THE SOLUTION of the Northern Ireland conflict came through a very sophisticated process of mediation, President Mary McAleese told a conference of mediators yesterday. She was opening a symposium organised by the Mediators' Institute of Ireland in Dublin.
In such a process people think "in terms of longitudinal relations rather than short-term gain," she said. Such an approach has an application both to dispute resolution and to macro politics.
This would apply not only to family law but to social partnership, the Equality Tribunal, community and employment disputes. In Northern Ireland a huge amount of work was done at community level, creating "a patchwork of mediated endeavours that gave the politicians a wind at their backs". This was being followed by post-conflict reconciliation.
"The evidence is in from our own political process that mediated settlements are what works. When relationships fragment we must hold the best of those fragments together," she said.
Turlough O'Donnell, chairman of the Bar Council, welcomed the fact that the first mediated personal injury case had just been concluded. This was a medical negligence case, involving the loss of the life of a young boy following surgery for colitis, and his widowed mother sought compensation. Mr Justice Feeney referred the case to mediation, and it was successfully resolved, at great saving of both cost and personal stress and trauma.
He said there was an ethical requirement on every lawyer to put the needs of his client first, and if the needs of the client required mediation that is what the lawyer was ethically bound to recommend, irrespective of what this meant for the lawyer's own interests. "It's a disgrace to promote a solution that suits the lawyer more and the client less."
He said that the mediation method should be used in our public affairs, to allow a constructive dialogue between public bodies and those who were critical of aspects of their policy. Referring to the controversy surrounding Thornton Hall and the siting of the new women's prison there, he said that this had now become an adversarial issue, when all involved wanted to promote the welfare of the prisoners.
Ken Murphy, director general of the Law Society, said that the society favoured mediation as a form of dispute resolution, and one of the keys to this was effective case management.