Address by the Tánaiste Micheál Martin at Alliance Party Conference, Belfast

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Naomi, Kate, delegates, a chairde, friends.

Thank you for the invitation to be with you here this evening, and for the warm welcome.

It is a real honour to join you, the Alliance Party family, as you come together in Conference to reacquaint with friends and colleagues, reflect on the last year, and, of course, debate policy.

You gather, and I join you, at an important moment for Northern Ireland, with the Assembly and Executive finally back in place and functioning again.

And I want to wish Naomi and Andrew all the very best in their roles as Ministers, for Justice and for Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs. Two very important portfolios with very meaningful impacts on people’s lives and the future of Northern Ireland.

It is important that the opportunity created by the restoration of the institutions is grasped because as we all know for too many of the past 25 years, and especially for too many of the past 7 years, Northern Ireland has been without functioning political institutions.

The generation of adults born in 1998 have had very little opportunity to see the progress and new politics that were hard won in the Good Friday Agreement deliver for them.

Over half the current Assembly have been elected since 2017. For this party, that rises to more than three quarters of your MLAs!

This is the first opportunity for those new members to get stuck in and work to their full potential as legislators, building together in Stormont the cross-party relationships that will help Northern Ireland politics really deliver, in a meaningful and material way for all the people of Northern Ireland.

As each of you know better than me, there is hard work to be done. Public services to be renewed. Infrastructure to be built. Reconciliation to be embedded.

I know there is tremendous energy in this room, and indeed tremendous energy across the road in Parliament Buildings among your elected colleagues from other parties, to get on with this work, work that each of you were elected to do.

The truth is that none of us believe that the return of the institutions in and of itself, solves all the problems we face here.

But it is equally true that without the institutions, we were held back.

Thankfully, we now have functioning politics again.

Functioning politics doesn’t resolve political differences. Functioning politics is the mechanism to manage differences and work sufficient common ground to make progress on shared challenges.

And I know that’s what you as a party want to be about.

Functioning politics also allows a new focus on practical cooperation on shared opportunities to deliver practical improvements in the quality of life of everyone who calls this island home.

I’m pleased that we now have a date for a full Plenary Meeting of the North/South Ministerial Council.

It’s hard to believe but, due to the times the Executive was down since then – combined with the period of COVID restrictions- next month’s meeting will be only the second in-person such meeting since 2016.

As a government, we want to do our part. I want to see Strand Two work to its full potential, delivering for citizens of both jurisdictions.

It’s why, as Taoiseach, I established the Shared Island Initiative. And it’s why, a fortnight ago as part of that Initiative, I joined colleagues in announcing close to one billion euro in Irish Government funding for all-island projects including the A5 upgrade, the refurbishment of Casement Park, improvements to the Dublin-Belfast rail link, completion of the Newry - Carlingford Greenway, ground-breaking new projects in educational cooperation and cross-border enterprise cooperation, and of course, a project very close to my heart, the iconic Narrow Water Bridge.

The Shared Island initiative is about more than capital investment.

It’s about a shared approach to partnership, research and dialogue that can generate practical areas of joint work in the future across all sectors and parts of civic life on this island.

It respects the different traditions and aspirations on this island, while also making space for new communities, respecting new voices and new ideas.

It is about shared understanding, and I hope and believe that Shared Island is a good faith demonstration of our commitment to constructive co-operation on an all-island basis.

Now that we have an Executive in place as a partner in structured cooperation, there is so much more that we can do to unlock potential, in the north as well as in the south, to make this a much better place for us all to share.

If the ambition for the people of Northern Ireland is to be realised, it can only be done against the backdrop of functioning politics.

And for politics to function, the political institutions here must be stable and enduring.

I have been doing a lot of thinking about what it would take to ensure and underpin that stability into the future. This is something I’ve spoken about publicly recently and Naomi may have raised it with me just once or twice....

Northern Ireland has changed in many ways in the 25 or so years since the Agreement.

It is undeniably a better place.

Importantly, and as the Alliance vote - and consistent opinion polling - shows, there is an undeniable increasing proportion of society here seeking a political home that is not primarily defined by the constitutional question.

And the voice of your voters, their vision, and their identity, is just as relevant - just as fundamental - to the future of this place as anyone else’s. It cannot be seen through the lens of a previous time, nor can it be dismissed or downgraded as ‘other’.

The Good Friday Agreement was at its heart about inclusiveness – “of all the people in the diversity of their identities and traditions”.

That vision has to encompass the reality of today’s Northern Ireland. Every person has to count just as much as anyone else.

Every time I was asked in the last couple of years about reform, I always made the point that it would be better to address these issues against the background of functioning institutions.

The mandate of the last Assembly election had to be respected and and Executive formed on the basis of that mandate, in the first instance.

Well, that is now in place and with it in place, I feel that the opportunity to begin a meaningful conversation about reform presents itself.

We have had two extended periods of years of one party and then another blocking the formation of the Executive.

We just cannot have another such period.

I don’t think any party wants that and I am certain that the public would have zero tolerance for another cycle of suspension, disenfranchisement and political torpor.

And therefore I have said it makes sense for us to look now at what we can do to make the institutions more stable and effective while, of couse, retaining the Agreement’s foundational commitment to meaningful power-sharing and inclusiveness.

That must also be reflected in how we collectively consider and implement change – we must be clear-eyed and purposeful.

Any such discussion will need to involve all the parties, civic voices and both governments.

Indeed, the Agreement was clear that “all the institutional and constitutional arrangements” – the Assembly, NSMC, BIC and BIIGC – “are interlocking and interdependent and… that the success of each depends on that of the other”.

The Agreement was reached collectively. Proper review, which the Agreement itself provides for, must also be pursued collectively.

We cannot have any more one-sided negotiations only involving one party or one perspective. This is a plural place and its plurality must be respected.

Of course change, evolution, in the current arrangements is delicate. Any discussion will raise complex and sensitive issues.

If such discussions are framed as excluding or ‘getting around’ one party or one tradition, they will rightly fail. Inclusion, listening, understanding were the basis of the progress we made as a society in the Good Friday Agreement, and they remain the best frame for future stability.

While Northern Ireland has evolved and changed over the decades, there are still profound and overlapping cleavages of politics and identity, as well as important, legitimate and deeply-held differences around the constitutional future of this island.

These deserve respect.

But there are also very serious questions that deserve to be engaged with, including:

Are we prepared to stand over a situation where a single party can not only block a policy decision, but can prevent the very operation of a democratic Assembly? Not to mention a power-sharing Executive, and practical North-South cooperation in established areas of work?

Is the system of nomination of First Minister and deputy First Minister agreed at St Andrews fit for purpose? And indeed what is the logic today of no longer naming them for what they are – Joint First Ministers?

Can the Petition of Concern be returned to its original intent and process – not a blank cheque to veto, but a specific mechanism to protect important minority rights and interests?

Can the Bill of Rights for Northern Ireland finally be advanced as a safeguard for all?

Are there areas, where specific community interests are not at stake, where the use of cross-community voting – both within the Executive and in the Assembly – is no longer necessary or appropriate, compared to a more equitable weighted majority system?

Are there steps we can take to make practical North/South cooperation on clear areas of mutual benefit more straight-forward and effective? And likewise East-West interactions between these islands?

The North-South and East-West institutions offer fora for practical cooperation that can help us all. They cannot continue to be seen as one for each community, with zero-sum considerations of whether, how and when they meet. Can we just let them do their work?

How can we include wider civic voices within Northern Ireland and North/South - as was envisaged in the Agreement?

What can we do more broadly in terms of incentives to bring people out of political and community silos, and into productive areas of joint working?

Your party have put forward substantial ideas on many of these issues, as have others. But answering those questions will have to be a serious, collective undertaking. And these questions are not exhaustive. Others will have their own questions, their own positions and outlooks, not to mention fears.

It is important that we remember and understand that what can look from one perspective to be a block or a veto is a crucial safeguard to another.

A key question therefore is how to ensure confidence that any change is perceived to be in the common good, and not sectoral interest.

Everyone can be fully reassured that my government will support and engage in that endeavour appropriately - fully in line with the core principles endorsed by the people in the referendums North and South; reflecting our role as co-Guarantor of the Agreement; and recognising the interdependency of the institutions across all the Strands.

Let me be clear: we cannot be reckless with the delicate balances and protections at the heart of the Agreement. I do not believe that a winner-takes-all system or indeed a ‘like it or lump it’ attitude is in any way in the interests of Northern Ireland.

Every community and identity must feel they have a stake in the institutions, a say in the policy process and a safeguard for their fundamental interests into the future, wherever it may take us.

But nor can we let appropriate caution become inertia or inaction, because that will only store up greater problems and instability for the future.

Even positive incremental early steps in adjusting the rules to strike better and more sustainable balances – to reduce the emphasis on the binary, or the incentive to veto - would build public confidence in the institutions.

Unfortunately, there is a tendency among some to assume that the Executive ‘can’t work, won’t work’. This attitude is informed in part, by scepticism but, sadly, it is informed also by experience.

This is a dangerous idea to allow to fester. The default assumption cannot be that the institutions are unlikely to work - the default assumption must be that they will last.

That politicians will be allowed to deliver on responsibilities. That politics can and will work for the people of Northern Ireland.

We must create the conditions for that. We must normalise stability and effectiveness, while respecting the fundamental balances and continuing challenges.

As I have said, I believe it is time for that conversation to start.

And it is time for us to collectively move it forward, structured in a way that respects the fundamentals of the Good Friday Agreement– but allowing its institutions adapt and evolve in sensible and equitable ways.

We need those institutions to be working as effectively and positively as they can, because there are still big and unique challenges to be faced, that need us to be working together and with imagination - on dealing with the legacy of the past, on building a shared society, on lifting up marginalised communities and on ending paramilitarism for good.

None of which will happen with a ‘steady as she goes’ mentality, but will require political choices and determination.

In conclusion colleagues, friends, ladies and gentlemen, I believe we all have a shared belief in the potential of the people of Northern Ireland and this island as a whole.

We have lost valuable time from our collective efforts to make the best of that potential, and deliver for all the people on their day to day needs and concerns.

I am determined that the Irish Government I jointly lead will not be found wanting when it comes to making up for that lost time, or in any constructive, shared discussion brought forward by any community or quarter in Northern Ireland.

Thank you for inviting me, and welcoming me to be part of this one tonight.

Go raibh míle maith agaibh.