DESMOND GREAVES SUMMER SCHOOL 2011 | SINN FÉIN SENATOR KATHRYN REILLY

An All-Ireland Economic Area does it make sense?

Competing development agencies currently wrestle with each other for foreign direct investment

THE 23rd Desmond Greaves Summer School took place at the Ireland Institute in Dublin over the weekend of September 9th to 11th. Discussion themes included The International Economic Crisis – Making the Periphery Pay; Is Ireland a Democratic Republic?; Ireland and the Eurozone Crisis; and Where is Contemporary Capitalism Going?.
In the session An All-Ireland Economic Area: Does It Make Sense? — and speaking alongside ICTU Assistant General Secretary Peter Bunting and former ESRI Research Professor John Bradley, now an international research consultant in economic development strategies — was Sinn Féin Senator Kathryn Reilly.

“THE CHALLENGE we face is the challenge republicans have always faced — how do we fully realise a republic in the political reality of today?” Sinn Féin Senator Kathryn Reilly asked at the Desmond Greaves Summer School.
In addressing the question of whether an all-Ireland economic area makes sense, the border Senator said we need to look at it through our shared history, through an assessment of where we are today and through our republican principles, and quoted the Proclamation of Easter Week, 1916.
“We declare the right of the people of Ireland to the ownership of Ireland, and to the unfettered control of Irish destinies, to be sovereign and indefeasible.”
Those words of the 1916 Proclamation still hold true and must be the basis of the all-Ireland economy, she said. “The Proclamation has no clauses, no small print that says that right of the Irish people should be handed over to the IMF, EU, ECB, bankers, the markets or in the Six Counties to the British Government. The national economy must support the national interest, not be subverted by the interests of economic elites or golden circles.”
The Sinn Féin senator said that Desmond Greaves wrote the seminal biography of Liam Mellows. Greaves’s work on Liam Mellows and the Irish Revolution continues to expose  new generations of republicans to the thinking and actions of Mellows, she said.
“Our nation was denied the realisation of Mellows’s vision of a republic. However, his words remain inspirational and prophetic. How right he was when he said: ‘Ireland, if her industries and banks were controlled by foreign capital, would be at the mercy of every breeze that ruffled the surface of the world’s money-markets.’ Those words should be writ large across the Department of Finance.”
If we are to realise the value of the all-Ireland economy we need to regain our economic sovereignty so easily lost and an all-Ireland economic area is a benefit only in as far as it  delivers for the people of Ireland, she said.
Border communities are particularly affected by partition - dealing with the costs associated with two different currencies, two different tax regimes, two different systems for accessing public services, two different systems of support for small and medium-sized businesses.
In the North, partition institutionalised sectarianism, disadvantage and inequality. It was designed and administered as ‘a Protestant state for a Protestant people’. It locked nationalists and republicans into opposition to the state and unionism into defending indefensible policies, she said.
“Under the old Stormont Government, the greatest price was paid by working-class communities. People from the nationalist working class were assigned second-class citizenship: last in and first out of the labour market and every expression of Irish nationalism suppressed; people from the unionist working class were sold the pretence of privilege but the reality was back-breaking manual labour, asbestosis in the shipyard and fodder for the Orange card.”
Partition and community segregation failed and continues to fail the working classes.
The major macro economic powers in the North are not devolved — they remain in Westminster under the control of the Tory party.
She recalled that, speaking earlier this year at a Sinn Féin ‘Uniting Ireland’ conference, the economist Michael D’Arcy likened the separate economies to existing soccer teams and contrasted that with the relative successes of the national rugby and cricket teams, which have found success on a global stage.
“Without a doubt there are those in power, North and South, who are content to maintain their positions at a cost of not realising the full economic and social benefits of reunification. They are content to retain their positions of privilege, to play in the bottom economic divisions, but this is at a cost that communities, North and South, can no longer afford to pay.”
Senator Reilly added that Sir George Quigley pointed out in December 2009:
“Both parts lose out when instances of market failure which prevent island-wide synergies remain undetected or neglected. Likewise when, in an era of constrained resources, services are needlessly duplicated and resources thereby, in effect, wasted. In many instances, the island will more easily achieve world-class excellence in key areas through combined, rather than by separate, effort.”
The Sinn Féin speaker said the arguments for fully realising the benefits of reunification have never been more appropriate, more relevant or more urgent.
“Differences in VAT, Corporation Tax, personal taxation and excise duties as well as two different currencies create significant barriers to cross-border trade and inhibit strategic and balanced regional development. The harmonisation of progressive tax measures on an all-Ireland basis would remove many of the existing barriers to trade and create new incentives and opportunities for better investment policies, in both the public and the private sector.”
A similar set of arguments can also be made in relation to government support for indigenous businesses growth, she said. At the moment we have “disjointed and competing economic policy and structures, North and South” including investment agencies such as INI and IDA wrestling with each other in trying to attract foreign direct investment. “We have agencies competing to offer the best incentives at the highest cost to the state to locate in Donegal or Derry. Such competition makes no sense on an island the size of ours.”
Tourism has led the way in replacing co-operation with competition, Kathryn Reilly said. “The development of Tourism Ireland, the all-Ireland body that promotes Ireland as a tourism destination has been proven to be both efficient and effective. It has reduced confusion over branding and delivered value for money in the tourism market. An all-Ireland approach to infrastructural investment and development would also assist efficient and balanced economic development.”
Better services to the consumer and the public and private sectors would result from a fully integrated, all-Ireland approach to energy supply, road and rail networks and information and communications infrastructure, she said, “across the country but particularly in the border counties”.
“All of this would be greatly complemented by the provision of public services on an all-Ireland basis. Greater co-ordination of public services would provide a greater value for money spent. An example is the development of cancer services in Derry to serve the north-west. This project is jointly funded by the departments of health, North and South. It means that cancer sufferers can receive their treatments closer to home. And yet we still have those who are blind to the consideration of the benefits of co-operation and co-ordination.
“If we are to  realise the full potential of the all-Ireland economy we must also have a new economic model as well as management.”
As a republican, she said, an all-Ireland economic area only makes sense, is only sustainable, if it promotes social solidarity, delivers equality and respects fundamental freedoms.
“I was asked if we could afford reunification, could the South afford the North and the level of public services. The answer cannot be found on a spreadsheet and cannot be addressed short-term. However, that economy has failed to achieve its potential under partition. It has failed to redress inequality.
“More can be gained through co-operation, harmonisation and unity to develop effective and efficient public services, to promote economic growth and to deliver prosperity for all.
“I believe that there is sense to reunification and it is for all of those who believe in the Republic to convince unionism that more can be achieved as full political actors in a unified state than spectators in Westminster.
“I believe passionately that the Irish people, North and South, are entitled to ‘the unfettered control of Irish destinies’ — free from the IMF, EU and British governments.
“As a democrat, I trust that all the people of the island acting in unity and in the national interest can and will manage and grow the Irish economy for the betterment of all.”