RECURRENT NEWS reports of past and present political and sectarian violence in Northern Ireland remind us its peace process must not be taken for granted. The report on the Miami Showband murders, the Smithwick Tribunal, and the recent murder of a PSNI officer show the conflict persists, though tremendous progress has been made. Co-operation Ireland helpfully distinguishes the stages of peace-making and peace-building from the ultimate goal of peace-sharing. That we are in the middle of a transition from making to building peace is no reason to neglect the process. On the contrary, high-level engagement remains essential if it is not to stall or go into reverse.
May’s Assembly elections were, for the first time, concerned more with normal politics than reinforcing older enmities. But even so the North’s entrenched political, social and ethnic-religious divisions were manifest in the results. The form of powersharing used both reproduces and tames them; the hope remains that over time the habit of working together will transform a society which genuinely wants to move on from its divided past. But its leaders and peoples need continuing encouragement and stimulus from their partners in the Republic and Britain, including sympathetic attention to their current difficulties and future development strategies.
Peace will be built by convincing policies which confront current problems effectively. Among them economic issues loom large. They include the North’s exposure to UK spending cuts; its abiding reliance on exceptional transfers from London to maintain a local economy dominated by the public sector; the efforts to bring down corporation tax to the level of the Republic to encourage foreign investment; the realisation that this would involve a substantial cut in the transfers; the effects on the North’s economy of the UK’s changing relations with the EU; and the need to think about how better economic relations with the rest of Ireland would stimulate employment opportunities.
Too little research and political attention has been devoted to these questions south of the Border. It seems to be assumed that having made the peace there is less need to help build it by encouraging economic development. The North-South ministerial process seems locked into a static agenda. Economic researchers are so preoccupied with the impact of the EU-IMF bailout crisis that they neglect the 32-county economy. Private business investment in the North has dried up and seems numb to the opportunities that exist for aligning two adjacent compatible economies. Suggestions for aligning health, educational and social systems across the Border receive too little official or public attention.
Such neglect could easily backfire and is irrational given the human, peace-building and economic potential involved. The North’s security agenda will be provoked by the anniversaries straddling the next 10 years. The working out of Britain’s internal and external political identity problems with Scotland, Wales and the EU over that decade will have a profound effect on Ireland too. These are all sound reasons for more engagement.