Possible shape of North-South links: When each government department was challenged to detail implications for itself of the proposed Council of Ireland, the complexity of the proposal emerged. John Bowman reports
On June 12th, 1973, the Fine Gael-Labour government approved a submission from Garret FitzGerald that the Inter-Departmental Unit on Northern Ireland should immediately initiate discussions with other departments on the possible functions and structures of a Council of Ireland. FitzGerald wanted the work completed not later than mid-July. This deadline was then brought forward to the end of June!
Its secretary, Dermot Nally, notes dryly that because of the short timeframe, his 76-page report was "provisional in many of its conclusions". He wrote that there was a wide range of possibilities for a Council, lying between two extremes: a nominal North-South link "with at most fringe responsibilities in harmonising interests of both parts of the island where they overlap; a 'talking shop' in effect, intended merely as a 'sop' to us and to the minority in the North"; and at the other extreme was "a strong Council with real functions - perhaps even exclusive functions in certain areas, and a real in-built potential for growth." Although he did not say so, the variety of responses from government departments reflected both these extremes - and many positions in between. Had the British officials - who had been so sceptical about the possibilities of a powerful Council of Ireland from the first meeting on New Year's Day - seen all the small print in this report they might have been forgiven for saying "I told you so".
The Department of Finance, in one of the most comprehensive contributions, drew attention to the need to protect Southern interests. Noting that the systems of state incentives for industrial development differed North and South, the Department warned that "because export tax reliefs give us, in certain circumstances, a competitive edge over the North, there could be pressure from the Northern side for harmonisation of incentives".
The Department of Health shot down any suggestion that health services could be delivered through the Council of Ireland. Throughout the island the provision of the statutory services was being administered through 12 executive agencies. It would be difficult, argued the Department's memorandum, to mount a case for abandoning 12 agencies on this scale "in favour of one of a much larger scale". And on recruitment to the civil service, Nally allowed himself the comment that "the position of Irish would need special review".
There was some emphasis from a number of sources of the possibility that at EEC level the North might be more effectively represented on an all-Ireland basis than was the current case where they were a relatively insignificant peripheral region of the UK.
Some feared the delegation of policing functions to the Council could prove so divisive that, if assigned to the Council from the beginning, they "could wreck it". Others saw effective policing as of such importance to unionists that they seemed willing to experiment with a significant role for the Council in law enforcement: it might bring longed-for results to the unionist community and would bring an important agenda to the Council for nationalists.
By late August Nally complained to Cosgrave that his interdepartmental unit, which was charged with collating this material, was hindered by the fact that although it had been switched by Jack Lynch from Foreign Affairs to the Taoiseach's Department in March 1972, it was still disproportionately staffed by specialists from Iveagh House. Something would need to be done: either the unit should be returned to Foreign Affairs, or the Foreign Affairs secretariat should be transferred to the Taoiseach's Department. If these proved unacceptable, then "much closer liaison" should be arranged in future.
"This has not been satisfactory in the past and may not be so in the future, but at least we could give it a try." On this last option he then added a manuscript note - perhaps only intended for Cosgrave's copy: "I am less than hopeful about the prospects of success for this course."