The Other View

Cross Border Cooperation

By Andy Pollak

Cross-border co-operation is a relatively new phenomenon in Ireland. After partition the two Irish states turned their backs on each other, and with a few exceptions – such as the Foyle Fisheries Commission and the Erne hydroelectric scheme – there was little or no attempt to explore how Irish people's lives could be improved by the governments in Dublin and Belfast working together on practical projects. The clashing nationalist and unionist ideologies of the two administrations ensured a kind of official apartheid for most of the past 80 years.

There was a small, short-lived thaw in relations during the 1960s, when a pragmatic Taoiseach, Sean Lemass, had talks with the Northern prime minister, Terence O'Neill, with a view to improving economic relationships. But the onset of the 'Troubles' meant that any resulting slight improvement was stillborn.
The 1998 Good Friday Agreement changed all that. Its North-South 'strand', based on a range of cross-border bodies overseen by North-South Ministerial Council, brought together ministers and civil servants from both jurisdictions. If the post-Agreement institutions survive the present decommissioning crisis, in a few months there will be up to a thousand civil servants working in places like Armagh, Newry, Coleraine, Omagh, Enniskillen, Monaghan, Donegal, Clare and Cork on cross-border bodies running inland waterways, EU programmes, trade and business development, food safety promotion, Irish and Ulster-Scots language programmes, lighthouses and tourism. The Irish border could become a cross-border cooperation laboratory for all of Europe.

Alongside all this inter-governmental activity, non-governmental bodies are also on the move. The pioneer here, of course, is Cooperation Ireland, which as Co-operation North was founded 22 years ago. But there is a new player on the block. In September 1999 the Centre for Cross Border Studies was set up in Armagh. Its aim was to research and develop practical co-operation across the Irish border in areas like health, education, business, agriculture, communications and local government. It is an independent company owned by Queen's University Belfast, Dublin City University and the Workers Educational Association (N. Ireland), and its first two-year phase has been financed by the EU Peace and Reconciliation Programme.
The group of people involved in education and cross-border co-operation who set it up believed that controversy about relations between the two parts of Ireland obscured something the vast majority of people agreed on: that low levels of contact and communication across the border damage the well-being of everybody on the island. If the phones don't work properly; if it's difficult to transfer money; if the cross-border road systems are bad; if the two social welfare and pension systems are incompatible; if it's hard because of different bureaucratic systems to move across the border to live and work – then it is only common sense that these barriers and bottlenecks should be removed.

Because whatever the arguments about the eventual constitutional shape of this island, the fact is that thousands of people are crossing the border every week to live, work and enjoy themselves. Because of the 'Celtic Tiger' economic boom, there are now over 9,000 people a year moving from North to South to work. Huge numbers of people travel up and down to visit family and friends. Sport and tourism and other leisure activities are another reason for large numbers of regular cross-border travellers.

The political problems the implementation of the Good Friday Agreement have run into in recent months won't change this. A closer relationship between the governments, civil servants, social partnership bodies and other groups on both sides of the border is an integral part of that Agreement, one of its three 'strands,' and, as far as the British and Irish governments are concerned, it is here to stay. The EU is also very keen on it, as a way of lowering barriers to trade and labour mobility across a European border.
The Centre for Cross Border Studies believes there is a gap in these arrangements. People have to see that cross-border co-operation brings them concrete benefits; only then will the fear it provokes among unionists be lessened. And the pragmatic view - that co-operation should take place where it brings real benefits to the people of both parts of the island - is weakened by an absence of research into where this co-operation is most needed.

This is the gap the Centre has set out to fill. In the past two years it has carried out studies into opportunities for and barriers to co-operation in a wide range of subjects. It has studied why the cross-border telecommunications systems are so complicated and costly (and has set up a website, B4UCall.com, to allow people to monitor the cost of cross-border 'roaming' and other mobile phone calls). It has examined the low levels of numeracy and literacy many people suffer from in both Irish jurisdictions, and how action by the two Departments of Education, colleges and other education providers could work, on a cross-border basis, to tackle this. It has looked at examples of how people involved in suicide prevention, cancer counselling, out-of-hours GP calls and a range of other medical services are working across the border to improve their provision. It has evaluated how the main EU cross-border funding programme, INTERREG, works in the Irish border region.
The Centre has also researched (or is currently researching) obstacles to labour mobility across the border; links between local authorities North and South; the role of the border in the foot and mouth disease crisis; the rapidly growing number of cross-border links between schools, teachers and youth groups; and the cross-border potential of local history societies.

Another part of its work is to bring politicians, civil servants, experts and people 'on the ground' together to discuss how cross-border co-operation can be improved in particular sectors of society and the economy. It has so far held five of these 'study days' in Armagh: on agriculture, education, tourism, health, and information and communications technologies. It is planning another five this autumn: on telecom technologies, mental health promotion, local government links, citizenship education, and the lessons of the foot and mouth crisis.

As can be seen from this list, there is an overlap between the research the Centre does and the study groups it organises. This is because the Centre does not want the work it does to lie on the shelves of university libraries or government offices: it wants it to inform the debates going on among both policy-makers and people at grass roots level about the new era of cross-border co-operation emerging from the Good Friday Agreement and the moves to peace in Northern Ireland.

Andy Pollak is director of the Centre for Cross Border Studies. He is on leave of absence from his job as a journalist with the Irish Times. The Centre can be found at 39 Abbey Street, Armagh BT61 7EB. Tel. 028 (048 from the South) -3751-1550.
E-mail:a.pollak@qub.ac.uk

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