Twenty-five years on, former Department of Foreign Affairs official Tim O’Connor remembers the controversy that surrounded the first plenary meeting of the North-South ministerial Council in Armagh on December 13th, 1999.
The controversy that day was not about unionist fears of constitutional overreach by the Republic, as it was after the Sunningdale Agreement in 1974 when they objected to the Council of Ireland.
Instead, it was the furore created when “all the southern ministers arrived in a fleet of Mercedes coming up the driveway into Armagh”, O’Connor remembered this week at an Irish Association conference to mark the 25th anniversary of the NSMC.
The lesson left by “the Mercedes Summit” has not been lost on a generation of officials since. When it comes to North/South matters even the smallest of glitches can caused outsize grief.
On Friday a plenary NSMC meeting takes place in Dublin Castle, attended by Taoiseach Simon Harris, Tánaiste Micheál Martin and Northern Ireland’s First Minister Michelle O’Neill and Deputy First Minister, Emma Little-Pengelly.
Throughout its existence since 1999, the NSMC has been unable to function for approximately 40 per cent of the time because the Stormont institutions were collapsed, unable to send the ministers required for meetings to be held.
On other occasions, the NSMC’s operations have been sluggish because unionists – firstly, the Ulster Unionists and then the Democratic unionists – were less than enthusiastic about its role, or because they wanted to bypass it.
Illustrating the successes, Hilary O’Reilly, its Southern Joint Secretary, pointed to the work of Tourism Ireland, InterTradeIreland, or the Lough Agency, which looks after the river Foyle and Carlingford Lough.
She pointed, too, to Waterways Ireland, or the battle in 2002 to ward off foot-and-mouth, or last year’s campaign to win European Union recognition for Irish grass-fed beef, giving it a geographical recognition status shared by Parma ham, and other high-quality food.
Some successes have made headlines: cross-Border cancer care in Derry’s Altnagelvin Hospital has offered radiotherapy to more than 1,000 people in the Republic since 2016, along with cardiac care, or an all-island autism centre in Armagh.
Meanwhile, children from Northern Ireland requiring cardiac surgery now receive their treatment in Dublin, while cross-Border ambulance services have been negotiated through its auspices, too.
Sometimes, however, Dublin and Stormont ministers, and sometimes officials alone, have co-operated directly outside of the NSMC, with Dublin, for example, paying for medical degree places in Northern universities.
And there is a new beast on the block: the Shared Island Initiative set up by Micheál Martin during his time as Taoiseach, which now has over a €100m-a-year budget to boost cross-Border co-operation.
Today, there are growing calls, echoed forcibly by former taoiseach Bertie Ahern this week, for more co-operation between Dublin and Stormont, if necessary, outside of the realm of the NSMC and the Good Friday Agreement.
The distinctions may seem esoteric, but they are not.
The Good Friday Agreement talks nearly collapsed in 1998 because the Ulster Unionist leader, David Trimble and, for once, all of his colleagues united in fury when faced with 40 North/South bodies with executive powers to act.
“It was so obvious to us when we saw it that we wouldn’t accept it, couldn’t accept it,” recalled the later Ulster Unionist Stormont minister, Lord Reg Empey at the Queen’s University Belfast gathering.
Pointing to transport, he said, its implementation body would have had full, all-island executive powers: “Stormont would no longer deal with transport. In fact, the Dáil would no longer have dealt with it,” he said.
Faced with opposition, Bertie Ahern sliced through the long list leading to a British-Irish agreement in March 1999 to co-operate across 12 subjects, including six cross-Border bodies, such as Tourism Ireland and Waterways Ireland.
Accepting that Stormont collapses have impacted on the NSMC’s ability to operate “when there are no ministers to pitch up”, Empey sought to emphasise the body’s quiet successes.
“There hasn’t been a single solitary incident that I can recall where there’s been a challenge to what they’ve been doing, where there’s been an argument, where there’s been a constitutional row over it.
“They get on with their business insofar as they’ve been given proper guidance and direction. And it hasn’t caused any ripples,” he said , though he accepted that it needs review 25 years on.
Saying that the Brexit referendum created “a fairly traumatic situation”, Empey said no effort has been made since to use the NSMC to help find ways around problems caused by the result.
“The best way forward is to ensure the institutions work. They haven’t really been given a full opportunity to do so uninterrupted. But I hope maybe we’ve passed the point of interruptions, and we’ll get at least a few years to show what they can do,” he said.
Some of the cross-Border bodies “are doing quite well”, he went on, but “unless they are given clear political direction by both governments” then they will never be able “to plan over time”, he said.
Praising past and present NSMC officials from both sides, Bertie Ahern said: “They’ve worked very hard under difficult circumstances. They’ve kept things going when the political system wasn’t functioning at all, or wasn’t functioning well.”
Accepting that the original 1998 proposal of 40 bodies was too much, even if it was an agreed Dublin/London proposal, not a Dublin solo-run, he was emphatic, though, that more co-operation is needed, with, or without the NSMC.
“Co-operation is essential to the wellbeing, prosperity and progress of the people of this island, regardless of their outlook on the constitutional future,” the former taoiseach said.
Caution has too often been the byword because of Stormont, or cross-Border sensitivities and should be put to one side: “We’re not in such a worrying position now, disruption is to the detriment of everybody,” he said.
Too often, NSMC statements are too cautiously drafted to ensure that “no one gets upset”, with everything agreed “down to the last word and if somebody changes a word then everything is revamped.
“I think the paranoia should stop, to be honest. It’s not necessary to do a communique and have half the bloody world checking whether it’s word perfect or not,” he said, urging everyone “to get on with it”.
Conscious that the Good Friday negotiators “will not be around forever”, Mr Ahern offered a reminder of the importance of the cross-Border institutions – the so-called Strand 2 of the talks.
“Strand Two was the reason I could change Articles 2 and 3 [of the Irish Constitution]. That was the reason that we could move forward, and it should always be remembered, that,” he said.
Pushing for more cross-Border co-operation and quickly, Mr. Ahern said actions could take place on an informal basis “and then maybe some day in the future” formal rules could be created.
Such desire for informality provokes nervousness among officials, past and present. Illustrating this, former Foreign Affairs official, Tim O’Connor remembered organising ministerial meetings along the Border in the NSMC’s early years.
In one place, he cautioned a hotel manager about the sensitivities of the upcoming meeting, requesting that no flags of any kind be flown, lest misunderstandings occur.
“He said, ‘Don’t worry, sir, we don’t even have a flagpole’. I said, ‘You’re my man.’.
Acknowledging that things have matured in the years since, he went on: “It’s just ingrained in me that everything is fine until it isn’t. When you’re doing things informally and then you hit the buffer, then you don’t know where to go.”
The former head of the Northern Ireland Civil Service, Andrew McCormick points to the success of Tourism Ireland, even it gets criticised by unionists, saying, ‘Oh, sure. they’re just working on behalf of Dublin’.
“The capacity to present tourism opportunities [globally] was far, far greater working together than it would have been had we in Northern Ireland been trying to do it all by ourselves,” he said.
The journey travelled since 1999 has left cross-Border co-operation “so secure and so significant, [that] many things happen naturally, but the one fact is that many unionist ministers are much happier to work bilaterally”, he cautioned.
However, the NSMC and the structures flowing from it were central to the Good Friday Agreement negotiations, and central, too, to getting voters in the Republic to drop Articles 2 and 2, he said, echoing Mr. Ahern’s point.
“This is one of the most important ways in which Irish identity is recognised and underscored within Northern Ireland. If it’s all only done outside of an institutional context I would question if that’s enough.
“The actual point of the Good Friday Agreement was the legitimacy of the state, Before 1998, there was never an agreed basis for the legitimacy of Northern Ireland,” said Mr McCormick.
