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If there were two key words that came out of the launch of Seamus Mallon's memoir at the Irish Architectural Archive (23/5/19) they were integrity and interdependence.
The latter was well captured in the Irish language saying Ar scáth a chéile a mhaireann na daoine. In the course of his passionate address Seamus offered this saying as a guiding light in any consideration of the future in store for Northern Ireland. Or as he put it in the form of a brutally challenging question Are we going to do to them what they did to us?.
The theme is further rammed home in the title of his memoir A Shared Home Place. This is the calibre of the man we are dealing with here. Always constructive but with an eye on the longer term.
And the second key word integrity was much bandied about on the night, but nobody challenged the fact that Seamus Mallon personified it.
But I'm probably getting ahead of myself here.
Tim O'Connor
Tim was the first speaker. He is a diplomat much of whose career was taken up with Northern Ireland. He spoke of working with Seamus and of the work relationship developing into a friendship. This allowed him to slip in a reference to bunkers. Not just a golfing term but a politico/military one as Tim had been involved in the bunker in Belfast's Maryfield which had been the secretariat to the Anglo-Irish Intergovernmental Council in the period 1985 to 1998.
The term bunker will give you an idea of the environment in which the secretariat operated. A bit like the space station - careful preparations were needed before stepping outside.
He referred to how huge an undertaking it is to write and publish a book like this. Many a one has proclaimed their intention to produce such a book only to fall at the first fence.
Someone else mentioned that it was Tim who suggested that Andy Pollak should help Seamus with the book, and what we heard was that were it not for Andy's slave driving, among other things, there would have been no book.
Tim testified to Seamus's integrity and Seamus picked Brian to launch his book.
Now, Brian has had his share of criticism for both his actions and inaction in public life, but it is clear from Seamus that he acted with integrity and skill relating to Northern Ireland in the period following the adoption of the Good Friday Agreement when aspects of its implementation had gone into foot-dragging slow motion.
Brian was Minister for Foreign Affairs from 2000 to 2004 and Taoiseach from 2008 to 2011, though I'm sure he had more than Northern Ireland on his mind during the latter period.
I have to say that Brian amazed me by knowing my name. I am retired now some 13 years and I had very little contact with him when he was Minister for Finance. This memory for names seems to come naturally, or maybe of necessity, to politicians. I suggested to him that he must have a memory chip embedded in his head. He muttered something back which sounded like a mnemonic which I didn't quite catch.
He never gives up, and he's still at it. Telling it like it is, was, and hopefully never shall be, amen.
He recounted how, during the Good Friday negotiations, he asked Tony Blair why, given that the SDLP was the largest nationalist party, he was negotiating behind their backs with the smaller nationalist party (Sinn Féin).
Seamus describes Blair's reply as breathtaking and a seminal moment: "The trouble with you fellows, Seamus, is that you have no guns".
Indeed it was. The attitude it revealed as underpinning the Good Friday Agreement has led us to where we are today.
Seamus is, of course, hoping and working for a united Ireland. And the Good Friday Agreement contains a provision for the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland to call a border poll if they judge the time right. And at this present time we are at the tipping point of the Catholics outbreeding the Protestants, so is this the time?
Seamus's test goes beyond mere demographics. His question is "are we ready for a united Ireland?". For example, does the South know what it's getting into? Are we going to attempt to replace one reluctant/resistant minority (Catholics in NI) with another (Northern Protestants in a united Ireland)? Important as the demographics may be, reconciliation and mutual respect are more important as a foundation for unity.
The test relates to the timing, but Seamus gave us a quote on the inevitability of a united Ireland:
In this island we cannot always live separated from one another. We are too small to be apart or for the border to be there for all time. The change will not come in my time but it will come.And another one on its desirability:
There is no one in the world who will be more pleased to see an absolute unity in Ireland than I would.He then took us by surprise, as I'm sure he regularly did his Unionist friends, by pointing out that the first quote was from Northern Ireland's first Prime Minister, James Craig, and the second from the notorious Edward Carson.
However, the Shinners, as he pointed out, want an early border poll for party interest above that of country. For this reason, he said, they must be stopped.
As for Blair and his guns, if you check out my encounter with John Hume below, you'll see that the SDLP, or at least some of them, did have guns, but, presumably they weren't using them to shoot the right people.
Seamus is known for his alleged description of the Good Friday Agreement as Sunningdale for slow learners, and there is a lot of truth in that. That doesn't mean he regards the Agreement as the be all and end all. I think he sees it as a stepping stone along the way, though it may not be his ideal stepping stone given his exchange with Blair above.
Seamus would like to develop the Agreement which has its flaws as the current political paralysis in the North illustrates. This, of course, unlike a hard Brexit is a question of building on the Agreement rather than betraying it.
Such was the passion in Seamus's speech that you could hear a pin drop.
I was pleased to meet Seamus whom I had not met before.
I had met John Hume once way back. At that time the UK Treasury had introduced a piece of legislation formalising the annual determination of monies for Northern Ireland. I was dealing with this area in the Department of Finance at the time and Michael Lillis from Department of Foreign Affairs asked for my opinion on how the new legislation might affect the flow of funds to Northern Ireland. I said it would make no difference.
Now Foreign Affairs were liaising closely with the SDLP at the time and I was asked if I would brief John Hume on the matter. I said this wasn't really necessary in the circumstances. They could just tell John it would make no difference. That wasn't acceptable and I was press ganged into accompanying Michael to meet John.
We duly reached the appointed location and were admitted following a special knock on the door. I was invited to sit in a soft chair facing John who was sitting on a sofa. I was introduced, much to my embarrassment, as some sort of financial expert in these matters and invited to brief John. So I just simply said that the whole thing made no difference whatsoever. They would still just have to lobby Whitehall for the dosh as they had been doing up to then.
Now, as we know, John Hume did not like guns, but Northern security insisted that he carry one, and it was only as I was speaking to him I noticed he had removed the gun from his person and laid it, still in its transparent wrapping, on the couch, pointing straight at me.
I'm glad to say that this is as near as I came to being a target in my dealings with Northern Ireland over the years.
I also met Liz for the first time. She had been on the Irish team negotiating the Good Friday Agreement and, if I'm not mistaken, is in one of the photos in Seamus's book.
I was once close to becoming collateral damage in a political scrap between herself and Charlie McCreevy.
I gave her my view of the PD supporters at that time: one half admired Dessie and the other half fancied Liz. To the best of my recollection I had a foot in both camps myself.
She hadn't known it until I told her. Doireann is my sometime therapist.
Every time I travel on the LUAS and hear her announcing the stops and where to shop, my blood pressure eases, as does my pulse, and I luxuriate in the glorious intonation of Gaeilge Chorca Dhuibhne transported a million miles from the dystopian land of Myles's Corca Dorcha.
And it's not just me. Doireann told me how an autistic child became entranced with her voice which always calmed him down when he heard it. She ended up recording his favourite story for him.
As for Esther, I have almost fond memories of her chasing me round the block over some overdue Freedom of Information reply, or am I just imagining it? Sounds good at this remove and she takes a compliment well.
As mentioned above, Andy was chosen to help Seamus with the book. He was eminently qualified to do so, with a strong journalistic background and involvement in Northern and cross-border affairs.
He is married to Doireann and both their children were at the launch: Sorcha who is a journalist and author herself, and Grainne, who is an executive and production assistant at the Gate. I will include a picture in response to overwhelming demand if it materialises.
Rory was a border TD which meant he had a good appreciation of what went on in the North. He has been Minister for Health, and for Environment, and Ceann Comhairle (Speaker) in the Dáil. Ardal O'Hanlon is a son.
Wally Kirwan
Wally was one of my earliest bosses in the Department of Finance. He was a marathon worker. At the time we were an AP/AO unit sitting across the table from each other.
I remember one occasion when Wally wrote a medium term economic model for the economy, virtually non-stop off the top of his head. I was almost afraid to take a break to the loo, such was Wally's dynamic pace.
His output was prodigious and the rise of Maurice Doyle to Secretary of the Department was not unrelated to Wally's supporting work, particularly in relation to Maurice's participation in the OECD's Working Party Two. This Working Party was the principal focus for economic work in the Organisation and performance there could make or break reputations.
Wally was seen by some as being prolix. This was a Civil Service curse word at the time and one of the criteria it was fatal to score highly on in your evaluation form. It means going on at length but it also suggests low grade content.
Now this never applied to Wally. His briefs were thick, but if you took the trouble to read them you would then know what you were talking about. Needless to say this didn't suit everyone at the time. At a later stage in my career we were down to one page briefing notes for the Minister.
Wally went from the Department of Finance to Taoiseach's where he worked on Northern Ireland matters. His nationalist sentiments, though they never interfered with the professionalism of his work, were sometimes not appreciated particularly in periods of Blueshirt government. The paranoia of some of the politicos at the time is well illustrated by my run in with John Kelly.
Robert Schmuhl & Felix Larkin
Felix is a former colleague, friend, and mentor. He turns up at a lot of the things I do and many more that I don't. Felix sees himself primarily as a historian, I think, and his output is top class. His particular interest includes the Freeman's Journal and everywhere that leads him.
Bob is Retired Professor of American Studies and Head of the School of Journalism at Notre Dame University in Indiana. He is a regular contributor to “Morning Ireland” on RTÉ1.
The Offaly Camp
The father in law of the man in the pink shirt next to Brian Cowen is a cousin of Seamus's and the man himself is from Offaly. So he has two separate feet firmly in tonight's event.
We had a very productive discussion on how to crash events. In fact, I was going to crash this one but lost my nerve and wangled an invite earlier in the day
XX, Nora Owen & Bill Nolan
One of the problems at these functions is that you think you recognise faces but you haven't the faintest idea who they are. That applies to the man on the left. Answers welcome on the back of a postcard or in the comments below. I didn't know the man on the right but he's wearing a badge that tells me he's Bill from Foreign Affairs.
And all this is irrelevant as I took the photo of Nora Owen who was Minister for Justice in the critical period 1994 to 1997. One minute we have a Cease Fire (1994) and the next we don't (1996) and then, just after you go, we have the Good Friday Agreement (1998).
I remember vividly the night the Cease Fire broke down at Canary Wharf. But that's another story.
Nora is a grandniece of Michael Collins.
Tom Arnold & Tim
This is what Professor Jim Phelan said about Tom on Bloomsday 2010:
Praesento vobis hunc meum filium, quem scio tam moribus quam doctrina habilem et idoneum esse qui admittatur, honoris causa, ad gradum Doctoratus in Scientiae; idque tibi fide mea testor ac spondeo, totique Academiae.
And that was only one of the honours Tom picked up in a long career as economist and leader of projects, both national and international.
Tom was chair of the Constitutional Convention in 2012. The Convention membership included four members of the Northern Ireland Assembly of which Martin McGuinness was one.
Tom had a plan to smuggle me in to the launch, but, as I said above, I lost my nerve and sought an invite.
Austin was one of the people who sparked off the civil rights movement in the North when he squatted in a house in Dungannon which had been allocated by the local council to a Protestant unmarried mother, daughter of a local politician, over the heads of what he considered more deserving cases.
Housing discrimination was endemic in Northern Ireland and it was a similar incident which catapulted Seamus himself into politics.
Austin spent many years as a member of the Stormont paliament and subsequently moved south serving as a TD for many further years. Fine Gael put him up as a presidential candidate in 1990 but he did not succeed in stopping Mary Robinson's gallop.
I also met Colm Larkin for the first time though I felt I sort of knew him through my friend Cathal Cavanagh with whom he is friendly.
Conor has strong Northern connections having been born in Belfast and graduating from Queen's. He may be more recognised by the general public for his reporting from New York during and after 9/11 and also from Moscow.
Everytime I see the title of his latest book The Shoemaker and his Daughter I jump. I have a talk on one side of my family which I had called The Shoemaker's Daughters. And there the similarity ends.
I wasn't talking to Conor but I did meet him once about twenty years ago when he was advising my Minister that China was the coming thing and Ireland should be pulling out all the stops to develop markets there.
I gathered there were also people there who I would have captured on film except I didn't even see them. I had placed myself up front to take photos and wasn't always conscious of who was behind me.
One of these was David Andrews. David had been Minister for Foreign Affairs at the time of the Good Friday Agreement.
He had been my local TD in the 1960s and was instrumental in getting me a certificate to import four banned books on the eve of the reformation of the State's book censorship regime in 1967. You can read the correspondence here.
I saw Noel Dorr in the distance but didn't catch him.
I gathered Seán Donlon was there too but I didn't even catch sight of him. Seán spent some time on the board of the EBRD where I had been many years earlier, but that too is another story.
I also missed seeing Daithí Ó Ceallaigh and I don't know was Michael Lillis there at all.
Before I leave Seamus, I think it is important to say that, at the outset, he said he regretted that John Hume could not be there. John, as the world knows, is not well.
The two men have had their differences and strikingly so. Seamus said that John was a loner and it is clear that Seamus felt that Sinn Féin/IRA had too many concessions embedded in the Good Friday Agreement.
But he acknowledged John's place in the Nationalist Pantheon and made a point of doing so.
So, to sum up, I enjoyed the night immensely. Seamus was full of sensible passion and it was great to meet him after my being involved on and off in Northern affairs down through the years. I also enjoyed meeting old friends and maybe making one or two new ones.
I bought Seamus's book and look forward to reading it. I've only got as far as reading the introduction by Andy Pollak and this promises a lot.
Finally, thanks to Lilliput Press for inviting me after I had the cheek to ask.
