Ireland of Equals Sinn Féin -- Building an Ireland of Equals

Selling our All Ireland Agenda

Setting out our stall - selling the All Ireland Agenda.

How do we make our vision of re-united Ireland popular, and most importantly, relevant to the people - in the twenty six counties in particular.

It could be said that the 26 county electorate's view on a re-united Ireland could be categorised into four broad categories:

1) A United Ireland is an issue that ranks at the top of, or very high up, their agenda. Many of these would already be supporters of Sinn Fein, but by no means exclusively so.

2) Reunification is a positive ideal, but it is not an issue in the same way that health care, education, transport, the economy, agriculture, the environment, etc are.

3) It is irrelevant and does not even rank as an issue.

4) It is a negative issue as they do not want a united Ireland because of the perceived negative economic effect the 6 counties would bring into a 32 county state.

So Sinn Fein must take up this challenge, and we must make available, and publicly articulate our All Ireland Agenda. However this cannot just be confined to arguing for the harmonisation of services across the island - we also need a vision for the future.

Our All Ireland Agenda (AIA)'s aim must be the building of a New Ireland in which the ideas of inclusion and participation dominate in its social and economic life. The New Ireland will include all the people on the island while respecting the cultural and racial differences in the older and newer groups of inhabitants. The New Ireland cannot simply be the extension of the current 26 county economic and social system to the whole island.

The process of dialogue about its shape and values is starting and must be ongoing as the project progresses. It is not a blueprint to be agreed by some of us on behalf of the rest, but rather an ongoing process.

As the economy of a country determines the wealth available for social progress and its values determine the priorities of its political system in redistributing the wealth, it is crucial that great attention be paid to the values we promote for the economy. These values should include social justice, and rights to participation & inclusion in decision making at all levels.

Much of the formation of the economy and of its underlying values is the work of government at all levels where laws or regulations are made, but social organisations, trade unions, private business, NGO's and political parties are important in shaping social values.
For example, the education curricula in both states are a powerful tool in shaping social values such as inclusion, self confidence and discussion skills, and in providing the skills needed to meet future needs. For instance, we will need university graduates with the expertise to meet challenges such as global warming and possibly a 'peak oil' crisis.
Education for life long learning will also be a powerful opportunity for shaping social values and to meet the need for changing technologies and new participative relations in the workplace and communities.

Practical opportunities to advance our All Ireland agenda.

This document is targeted at Sinn Fein activists, because most of the benefits that resulted from the Good Friday Agreement etc. are a matter of potential. These need to be made real, by developing the opportunities.

The AIA has a focus on encouraging the development of those things that are cross border, or intrinsically all Ireland.

The AIA needs to be advanced on many fronts, either when the opportunity arises or when it can be generated by campaigning action. At present there are many opportunities around the goals of social and economic unity. Success in making these linkages between both jurisdictions will help build a more favourable climate for eventual success on political unity. If social and economic links are built embodying the values of the All Ireland Agenda then we are also building the New Ireland. We will have succeeded in bringing together the national and the social struggles into one struggle.

The All Ireland Ministerial Council, with the current twelve areas of co-operation - six being advanced by AI Implementation bodies, and six by formal areas of ministerial co-operation - provides us with a major opportunity in furthering projects of harmonisation and integration on a major scale. These could include linkages in hospitals and health services, linkages in roads, railways, air ports and electronic networks such as phones and TV services. Tourism and joint industrial & agricultural development can benefit from island wide planning and negotiation with the EU. Co ordination of measures relating to animal, plant and human health is the only sensible way to deal with global threats such as bird flu, foot-and-mouth disease, GM seeds or waste disposal.

The development of the All Ireland Consultative Civic Forum, and of a Charter of Human/Fundamental Rights, which should be enforced by an all Ireland court, would be hugely beneficial to people across the island, and would be another powerful harmonising measure.

The European Union makes special funding available for integration and harmonising across border regions. Some of this work is being implemented through the Local Authority Cross Border Groups, in which Sinn Fein councillors participate.
The proposed EGTC (European Groupings of Territorial Co-operation) measure, to be implemented from the EU, would allow local authorities to work jointly to deliver services on a cross border basis. Water supply, sewage treatment, health services and so on have been historically distorted by development in a landscape divided by a border. These can now be developed in a rational way dictated by the natural lie of the land.

More potential for this should result from the north's Review of Public Administration (RPA), if the current plans for seven councils become a reality, with the 'Super Councils' operating on one side of the border initiating joint projects on a large range of beneficial issues with County Councils on the other side.

Projects are underway already on the all Ireland electricity and gas networks. In these cases we are playing catch-up to make sure these services embody our republican values rather than neo-liberal values. We also need to coordinate our actions on any possibility of the privatisation of essential services such as water and electricity.

Accountable policing services, north and south, that work in close co-operation as one would be more effective against the growing threats that face all our communities, such as that of rampant drug use and the violent culture that accompanies it in every town and village.

As climate change becomes steadily worse there is an emerging need to take counter measures in a wide range of matters. It would be sensible for the measures needed to be taken on an island wide basis. These would include such as dealing with water shortages, flooding, renewable electricity supply, emissions cuts, sustainable housing and building regulations, forestry for wood-chip fuel, bio fuels etc.

The involvement of the various immigrant communities in the life of the country is of central importance to the All Ireland Agenda, if only because their numbers north and south makes them a substantial part of the total population. They need to be involved in shaping the community life of towns, villages and cities. Their contribution to the future will be vital. We need to go out of our way to ensure that they are included and that they are not victimised in the event of an economic downturn.

There are large communities in deep poverty due to historic neglect and in some cases to systematic sectarian discrimination. It must be a priority of our All Ireland Agenda to put in place the means of ending discrimination and poverty and educating the children for a prosperous life.

Our basic politics in the All Ireland Agenda compels us to look at Britain, the EU and what is happening in the wider world. Decisions on all sorts of things taken by the London government have immediate relevance in the North, but so do decisions taken by the EU. The new replacement for a constitution will have far reaching implications for neutrality and citizenship, with decision making taken out of the hands of the Irish and British governments. The concept of 'resource wars', such as that in Iraq needs to be resisted.
Our dream cannot become a reality in a world that tramples the dreams of others.