THE major shortcoming of the Irish Government's Shared Island initiative is that cross-border projects approved for funding had to pass what one Dublin diplomat used to call 'The Jeffrey Donaldson smell test.'
That test moniker has of course been jettisoned but until last month's fifth Shared Island Forum in Dublin the fact remained that getting DUP buy-in for any all-island initiative remained a sine qua non for funding. An Taoiseach Micheál Martin admitted as much at the Forum when he boasted that every party in the North was participating in projects funded from the €1bn+ that the Irish Government has poured into cross-border collaborations.
By every party, he meant of course that the DUP had smelt and approved every project. As a result we are given greenways rather than transformative, multi-hundreds of millions euro green energy projects; slow trains every hour rather than the much-needed Dublin-Belfast bullet train; and academic discourse about a united Ireland rather than actions towards unity. So far, so Fianna Fáil.
And yet, as anyone who has watched the shambolic reaction of the DUP to the Donaldson debacle, the Casement Park cock-up and the Twelfth hate-fest should realise, giving the DUP a veto over all-Ireland progress is the road to nowhere.
In fact, the record shows that when the DUP held the levers of power in both the economic and finance departments at Stormont, the cross-border bodies established by the Good Friday Agreement were effectively strangled. By the time the DUP had to give up the economic portfolios, Waterways Ireland, Tourism Ireland and Intertrade Ireland were reduced to shadows of their former selves.
No surprise then that when Sinn Féin finally secured the economic hot seat in the Executive, incoming minister Conor Murphy had to grow staffing numbers at Intertrade Ireland by over 50 per cent in order to make it fit-for-purpose again.
But perhaps change is in the air.
For the revelation by An Taoiseach that he has told the Industrial Development Authority (IDA) in the South to get its act together and start attracting investment with an eye to all-island economic co-operation could be a game-changer. After all, multinationals who see their staff being priced out of the Dublin housing market can only welcome the prospect of being encouraged by the IDA (regarded as one of the best, if not the best, economic agency on the planet) to spread their wings by basing satellite offices in Newry, Enniskillen or Derry.
Whatever the new approach requires of Invest Northern Ireland, we shouldn't underestimate the volte face required from the wholly partitionist agencies in the South. For both the IDA and Enterprise Ireland have a blindspot when it comes to cross-border co-operation. Notably, when trying to attract companies to Donegal, the IDA fails to include Derry as part of the travel-to-work area for potential employees. Invest NI, under unionist control from its inception until 2020, was always going to be to a six county-only agency, but that doesn't excuse the IDA and Enterprise Ireland from failing to think strategically on an all-island basis when setting job creation goals.
If An Taoiseach really is setting a new course, then for the first time we could see an economic policy which is founded in cross-border cooperation in order to improve the lives of all seven million people on the island.
That would mean that the border regions, currently on the periphery of two economies, would be at the centre of one all-Ireland economy. Similarly, the nascent Belfast-Dublin economic corridor could be turbo-charged by bringing together the best brains in economic development from all the agencies on the island to discuss how best to forge a dynamic inter-city tech and industrial powerhouse.
It's long been recognised that unionists stymied the suggestion of an all-island economic agency during the Good Friday Agreement talks because they realised such a body would swiftly prove the benefits of the all-island economy. Back then, the Irish Government, led by Fianna Fáil, swiftly folded on the all-island economic agency demand and settled for half a loaf. For after all, in their view, the Good Friday Agreement was as good as it would get for Northern nationalists.
Of course, it's exactly that attitude which underpins Taoiseach Micheál Martin's visceral opposition to planning for Irish unity – even as his Fine Gael allies in the good ship 'Unified Island' leave him in their wake.
Let's hope the Taoiseach's unilateral move on all-island economic policy means that, for once, it's Northern nationalists who will be afforded a smell test over Irish Government policy rather than condemning us all to move at the pace of 'never, never, never' unionism.
