Opinion

Deaglán de Bréadún: Micheál Martin cannot afford to allow Sinn Féin to claim ownership of the unity agenda

The problem for Micheál Martin is that securing unionist cooperation on practical north-south matters becomes much more difficult if not impossible when these measures are portrayed as a pathway towards a 32-county republic. Picture by Julien Behal/PA Wire
The problem for Micheál Martin is that securing unionist cooperation on practical north-south matters becomes much more difficult if not impossible when these measures are portrayed as a pathway towards a 32-county republic. Picture by Julien Behal The problem for Micheál Martin is that securing unionist cooperation on practical north-south matters becomes much more difficult if not impossible when these measures are portrayed as a pathway towards a 32-county republic. Picture by Julien Behal/PA Wire

IF you want to work in the journalistic trade, it is essential to have a cheeky side to your nature. I displayed this attribute at a very early age when the taoiseach of the day, Seán Lemass, came to visit our school, Synge Street CBS in Dublin.

A general election had been called and a polling-station was set up on the premises. The head of the outgoing government was no doubt checking at various locations to see how things were going. I greeted him with a single word: “Congratulations!” It’s useful to start on a positive note.

I also shook his hand and he smiled in amusement at this youngster who “wasn’t backward about coming forward”, as the saying goes. When the final results came in, my implicit forecast proved correct. Prior to the election, Fianna Fáil had to rely on the support of independent TDs but now they had won enough seats to govern on their own.

Lemass was in the General Post Office at Easter 1916 and I had shaken the hand of a man who helped to carry the wounded James Connolly out of the place on a stretcher when the Rising concluded. Connolly was taken to Dublin Castle, a fact that came to mind recently when I attended a press conference in the place, called by the current taoiseach, Micheál Martin. The former seat of British administration in Ireland is drenched in history and on the wall behind the Fianna Fáil leader you could see portraits of various individuals who had served as Lord Lieutenant of Ireland in former times.

The leader of the three-party coalition had just been giving an online address on the Government’s new Shared Island Unit which is to be based in Dublin Castle. A total of €500 million is pledged for cross-border projects. Possible beneficiaries mentioned by the taoiseach included the Dublin-Derry motorway, the Narrow Water Bridge across Carlingford Lough, the Ulster Canal between Clones and Upper Lough Erne and high-speed north-south rail links.

Martin says a border poll is not on the Irish government’s agenda “for the next five years”. He has invoked the spirit of Seán Lemass in support of the shared island approach. On January 14 1965, Lemass famously met his northern counterpart Captain Terence O’Neill at Stormont where they had champagne over lunch and discussed areas for practical cooperation such as tourism, education, health and trade.

Commenting on Martin’s Dublin Castle speech, Sinn Féin leader Mary Lou McDonald expressed disappointment that it had “failed to address Irish unity”. There was some concern expressed in Fianna Fáil circles also that their leader appeared to be sidelining the party’s traditional objective of a united Ireland. But speaking later at the MacGill Summer School, held this year online and in the autumn, the taoiseach recovered some lost ground when he said “Fianna Fáil is committed to a united Ireland” adding that this had always been the position.

The problem for Martin is that securing unionist cooperation on practical north-south matters becomes much more difficult if not impossible when these measures are portrayed as a pathway towards a 32-county republic. But in terms of basic political survival he cannot afford to give Sinn Féin an excuse to claim exclusive ownership of the unity agenda.

Back in 1965, Lemass didn’t put a tooth in it when he said, in relation to his talks with O’Neill, that “action taken following these discussions will nullify many of the material disadvantages of the partition of Ireland as well as helping to bring nearer the day of reunification”. That was just a few weeks ahead of the general election referred to at the start of this article. Any hint of backing away from the traditional unity objective might have cost him his job as head of government and later as party leader.

Opinion polls published between August and October show Fianna Fáil support ranging from 10 to 19 per cent, compared with 27 to 32 for Sinn Féin and 30 to 37 for a revitalised Fine Gael – although the latter party is currently caught up in a schemozzle over a draft pay agreement with a doctors’ organisation that was shared with another body by party leader and then-taoiseach Leo Varadkar.

At the start of his political career, Seán Lemass called Fianna Fáil a “slightly constitutional” party but nowadays “somewhat squeezed” would be a better description.

Email: Ddebre1@aol.com; Twitter: @DdeBreadun