Speech by Taoiseach Micheál Martin at Seamus Mallon Shared Home Place Lecture, Navan Fort, Armagh

Check against delivery

Mo bhuíochas libh ar fad. Is mór an onóir dom a bheith in bhur dteannta chun saol agus saothar Seamus Mallon a cheiliúradh.

I can think of no more fitting place to celebrate the achievements of Seamus Mallon, a “great Irish chieftain”, as Tim O’Conor put it, than Emain Macha. This is a special place, resonant with the stories of Cú Chulainn, the druid Cathbad and of course the goddess Macha herself. In the epic Táin Bó Cúailnge, it was right here that Conchobar Mac Neasa, having dealt with his daily affairs, would turn to leisure:

an chéad trian de ar dtús ag breathnú ar na macaoimh ag imirt cleas cluichí agus iomána,

an dara trian den lá ag imirt brannaimh agus fichille

agus an trian deireanach ag caitheamh bia agus leanna go dtí go ngabhann codladh cách,

aos ceoil agus oirfide á thál sin suain orthu.

I certainly hope that Conchobar didn’t see Sunday’s game from his high hill.

The site was also of very special importance to Seamus. In his own words, it was “the Irish equivalent to Camelot, except that it exists” and for many years he fought to preserve this important site from the impact of harmful quarrying.

This dedication to the past was typical of the man. I have elsewhere described our last meeting, just months before his passing, in Markethill. As often happened when we met, our conversation turned to history. Seamus looking out his kitchen window recounted a centuries-long epic: Here was O’Neill Kingdom; there was the huge estate of rich farmland settled in the seventeenth century. Here were the mountains of South Armagh, marking the end of the ‘good land’ and home to the dispossessed. There in his garden was part of the old Armagh–Dublin road, along which Hugh O’Neill and his army marched after victory at the Battle of the Yellow Ford.

For Seamus, history was not a fixation on an unchanging past, but a way forward. It was an acknowledgement that reconciliation comes from a deep awareness of the past in all its complexity. And it is through this awareness that we can create new futures.

Seamus imagined Emain Macha in just these terms. In his memoir A Shared Home Place, he describes it as a “centre stone for a common heritage”…“a new vision of a dynamic Ulster neither Catholic nor Protestant, Celtic nor Scottish, Gaelic nor Anglo-Saxon but an Ulster of generous, garrulous, combative, hard-working and poetic people united for the first time in common love of their home place.”

Shared Island

My conversations with Seamus remained with me, when nearly five years ago, I announced a new Government of Ireland priority – the Shared Island Initiative – to push forward with the vital work of reconciliation for the future of our island, however it may be constituted.

Then, as now, I drew on Seamus’ wise words to encapsulate why we need to do more to accommodate and understand each other across the different and often interwoven communities of this island:

Because, as Seamus perfectly described it, this is and will always be our ‘shared home place’.

Our Shared Island Initiative is focussed on harnessing the full potential of the Good Friday Agreement – in politics and in wider society.

It is inspired by the vision of leaders like Seamus Mallon and John Hume who recognised that we can work to strengthen the bonds between people – in Northern Ireland and across this island – without in any way diminishing our different, equally-legitimate, political and community traditions, identities and aspirations.

With these foundations, and a sustained political focus and drive from Government, our Shared Island Initiative has enabled a step change in beneficial island-wide cooperation and of new connections between people across the island.

On these foundations, we can drive forward that central and essential work of Reconciliation.

As Seamus said in his address to his Party Conference in Belfast in 1999, “We know each other […] We belong together. We sink or swim together.”

What does that mean in real terms?

It means, for instance, €25 million in resourcing from the government to introduce an hourly-frequency rail service to Dublin and to Belfast from Portadown in County Armagh. Multiplying business, work, community and education connections all along the eastern seaboard. Passenger numbers increased by 50% in the first 6 months.

It means that the iconic Narrow Water Bridge is now under construction, thirty minutes from here at Carlingford Lough, to connect communities on the Cooley Peninsula and the Mourne Mountains and open up the huge sustainable tourism potential of the region.

In February, we also announced a new €23 million Shared Destinations tourism programme to resource tourism agencies and local authorities to invest in new amenities and international promotion of Carlingford Lough, as well as the Cuilcagh Lakelands Geopark and the Sliabh Beagh region – three spectacular destinations that straddle the border.

Similarly, with a major drive from Government, Phase 2 of the Ulster Canal restoration at Clones was finished last year, and we are resourcing and working for Phase 3 to commence next year.

Alongside strategic investments like these for communities and tourism development throughout the border region, as part of the Shared Island Initiative, we have introduced new island-wide and Ireland-UK programmes that are about delivering more for both jurisdictions.

For instance, through the North South Research Programme, the government has so far provided €50 million to resource new cross-border collaborative research projects, hubs and institutional connections, to deepen and grow the university sector across both jurisdictions.

Similarly, the Co-Centres programme – co-funded with the Executive, the UK Government and with industry – is enabling world-leading research on Climate, Biodiversity and Water and on Food Sustainability issues, to deepen knowledge and identify solutions for common challenges.

Major new island-wide enterprise, bioeconomy and biodiversity programmes are also now well underway, with agencies North and South working together in more substantive ways that ever before. These have been enabled by over €55 million in Government of Ireland resourcing and through funding contributions from the Executive.

We are putting a sustained, strategic focus on new opportunities for people to connect, through the Shared Island Civic Society Fund, Creative Ireland and Community Climate Action programmes. With over 150 new projects funded to date, creating new communities of practice, common interest and common cause across this island.

This is what building a shared future means in real terms.

With the renewal of Ireland-UK relations that Prime Minister Starmer and I marked at our first, in what are to be annual, summits in March and our sustained engagement with the Northern Ireland Executive, including through the North South Ministerial Council, we are able now to really scope the full potential of both North/South and East-West relationships under the Good Friday Agreement.

With this momentum, energy and potential, I announced a new phase of the government’s Shared Island Initiative in April. This is backed with a doubling of our resource commitment to the Shared Island Fund, with €2 billion out to 2035, to foster reconciliation, mutual respect and growth.

This will deliver our enhanced commitments and objectives on Shared Island, as set out in our Programme for Government and revised National Development Plan.

Like establishing a new air connectivity route between Derry and Dublin and building up the island-wide provision of specialist healthcare services.

And, developing the all-island skills agenda and harnessing the full benefits of the island-wide labour market, working with the Executive, UK Government and through the Labour Employer Economic Forum.

Our Ireland-UK 2030 partnership includes a focus on infrastructure and energy, and we will pursue coordinated, strategic investment in offshore wind and support an all-island supply chain to realise the full potential of the sector and create new jobs both North and South.

I have also introduced targets for every department to bring forward new investment cooperation projects, working with counterparts in Belfast and London.

And, in April, I announced a new phase of my department’s Shared Island research programme with the Economic and Social Research Institute with a focus on strategic policy and cooperation opportunities, to deepen the evidence-base and analysis of the island as a whole.

Our focus on fostering people-to-people interaction is also now moving to a higher level.

To meet the scale of the demand and the potential there is now, to foster connections in every domain, and to involve and benefit every town and community on this island.

We are continuing and expanding the Shared Island Civic Society Fund and island-wide Creative Ireland programming.

We are this year initiating major new arts and cultural heritage programmes, backed with more than €20 million from the Government of Ireland out to 2030.

This will see more island-wide productions, tours and exhibitions across all arts spheres and a new Ireland-UK cultural partnership for institutions and audiences to engage more with the culture and heritage of both our countries.

This year, I also announced a new dimension to the Shared Island Initiative that is directly inspired by Seamus Mallon – the ‘Shared Home Place’ programme.

This is inspired not just by Seamus’s words, but by his life-long commitment and work to deepen a shared connection to place and to community.

This new participative programme will be launched later this year with a range of ways for communities, and our diaspora abroad, to explore and celebrate the diverse layers of heritage that are a part of every town on this island and of what make us the people and communities we are today.

This is about all of us having more context, more points of connection and more confidence to acknowledge that Irishness and Britishness – in all of their varieties and continuing evolution – have shaped the heritage of every county on this island.

And to recognise more the contributions of Irish, Anglo-Irish and Ulster-Scots traditions across the island of Ireland, and those of ethnic minority communities.

All are a source of richness and strength in our society.

Each is a valued part of the heritage of this island, and crucial to how we approach and build our future together.

Seamus Mallon practiced a politics and lived a life that was inclusive, inquisitive, honest and unflinching in the pursuit of a reconciliation of all of the people who called the same place home – in Markethill, in Armagh, and across the entirety of the island of Ireland.

Seamus’s spirit, confidence and force of intellect can and will guide us in how we take the next steps in reconciling how we look to the future on this island.

The Shared Home Place programme will foster a space in our society for telling the multiple versions of the stories of Ireland that are and always will be a part of who we are.

It will be a part of how we honour Seamus’ legacy and work every day so that our Good Friday Agreement stands as the “beacon of hope” he knew it could be – for us and for the generations to come.

North South Ministerial Council

Not far from here is the home of the North South Ministerial Council, established under Strand Two of the Good Friday Agreement.

I participated in the very first North South Ministerial Council plenary meeting, held in the Palace Demesne on the thirteenth of December 1999. I was Minister for Education and Science at the time, and the historic nature of the meeting was not lost on any of us in attendance.

Seamus was at that table as well, of course. He sat in the deputy First Minister’s seat during that first plenary and was particularly pleased, as an Armagh man, to welcome the Government of Ireland to that first meeting of the Council with the Northern Ireland Executive.

I was equally pleased to last month lead the Government of Ireland’s delegation to attend the twenty-ninth plenary meeting of the North South Ministerial Council in the Joint Secretariat offices here in Armagh.

While there have been periods over the past twenty-five years when the NSMC, along with the other institutions of the Good Friday Agreement, was down, a vast amount of concrete North-South co-operation has nevertheless taken place.

That co-operation continues today across the twelve work sectors of the Council, and indeed beyond. As well as overseeing the vital work of the North-South Bodies – themselves unique entities who have worked consistently over the last 25 years to deliver for people on this island – there is a wealth of solid co-operation ongoing through the NSMC whether on health, education, environment, agriculture, tourism or transport.

Since the institutions were restored last year, twenty-nine meetings of the North South Ministerial Council in its various formats have taken place focusing upon issues that matter to people right across this island.

The Education Sectoral between Minister Helen McEntee and Minister Paul Givan, for example, took place in the nearby Middletown Centre for Autism in April and included discussions on greater collaboration in relation to special educational needs, and addressing educational disadvantage.

Earlier this afternoon, I was delighted to visit the Middletown Centre and to have had the opportunity to meet with the team there, as well as with parents of children who have benefitted from the Centre’s services and with educators who have received training in autism support.

The Centre is doing excellent work, not only through providing services and supports, but also in terms of contributing to the broader body of knowledge on autism, through their essential research.

It is also a shining example of practical North-South co-operation in action. It was established by the two Departments of Education, North and South, in 2007, and is funded by both departments. It demonstrates the strength of collaboration on this island, and what can be achieved by working together.

Conclusion

Seamus was always one to push boundaries in political life – whether that was in Westminster, in the Seanad or in the Assembly. I do not think Seamus would want anyone resting on their laurels as we try to continue to implement the Agreement he fought so hard to make a reality.

Every so often, it is important that we challenge ourselves and examine our own roles - Is the Agreement perfect, twenty-seven years on? Are there things we can do better? How can we create a greater sense of a shared home place for all on this island?

Seamus ends his book A Shared Home Place with a Greek Proverb – “A society grows great when old men plant trees in whose shade they know they will never sit.”

Seamus and some other leading figures who brought us to where we are today are no longer with us, and they knew that there would be a long road ahead. Here in the Orchard County and across this island, it is up to all of us – politicians, civic society activists, mothers, fathers, aunts, uncles, students, children and, most importantly, neighbours to tend and nurture the roots, and to grow and reap the fruit of the tree of peace that they planted in the garden of our shared home place.