EU/NI PEACE PROGRAMME 1995-99

As the Irish border is back in the news, thanks to the folly that is Brexit, I thought it an opportune moment to share some reflections on the first EU Peace Programme which covered the full area of Northern Ireland and the border counties of Ireland (South!).

The programme was sort of up and running when it hit my desk in early 1996. It had been approved by the EU on 28 July 1995 following years of work and the proximate catalyst of the 1994 ceasefires.

The basic rationale of the programme was to encourage the economic and social development of Northern Ireland as a means of cementing peace in the longer term. The emphasis in the programme was on cross-community and cross-border activities, the latter attempting both to compensate border areas for their artificially enforced peripherality and to improve north/south relationships.

I should nail my colours to the mast at this point and say that, despite many, and some justified, criticisms of the programme, my view is that it was a spectacular success.

It is important to distinguish this first Peace Programme from its successors. This one was pathbreaking in many respects while its successors both had something already in place to build on and in the normal course of such matters became more structured and bureaucratised. PEACE I (and II) were funded from across the EU structural funds, each of which also had its own protocols and regulations.

The Name

I don't know just how the Peace Programme got its name but there is a rumour that the initial working title was Special Northern Ireland Programme for Economic Recovery.

If that was the case, it clearly got nipped in the bud as soon as it was reduced to an acronym.

Canary Wharf

I was just in the process of taking over the southern end of the programme when the IRA ceasefire blew up in Canary Wharf in London's docklands. This was a huge shock to the system and it looked like curtains for the programme.

But I remember Inez McCormack from ICTU reporting to a subsequent Monitoring Committee meeting that, while new cross-community contacts were out of the question for the moment, those that had been established before the breakdown were holding. This was very encouraging.

North vs South

The northern and southern sides had significantly divergent views in how they approached implementing the Peace Programme, and this most particularly regarding EU oversight and control.

As far as the northern side was concerned, they viewed funding essentially coming from London rather than Brussels and they resented the EU Commission telling them how to spend it and holding them to account after the event. The UK was a net contributor to the EU budget, so it was their money that was involved.

In contrast, the southern side was a net beneficiary from the EU budget and we more readily accepted the Commission's right to "interfere" in the programme's implementation. We didn't always go the whole hog with them but we put up with a lot to get our hands on the dosh.

You can see echoes of the northern attitude in the current goings-on over Brexit if you look hard enough.

I should mention another difference between north and south which impinged to some extent on the operation of the programme. The locus of responsibility for the programme in the civil service was in the Department of Finance and Personnel in the north and in the Department of Finance in the south.

That may seem on the surface like a perfect match but the northerners were always conscious of an additional layer lurking in the background. Ireland is a sovereign state and deals directly with EU Councils. Northern Ireland is a regional administration and responsibility for EU affairs ultimately lies with the UK, which is the EU Member State. Responsibility at the UK end ultimately rested with the Department of Trade and Industry.

This was less of a problem in the actual implementation of the programme as opposed to its negotiation but it was often lurking in the background.

Spend, Spend, Spend

Another tension arose from within the EU structures themselves. Once a budget and a multi-annual spending profile had been agreed, the relevant section in the EU Commission saw itself on the line to deliver, so they were constantly putting pressure on the Irish, north and south, to spend up to the "targets".

In some ways this was understandable as funding for the programme had been hard fought for at EU level and leaving part of it unspent would not reflect well on the Commission.

However, in the prevailing environment in the north and the border counties it was not always easy to identify projects on which spending could be subsequently justified.

And there's the rub. However much the relevant Commission section was happy to see money spent, and however much they leaned on the authorities to spend it, their say-so was a poor defence when the financial control side of the Commission subsequently arrived to inspect and audit the books. Their judgement was completely independent of all that went before and the national authorities were on their own here.

And even if that hurdle was overcome you then had the EU Court of Auditors arriving on the warpath to flush out every hint of possibly "unjustified" expenditure to feed their bureaucratic empire-building campaign. You really couldn't win.

Product versus Process

To add to all of this, there were strong views on product versus process. There was a bit of a bricks and mortar mentality in the Commission, particularly at the financial control end. By this I mean they liked to see physically measurable results - in other words, a product.

The northern authorities also shared this attitude to some extent.

But this exercise was as much about process as product and this was much less measurable in any truly relevant sense. You could count up the numbers of cross-community projects, or even meetings, but eliciting their true meaning and potential sustainability boiled down to subjective, albeit informed, judgement.

Administrative Peace and Reconciliation

As far as process goes, I didn't myself have direct experience of it on the ground at the level of individual projects, but I did experience it at the level of those running the programme.

For example, I had no real experience of dealing with northerners at official level. My experience of the north consisted of (i) spending a holiday in Bangor when I was small, when post-war rationing was still in force and when the comic strip of Mandrake the Magician in the local paper was some six months ahead of the Dublin Evening Mail, (ii) passing through the north going to and coming from Donegal, and (iii) making an LP with Tŷ Bach in Billy McBurney's studio in the centre of Belfast.

Now I was dealing not only with my counterpart in the northern Department of Finance and Personnel but with officials from other northern departments and with implementing organisations and NGOs from both sides of the border.

There was some perceptible rapprochement there over the period when I was involved in the programme. I even got to a stage of informality which allowed me, at a conference we were organising in Ballybofey in Donegal, to welcome the northern participants to Ulster. I must say, it took most of them a few moments for that one to sink in.

As far as the central authorities and the NGOs were concerned, I think a mutual understanding slowly developed of where the other side were coming from and that it was possible for both sides to be operating in good faith.

A Lesson in Geography

A significant feature of the programme, at least for those administering it, was the Monitoring Committee meetings being held in different locations, alternating between both sides of the border.

The Monitoring Committee was not just an academic exercise after the event. It was a quasi-cross-border implementing authority where the major players were held to account in real time. It was co-chaired by the north and/or south depending on which side of the border the meeting was taking place.

I was the southern chair and Jack Layberry from NI DFP was the northern chair. We held our first Monitoring Committee meeting in the Folk Park in Omagh. I'm sure there is some symbolism lurking there but I haven't yet fully figured it out.

The full significance of holding meetings on alternate sides of the border may be lost on the current generation of young people. I know that one member of my staff became quite nervous as we crossed the border heading north and didn't relax until we crossed it again on the way back.

Some people saw our chairing of the Monitoring Committee as involving a conflict of interest as the Department of Finance in the south and the Department of Finance and Personnel in the north were the locus of funding and control within our respective administrations. I can understand such a view and might have sympathy with it in other circumstances. In this case I think the Committee was chaired in a reasonably objective manner and a similar situation still pertains with the Special EU Programmes Body (SEUPB) alternatively known as Boord O Owre Ocht UE Projecks.

A Roman Conspiracy

At one stage I got very alarmed when I heard that Ian Paisley claimed that the programme was a sham and the Catholics were getting all the money.

I wasn't the only one worried by this claim and a study was quickly commissioned to find out if it was true.

Our alarm escalated to defcon panic status when the study reported that it was indeed true. The Catholics were not getting all the money but they were getting a hell of a lot more than the Protestants.

Was this another potential death blow for a programme that was supposed to be promoting cross-community cooperation and inclusiveness?

Well, further research turned up some very interesting results.

It appeared that both Catholic and Protestant applications had the same rate of success (phew!) but that there were far more applications from the Catholic than from the Protestant side. So the programme itself was not biased. There was no papal conspiracy. The programme simply reflected one of the underlying features of the society of the day.

The reason for the disparity in applications seems to have arisen because Catholic communities were more organised on the ground, having been in a minority and having had to fight all the way for anything they ever got, while the Protestant communities were under the illusion that their own were looking after them anyway and so didn't need to be pressured to do so.

These results, in my book, certainly validated the politico/class analysis advanced over earlier decades by the likes of Michael Farrell.

Good Friday

Former US Senator George Mitchell, who chaired the talks leading to the Belfast Agreement in 1998 has said that "the European Union played a part in thawing relations between the Republic and Britain, which enabled the peace process and was central to the Good Friday Agreement".

The Peace Programme was clearly a significant element in this process.

Consider Michel Barnier who is currently the European Commission’s chief Brexit negotiator. He has a long history in both French national and European politics. He was EU Commissioner for Regional policy from 1999 to 2004 and as such gained good insight into the legacy of PEACE I and the Belfast Agreement of 1998.

He has said that the programme “is one of the very important instruments that has contributed towards the Good Friday agreement”.

Sadly, continued funding of the programme is in jeopardy if the UK sticks to its Brexit red lines.

Here We Go Again?

Euroland

Some thoughts on the European Union, provoked by their losing the plot in the upcoming transatlantic treaty (Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership).

The Union started out as the more restricted European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) in 1952. This had the laudable aim of integrating these two sectors, so vital in war, across the economies of those Western European states which had been involved in two world wars and were then only emerging from the second of those.

That war had essentially been Germany against the rest and after the war the occupying forces made sure, as they saw it, that Germany would never rise again to dominate the continent. They wrote a constitution that was so involved that it is a wonder that Germany was able to do anything at all under it.

But beyond this others saw the need to neutralise the war industries and so the ECSC was born.

It was originally intended that the UK would participate but they were still suffering from the delusions of empire and did not have much respect for the other potential members. So they stayed out.

The next major leap was in 1958 with the Treaty of Rome (European Economic Community - EEC). Again the British stayed out and eventually set up their own European Free Trade Area (EFTA).

Also lurking in the background was the British perception of their "special relationsip" with the USA, which they valued above all else.

When they eventually decided to apply to join the EEC they were repulsed as likely spoilers. I think De Gaulle got that about right.

The lack of British membership meant that the Community was dominated by the French and adopted a very French character. For us it also meant that Ireland was not a member as our very high dependence on British trade would not have made much sense of our membership without that of Britain. Meanwhile, we set about reforming our own economy in anticipation of joining at some future date.

When the immediate post-war rationale for the Communities had more or less run its course, a new rationale emerged. Europe was now to further integrate to respond to "le défi americain", or the postwar dominance of the USA on the world stage. This dominance was seen to be facilitated by the scale of USA production and of its home market, along with the dollar assuming the role of a reserve currency.

Britain and Ireland finally joined in 1972. Britain ditched its old economic allies in EFTA which became very much a shell organisation.

Ireland's heavy dependence on the UK in the trade and finance areas were cited in support of our paralleling the UK application. But Ireland was also sold the idea on two added scores.

One was the benefits which would accrue to the agricultural sector from the EEC's Common Agricultural Policy (which was the only common policy in force at the time). That policy was based on income and market support and offered a way of escape from Britain's cheap food policy which had crippled our agricultural sector. Significant benefits were expected to accrue to individual farmers and the ensuing wealth trickle through the economy.

The other was the promise of a market of around 250 million people which would allow Irish industry to benefit from niche markets and long production runs.

The then Irish Foreign Minister, Patrick Hillery, expressed these benefits as "the CAP and the long runs".

There does not seem to have been any significant ideological or political motive to Ireland joining. This is borne out by the way the case for subsequent treaty and other amendments was presented. It was either in terms of financial benefits or losses, pure and simple.

A number of things have happened since those days. The policy remit of the Community has expanded enormously. The Commission which was designed as the guardian of the "Community Spirit" and the interests of the smaller members, has been captured by big business at the same time as its powers relative to the rest of the institutions have expanded, particularly in the area of external trade.

The powers of the European Parliament have increased from being purely consultative at the outset to its current participation in co-decision making across a widening range of policy areas. It is not, however, a sufficient counterweight to the centralised powers of the Commission and the Council of Ministers.

As the Community further evolved into a Union (of sorts), decisions tended to be taken on "political" grounds without due attention to economic logic or long term consequences. The Union prided itself on its respect for democracy and the rule of law, but in its rush to expand it admitted some dodgy states, consoling itself that membership itself would bring them to, and keep them on, the path of virtue.

Then there was the very premature launch of the Euro. This was a single currency area comprising economies at different stages of development and with varying dependencies outside the Union, and, worst of all, the area did not have any institutional redistributive mechanism built in. Economic integration at least had a vigorous regional policy behind it. Studies from earlier decades had made it clear that any currency union would need a similar structure with the possibility of providing significant financial transfers.

In the event, there was no such thing. The ECB was not structured to allow for this and has been going through contortions since the start of the current crisis bending the rules in an attempt to simulate this effect intra vires.

Nevertheless, as we saw in Ireland, Community solidarity was non-existent when it came to the Irish state being faced with stratospheric levels of compensation when an, admittedly over-expanded, banking sector went belly-up in an international meltdown. Although the blame could be widely spread, the remedy was forced on Ireland as the fault lines in the constitution of the European Central Bank became apparent.

Now we have this unbelievable treaty to be signed between the EU and the USA. Whatever about any of its more orthodox free trade provisions, it is ceding complete sovereignty, at both national and EU level, to the big corporates.

In what may soon become the "old days", a nation state could take unilateral action on, say, health grounds, or to protect some vital interest such as the environment. If commercial interests suffered as a result of these actions then it was just too bad. The wider interest had to prevail. Now, as I understand it, when a state, or the Union, takes a decision which affects the interests, or even the potential interests, of a commercial entity it has to compensate that entity. This effectively means that lots of actions in the public interest will simply become unaffordable. It is a sellout to big business along the lines of that already ceded to the banking sector and which was no small factor in the recent global financial meltdown.

The Union has shown it is not up to protecting itself from le défi americain, quite the reverse. It is now getting into bed with the enemy (within and without). The Commission has been captured by the over-financed lobbies of industry and this has to be rolled back. The Union needs to take back from the Commission its delegated powers to negotiate trade agreements and the objectionable aspects of this emerging deal need to be rejected by the Council of Ministers and the European Parliament.

And the Union itself then needs to take stock of why it is there in the first place.

EUbike

Now that the Irish EU Presidency is coming to an end, it is time to lift the veil on one of its most potent instruments of success, the EUbike.

You may have thought, in your innocence, that the Presidency logo was simply a pretty celtic picture for putting on notepaper and thick reports.

Not a bit of it. The "logo" was actually derived from the design of the Irish Presidential EUbike. This EU bike has many uses.

It is used for training chairpersons for the inevitable bumpy ride they will get at the negotiating table.

It is invaluable during the pre-Presidency tour of capitals, where the Taoiseach and other ministers ride from the airport into town, enabling them to identify with the people and at the same time draw attention to the then forthcoming Irish presidency.

Turned upside down (no, not that again) it can be used for winding wool for Aran sweaters which are expected to sell out, or dare I say it, be given away to unsuspecting foreign dignitaries, during the Presidency. Any leftovers can be disposed of under cover of The Gathering.

We really have a lot to thank Bertie for. It was his denigration of the undemocratic peann luaidhe that made us appreciate all the more our inheritance from our Victorian forebears. This comprised, in general, objects which were fixable rather than disposable and which relied on crude manpower (main d'oevre) rather than all this newfangled labour saving petrol/electricity driven stuff. It also turned out that this inheritance was eco-friendly and far healthier.

So thank you Bertie for the motivation.

As far as the technical design is concerned, the celtic pattern concept was originally intoduced into the 1996 Irish Presidency logo by Ruairi Quinn, at the beginning of the Celtic Tiger, and, while not quite as bumpy as the present logo, it still had its rise and fall. But that was then and this is now and things have got a lot bumpier along the way.

Eternal Vigilance

As everyone (ie the few) who reads my blog knows, I am obsessed with the upside down flying of flags, and in particular the EU flag.

I wish people would stop feeding my obsession.

The above photo of the EU flag flying upside down outside the European Parliament was carried without comment in yesterday's online edition of the Irish Independent.

Of the European institutions themselves, that now makes two, the European Commission and the European Parliament, not to mention the French and Hungarian embassies in Dublin and a few others like Sinn Féin and TG4.

Or do I smell Photoshop here and does it matter?

Eternal vigilance is the price of rightwayupness.

Garret FitzGerald

Garret was one of the driving forces behind the first MA in European Studies in UCD in 1966/7. And he set about implementing the new course with gusto. This was well before Ireland joined the EEC. In fact it was more than a year before de Gaulle (again) refused us entry (along with the UK, Denmark and Norway).

Garret had a long and enthusiastic interest in Europe and he was on the European Parliament's mailing list. He used to come into class (there were only about 6 of us, as I recall) with big bundles of EP reports under his arm which had just arrived in his morning post. He plonked these on the table and we sifted through them looking for nuggets on which to base our papers. The system worked well. We got a profusion of reliable sources and he got his reports sorted. A forerunner of distributed computing.

He may also have made history in the Berlaymont (Commission HQ in Brussels) during the same course. He had taken us on a study trip to the Commission and was in full flight at one of our briefings, quizzing the Commission official giving the briefing. The official was waffling all over the place and I figured there was nothing useful to learn from him, so I switched over to the French interpretation. As Garret, whose brain constantly outran his tongue, gushed on, the interpreter faltered and eventually lapsed into silence.

"I am sorry but I cannot keep up with this speaker", she said.

Incidentally, at the end of the session, the Commission official apologised for his disorganised presentation and responses, claiming he had hit his head on the side of the swimming pool when playing with his children over the weekend. We all felt very sorry for him until we later learned that this was a story he rehearsed on a regular basis to excuse his poor performance.

Garret had two great qualities for a teacher: great enthusiasm and intellectual curiosity, both of which he shared with his students.

A fault was his assumption that everyone was as interested in minute details as he was himself. And he wasn't the greatest delegator in the world. Very much a hands on manager which, when he was Taoiseach, led to difficulties in his dealings with the Civil Service and to some of the longest Cabinet meetings in the history of the State.

He was a conviction politician and, unlike many of his contemporaries, was conscious of the wider national interest in his dealings both at home and abroad. He will be sadly missed, not only by his family and friends, but by the country, which will be the poorer for his going.

It's a pity he missed his date with the Queen, but it now appears he had a more pressing appointment.

RIP

Lying in State

It's OK to shoot Leprechauns

[See 2019 update below]
The other evening Sky News reported that the EU had declared the Irish Leprechauns of the Cooley Peninsula, in Co. Louth, a protected species. No more shooting those Leprechauns at the end of the rainbow in order to make off with their pot of gold.

Now we all know that Sky News is one of the most reliable channels in the world when it comes to facts. In this case they reported Co. Louth as being in Northern Ireland. This would certainly be news to the Boundary Commission (wound up in 1925) and it would be even more breaking news to the Irish Government which had, since 1922, expected the territory of Northern Ireland to diminish rather than increase as a result of the same Boundary Commission's findings.

The story appears to have originated from the Carlingford Leprechaun site where the designation by the EU of Leprechauns for heritage conservation was announced on 14 December 2009. It seems to have got recent traction in the run up to the National Leprechaun Hunt on 28 March 2010 (last Sunday). And it was picked up by various news media and even the NDP/EU funded Carlingford Heritage Centre, though their phrasing is a little more subtle.

The Leprechaun site carries a reproduction of a letter from the EU EEA confirming the original designation. I have queried the letter with the EU EEA and am assured that it is a forgery and that there is no designation of the Little People.

So, get out your blunderbuss, rally the relations, bring in the tourists, and off you go hunting the Leprechaun.

Because, you see, it's still OK TO SHOOT LEPRECHAUNS.

(PS: note the date. I'm posting early to warn my family in Australia, where it's already tomorrow, lest they fall for this silly story.)


[Update 30/01/2018: When originally posted, all the links above worked. Since then the Carlingford website, not to mention CNN's, has gone through many non-backwards-compatible mutations. The only trace on the site of the original material is a link to booking for the hunt, the latest version of which seems to be for the 2017 event.

Meanwhile, the whole thing has transferred to to a new bespoke site where there is no longer any mention of the EU jape.]

Bring out your dead

The above was one of the posters in the previous Lisbon referendum campaign which invoked the support of the Republican dead for a NO vote. I was very surprised that the YES side let them get away with it, and I still don't understand this lapse in the YES campaign. This invocation is powerful stuff and it must surely strike a chord in the majority of those who were educated up to the 1980s at least. Why then did Fianna Fáil, the Republican Party, in particular, not respond in kind.

I remarked at the time that it was a pity the YES side did not include a similar approach in their postering. That they did not is surely an illustration of the nation's emerging ambiguity towards the 1916 Rising, and this, embarrassingly in the run up to the 100th anniversary in 2016.

When the whole rebel thing got serious after 1969, the IRA's anti-civilian bombing campaign put "constitutional" nationalists on the spot. They could no longer invoke the glorious armed struggle which led to (or just preceded) the foundation of the State without appearing to support the bombing campaign. And Fianna Fáil, the Republican Party, was badly split over the Arms Trial in 1970.

The result was that the IRA appropriated the Republican regalia, including the tricolour, for the most part, and the Wolfe Tones appropriated all the rebel songs, which up to then had been unthinkingly sung by one and all. Jack Charleton eventually clawed back the tricolour through the success of the Irish soccer team but the ballads are still floating around out there in a sort of Republican/IRA twilight.

I can only think that it was these ambiguities which prevented the YES side from attempting to equally claim the Republican dead to their cause, with possibly fatal results.

This time round the NO side have already put Pearse's head on the lamposts, but there is no sign, so far, that the YES side have learned the lesson.

I often wonder how well the YES side actually understand the fundamentals of the EU, at least as originally conceived. When Ireland joined, it was enough to know that the Common Agricultural Policy would break the British stranglehold on Irish agriculture and that industry would have access to a huge market, if it could get its act together. Then there was the Regional Fund, which we milked very successfully. Elections were won and lost on the size of the loot we could extract from those horrible guilt-ridden Germans.

Now we are about to become a net-contributor to the EU in cash terms and we have priced ourselves out of the market by our recent profligacy. Without these earlier tangible benefits, and in the absence of a general commitment to its aims, the EU is becoming a harder sell by the day.

The scare tactics of the NO side last time round are being matched by those of the YES side on this occasion: Ireland needs the EU. A humiliating come down from the hubris of the last round. We are safer in Europe. Safer from what? Our own self-destruction?

If the YES side want to hold their heads high and tackle their opponents head on, they could do worse than trot out their Republican dead, for starters at least.

Les pieds dans le plat

Here we go again. You can't get away from it.

"Ye did the wrong thing and it needs righting."

And his forthcoming visit is shortening by the hour to the loud sound of closing doors.

For a louder sound yet check out the inauguration of the ultimate anti-French device.

This one has been around for over 200 years and seems to have proved effective first time round.