EU clearly believes there is an identity-building effect to such investment, which is partly why it insists on having its logo prominently displayed beside new roads and railways.

The Shared Island initiative might want to avoid putting flags on signposts in Northern Ireland, but that should not be necessary.

Spending serious southern money in the North is a signpost few will miss.