I think it would be fair to say that something like 90% of people in the Republic of Ireland never think about Northern Ireland these days, other than, very occasionally, as a place to go to do some cut-price shopping. The North doesn’t even enter their consciousness.
A striking example of this was on the evening of Friday 21st August, when the viaduct across the Malahide estuary which carries the main Dublin-Belfast railway line collapsed, with the prospect of serious disruption of that vital communications link for up to six months. In the reporting of this incident on RTE over the following weekend, it was as if the North did not exist. In the dozen or so news bulletins I heard, this was a ‘commuter’ line serving north Dublin and Louth. The 800,000 passengers who take the Enterprise express every year were simply invisible. It was not until the Sunday night that this changed, brought about – it seemed to me – by the spokesman for the Automobile Assocation, of all organisations, underlining the ‘iconic’ importance of the Dublin-Belfast line to the island of Ireland.
The deep economic crisis in the South is, of course, all-consuming when it comes to both politicians’ priorities and public concern, and this understandably leads to a turning inward of public opinion, a concentration on one’s own serious problems and a lessening of interest in the neighbour’s. That plainspoken Fianna Fail politician Martin Mansergh – the main architect of the Southern dimension of the peace process – articulated this well when he told the annual conference of the Institute for British-Irish Studies in June: “The Republic is engaged in a major struggle to maintain, within the EU and the euro zone, its economic viability and sovereignty. It is hardly the moment to press claims to the North which we have renounced, and, it has to be said, the advantages and flexibility of joining up with a small sovereign state in the present global turmoil are for the moment a lot less compelling today than they were two or three years ago.”¹
If the South’s economic crisis has pushed the prospect of a united Ireland well into the future in the view of one of Ireland’s most far-sighted political leaders, for ordinary people it is now a nonsense for more practical reasons. A survey this summer by the Southern magazine Consumer Choice found that the cost of commonly used services was now on average 30% higher in Dublin than in Belfast.
Dublin people now pay 45% more for a mechanic; 33% more for a plumber; 29% more for a dentist; and 25% more for a driving instructor or a chiropractor. The gap between dental charges can be even more dramatic: Consumer Choice found price differences for a routine dental examination and polish between the two cities of up to 54%.² Those of us who live and work between the two jurisdictions know that to go to the doctor in the South costs €50 just to walk into the surgery, whereas consultations are free in Northern Ireland. Unemployment in the heavily subsidised North is currently running at 6.7%, compared to 11.7% in the Republic.
It is reasonable to ask in these circumstances how anybody in their right mind could advocate moving to a united Ireland as a way forward for the island. Even the most fervent republican must accept that until the Republic has sorted out its massive problems of bank indebtedness, public finance overspend and loss of international competitiveness, Irish unity is simply off the agenda. One of the South’s most eminent economists, Frances Ruane, director of the Economic and Social Research Institute, estimated this month that the Republic would not return to the economic situation pertaining in 2007 before the latter half of the next decade³ – which, with some ironic symbolism, would mean not before 2016 at the earliest.
As Martin Mansergh said, the barriers to cooperation, communication and understanding, both within Northern Ireland and between North and South, have never been lower. Let’s concentrate on continuing to lower those barriers. Whether it is through the work of the Community Relations Council, One Small Step, and other ‘shared future’ organisations in Northern Ireland, or the North/South bodies – particularly those, led by InterTradeIreland, working towards an ‘island economy’ – Cooperation Ireland and the Centre for Cross Border Studies across the border, let us continue building on the success story of ‘cooperation, cooperation, cooperation’ which has done so much to underpin movement towards peace and reconciliation on this island. There is enough work in that difficult, painstaking process to keep us all busy for the next 10 years and more. We should be wise enough to concentrate on what we can achieve together as good neighbours rather than raise the level of threat once more by continuing to demand the impossible.
Andy Pollak
¹ United Ireland less compelling now, says Mansergh, The Irish Times, 10 June 2009
² Cost of common services 30% higher in Dublin than in Belfast, The Irish Times, 5 August 2009
³ Address at Merriman Summer School, Ennis, 22 August 2009
What about a new telephone dialling code to make it easier for people in the North to ‘phone the South?
If I phone the North from Dundalk I just have to change the initial 028 code to 048 and go ahead with the northern number. Phoning Dundalk from Newry requires the International Access Code (00), usually signified by a ‘+’, then 353, Ireland’s code and then the area code (042) and finally the number!
Years ago you could phone direct to Dublin from the North by dialling 0001 before the local number. Couldn’t something similar be done to shorten the steps required to phone from North to South and so make it more accessible?
I was born to parents who were both from the South of Ireland and have always hankered after the reality of bringing my children up in the South. But it can’t be. i couldn’t afford the Docotr’s fees, the cost of living, the house prices, the distance from a good hospital if you chose to live outside of Dublin, the price of childcare and the schooling/education costs.
The reality of the the Iongoing Irish economic crisis and the increasingly divided society of the ‘haves’ and the ‘have nots’ will continue to make the Republic one of the least likely detinations on my ‘year out’ agenda. I cannot fathom having to spend £1,000 on Books for a secondary school child, £250 on Capital fees which are supposedly a parents ‘voluntary contibution’ to the school fund but have to be paid up front before the school year starts or the child won’t be asigned a locker! (barbaric) and £200 for a uniform before fees for photcopying and handouts and trips are even calculated. My Father in law pays £400 each month for life saving tablets which are not a luxury but a necessity, he has regular blood tests at £75 each vivst and £50 for each doctor’s visit, private health insurance covers some of this but he falls outside some ‘technicality’ for a medical card having worked every day since he was 16 and never having taken a penny from the state in benefits etc. His monthly health care costs more than his food mortgage and electricty costs combined- if he lived in the north he would have all this free of charge. I think the Irish Government are really covertly trying to remove any thought that any of us might have about it being the ‘free state’ by making it the ‘pay-as-you-go state’!
While I agree with many articles that you write, I would have many issues with this one. I will confine myself to one comment – the article makes no reference to the particularly weak state of sterling over recent months and the knock-on effect that that has on current price comparisons. Presumably sterling will return to its longer term norms at some point, at which stage more meaningful comparisons can be made (and at which point prices in the South might also have declined given current trends).
Andy,
There was never any interest in the North before the peace process either, apart from pricing comparisons, which has made smuggling one of our few consistently high performing sectors of the economy – both economies.
You are absolutely right about looking for an economic silver lining. So far Sinn Fein has been the only party to push the concept of an all-island economy but with little real research to back it up. It should be part of the mainstream debate in the present crisis. Maybe some clutch of economists could do a NAME type letter to kick start the debate. One immediate priority should be to use the Malahide causeway disaster to call for the Irish, NI and British Governments to make the upgrade of the rail link a priority and to promote it as a major freight corridor – which of course would require extra track. It is pathetic that intercity Enterprise trains are effectively relegated to outer suburban commuter services.
‘The North doesn’t even enter their consciousness’ you say. I presume you mean the lands and the people of the 6 counties of Ulster? If that is so then there are many people who live in Monaghan, which for you then is in the South, who would claim that they do not enter the consciousness of the Dublin Government either. When we examine what has happened in recent years in this county we have to admit that there seems to be an agenda there to isolate and ignore the people of this county. They have closed Post Offices, Garda Stations, Army Barracks, reduced our hospital to a glorified nursing home and relocated many other services closer to Dublin. We witness the advantages across the border on a daily basis and wait fretfully for the next onslaught on our existence from the South.