ADDRESS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE TO THE ROYAL COLLEGE OF OBSTETRICIANS AND GYNAECOLOGISTS LONDON
ADDRESS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE TO THE ROYAL COLLEGE OF OBSTETRICIANS AND GYNAECOLOGISTS LONDON, FRIDAY, 26TH JANUARY, 2007
‘The New Relationship between Ireland and Britain’
Ladies and Gentlemen
It is a great pleasure to join you this evening and my thanks for the kind invitation that brings Martin and I to this special gathering in one of our favourite cities.
It was Winston Churchill who once said “There is no finer investment for any community than putting milk into babies”. That being so, the branch of health care which is so well represented in this room comes in a very close second. In a very direct way, obstetrics and gynaecology hold humanity, literally, in their hands. Thanks to your investment we have seen massive improvements and extraordinary debates and developments, so much so that as one of your colleagues remarked, if variety is the spice of life then obs and gynae is the “red hot chilli pepper of medicine”. Mind you the last time I was in the company of so many obstetricians and gynaecologists, I came home with twins and if Daisy Hill’s Buster Holland is in the audience as I believe he may well be, I want to know is the guarantee up yet?
You know better than most just how vital it has been to your profession and the well-being of your patients, to have an effective culture of collaboration and cooperation. Potential problems of all sorts lurk wherever there are barriers to good communication whether between individuals or professional disciplines and that truth is particularly evident in relationships between countries, the subject I want to dwell on with you this evening.
This year marks the 50th anniversary of the laying of the foundation stone of this splendid building by her late majesty the Queen Mother. It is therefore just a little bit younger than me and just as those who have entered these portals over the past five decades have been witnesses to a huge transformation in healthcare, so too I belong to a generation privileged to have witnessed a significant transformation in the relationship between Ireland and Britain over that same period.
In the 1950s, many Irish, particularly young Irish, both from urban and rural communities, were forced through economic necessity and poverty to come to England in search of work. They landed in this city in their tens of thousands to work on building sites or in service and from their meagre earnings they regularly sent money home to parents and siblings struggling through what was a very difficult time for the relatively new-born Irish state.
The loneliness they endured, the roughness and toughness of their lives have been told of in songs and plays and poems but in and through their lived lives they made a considerable contribution to their adopted homeland, raised and educated their families and created a crucial familial web between these two neighbouring islands.
Some of them may have been your parents or grandparents and your success is a telling part of their legacy. But in truth, the historic relationship between Ireland and Britain has been far from one of seamless neighbourliness. For generations it was characterised by mistrust, suspicion and resentment and of course over the decades of the recent Northern Ireland troubles relationships were sorely tested. Yet today the best-educated generations ever to inhabit both islands, growing up as partners in the European Union, have together forged a new and confident relationship, characterised by mutual respect and considerable collaboration across many fields of common interest, best exemplified by the pursuit of peace in Northern Ireland.
Many factors lie behind this changed temper, these changed times. Ireland’s economic transformation into one of the world’s most globalised and successful economies has recalibrated our longstanding economic relationship with Britain. Where once our main export was our people and after that low-added value agricultural produce to a Britain which was our predominant export market, today we trade the most sophisticated of high-tech goods and services across the world. We trade 26 billion euro worth of goods and services with Britain. In fact British exports to the Republic of Ireland are greater than British exports to China, Brazil, India and Mexico added together and doubled. Not alone do we share many of the same challenges and goals in a competitive global economy but we are major investors in each other’s economies. We benefit enormously from each other’s prosperity and we have a real share in each other’s future.
We also enjoy a strong and vibrant cultural relationship with regular cross-fertilisation between musicians, writers, artists, actors and academics across these islands. We speak the same language, watch the same television programmes, visit each other as tourists and even occasionally cheer on the same football teams. Sport is, of course, an important part of the complex web that holds our relationship. We were all united in support of the European Ryder Cup golf team who won at the K Club a few months ago but normal service will be restored when England and Ireland play in the Six Nations Championship in a few weeks time in Dublin’s magnificent Croke Park.
There is little doubt that our membership of the EU has transformed the way Ireland and Britain relate to one another. We joined on the same day, started the journey together and have for thirty years now worked closely together on a range of international issues and through our development programmes. Our leaders and civil servants have grown to know each other well, to be comfortable in each other’s company, to trust and respect one another as colleagues.
Of profound significance and, personally dear to me, has been the historic teamwork between the two governments in their determination to find a lasting, fair and peaceful settlement in Northern Ireland. Back in 1998, thanks to their common focus and the hard work of many political leaders, a new international treaty was overwhelmingly endorsed by all those who share the island of Ireland. We know it better as the Good Friday Agreement. That Agreement set out a fresh new set of structures and guarantees within which the relationships which had been so fraught historically could grow organically and healthily in the future - a healthy womb you might say for an embryonic new future. The Agreement acknowledged that Northern Ireland would remain part of the United Kingdom unless and until a majority of people in Northern Ireland decided by referendum, to be held from time to time, that they preferred unity with the Republic. That gave huge reassurance to British unionists and an opportunity to Irish nationalists. Thus, both political ambitions were given meaningful recognition and the impetus to persuade people to their view by use of democratic means without the use of violence or oppression. The relationship between North and South was addressed and a new framework for cross-border cooperation put in place which would encourage good neighbourliness and cooperation on issues of mutual benefit. The East-West relationship between Ireland and Great Britain was also given new impetus with the setting up of formal new bodies like the British Irish Council which would carry forward a relationship based on developing mutual endeavour and mutual respect. There is clear evidence that the Good Friday Agreement has been phenomenally successful on the East-West axis and on the North-South axis. That success has helped with the considerable amount of heavy lifting that has been needed on the internal axis within Northern Ireland where efforts to get the parties into a power-sharing devolved government have been long and tortuous but are also manifestly now verging towards completion.
In October of last year both the British and Irish Governments published the St Andrews Agreement, the vehicle for resolving the remaining gaps between the parties. They are, at least, simply stated. The largest Unionist party, the Democratic Unionist Party led by Ian Paisley, has to commit to power-sharing and the largest pro-Irish unity party, Sinn Fein led by Gerry Adams, has to commit to policing and the rule of law.
There is now an overwhelming wish in Northern Ireland and on these islands to see everyday political issues being resolved and tackled by the elected politicians in Northern Ireland. Hopefully we are now only a matter of weeks away from that new reality. When it occurs as I hope it does, we will have for the first time in the history of these islands the opportunity to see what the best-educated generations North, South, East and West can achieve when they work together in respectful partnership on matters of common concern and in exploiting opportunities best harnessed by working together. No other generation has known such a time. We are now close enough to dare to move beyond dreaming to planning.
So how will this new relationship between Britain and Ireland develop over the next fifty years? Already we are starting to look at one another very differently, to move beyond old vanities and history’s burdens and are ready to move our relationship into an altogether different gear. We are two successful democracies absorbing many newcomers who seek opportunities on our shores. For Ireland this is a new phenomenon for, until the past decade, we were an island of outward migration with a dwindling population. Today our population is growing dramatically and we have net inward migration for the first time in a century and a half.
Our experience of being emigrants is a useful resource in welcoming migrants to our shores and we have much to learn from the experience of migrants here. With our geographical closeness and common travel zone it makes sense to work closely on issues like asylum seekers, drug trafficking, transnational crime. It makes sense for our professional bodies to collaborate, our universities, our schools, our trade unions, our voluntary organisations, our health services, as well as our politicians and civil servants. Ireland pioneered the smoking ban more recently followed in Scotland and soon to be followed in Northern Ireland. Your ideas on road safety among other things we have taken up. We both shake our heads in disbelief at the carnage on our roads, at the binge drinking culture, at the growing phenomenon of youth suicide. We both struggle with early school leaving, with the waste of underachievement, with the righteous demand of the marginalized for full social inclusion, with insatiable public demands for better and better infrastructure including health services. All these things get between us and our sleep whether in London or Dublin and the more fluent the conversations between us on these matters the quicker we will find the key to their resolution.
In building on the opportunities today presents to us, I am very conscious of the fact that we will be building on a longstanding mutuality and friendship between professional bodies. Close links have long existed between the Royal College in Britain and the Institute of Obstetrics and Gynaecology in Ireland. I understand that over 300 of your Fellows and members come from Ireland and if you include the whole island that number rises to over 450. Here too Irish nurses, doctors and dentists have made a huge contribution to the British health service and clearly mutual recognition of training and qualifications between Ireland and Britain has been an important element in our shared history. In my own profession too it is a matter of pride to me that I was involved in the deliberations a number of years ago which led to the situation where solicitors, whether qualified in Dublin, London or Belfast, became free to practice in all those jurisdictions immediately on qualifying.
Such links should never be taken for granted or underestimated, for during difficult times they were a strong and enduring witness to the power of partnership and to the other enduring reality that humanity is best served where knowledge and information flow easily and freely across boundaries whether geographic or between disciplines.
We are blessed on these islands to have bright, well-educated and ambitious populations, brimming with ideas and innovations. We are equally blessed to have bright, well-educated and cynical/questioning populations who demand better services and greater accountability. Those demands have led to greater lateral thinking with the Irish Government’s National Treatment Purchase Fund for example, funding patients’ treatment in hospitals in Northern Ireland and Britain with 2,000 operations in Northern Ireland and some 800 in Britain to date.
There are many growing and welcome examples of successful collaboration between us to better deliver high-quality healthcare to all our citizens. On the island of Ireland we have established an all-Ireland Practice and Quality Development Database. It is designed to provide information and encourage access to examples of good practice within the nursing and midwifery professions and to avoid unnecessary duplication of effort and enhance networking opportunities.
The Ireland/Northern Ireland/National Cancer Institute Consortium, established in 1999, is a very good example of the type of international collaboration I was talking about. It brings together the National Cancer Institute from the United States with the health services, North and South, to research and promote the most effective preventative and therapeutic strategies in management of cancer care.
Last October I had the privilege of launching the first ever dedicated Mental Health Service to the deaf and hard of hearing. It was only possible because it was launched on an all-Ireland basis and because of the co-operation between deaf organisations and health services on both sides of the border. The numbers of deaf suffering from mental ill-health were high enough to be tragic but geographically so spread out and so small in the overall scheme of things that this service eluded them until sensible people saw that what was impossible in each jurisdiction individually was possible together. In the Irish language the old proverb puts it well, ‘ní neart go cur le chéíle’ – real strength comes from partnership.
Cross-border health promotion co-operation in areas such as public information campaigns, anti-smoking, physical activity, nutrition and breastfeeding are also proving very effective. Every one of these initiatives and endeavours is seed-bedding a culture of comfortable, non-threatening partnership which will enhance the lives of all citizens regardless of their politics, their religion, or their ethnicity. There is nothing to fear from this kind of collaboration - just a lot to gain.
The little children you will help bring into the world in the coming years will, I hope, grow up in peace and prosperity in a world greatly enhanced by the pooled imagination and initiative unlocked by this Britain, this Ireland, neighbours, partners, equals and friends at last - except of course on the rugby field where all bets are still off.
Go raibh maith agaibh. Thank you.