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Gerard Deane and Paul Gosling host a new series of podcasts - explainers of some of the challenging issues that our society faces of promoting a wider, more inclusive and engaged conversation about how we make progress and further solidify peace and create a genuinely shared and integrated society in Northern Ireland. Holywell Trust is curating a discussion that is mutually respectful, forward focused and positive. The podcast considers the real challenges that Northern Ireland's society faces in the coming years and begins to arrive at practical and honest approaches to address these.
Okay. So welcome to the first Holywell Conversations podcast in a long time, about two years. So my name is Jared Dean. I work for Holywell Trust. Today, I am joined by two guests.
Gerard Deane:Firstly, Sarah, do you wanna introduce yourself?
Sara Duddy:Hello. I'm Sarah Duddy. I am program manager here with Holywell Trust. Nice to be here.
Gerard Deane:And as always, joined by Paul. Paul, how's the form? I'm grand. Thank you, Gerard. It's Paul Gosling here, and I am a freelance contributor to Holywell Work.
Gerard Deane:So, right now, we're gonna have a conversation to mark the end of our future relationship conversations project. A lot of our projects has very similar names, and I forget which ones I'm talking about some days. But this definitely is the FRC project, which is a project that we set up a while back, a number of years ago, to look at the constitutional conversation. Just to put it in a wee bit of context, Holywell Trust believes that the conversation on the constitutional position or future of this place or these places is really important. What we believe about the as the conversation itself is of importance, we have no preference as to what the outcome of that conversation might be, but are really concerned based on learnings from Brexit and other things that people are have as much information as possible if we ever have a border poll.
Gerard Deane:But we also believe as an organization, it's one of the more divisive conversations that we could possibly have, so we wanna do it in a really constructive way. Our project for the last number of years is delivered in two phases, we're gonna chat about both phases. All of the work under this project was funded through the Department for Foreign Affairs through the Reconciliation Fund, and as always, very grateful for their support. So, Paul, turn to yourself first. Phase one of the project had a number of different elements.
Gerard Deane:I think we started off doing or, well, first thing we did was form an advisory group. Do you wanna give us a wee reminder of who's on the advisory group or who was involved on the advisory group?
Paul Gosling:Well, you've got the list in front of me, Gerard, and I haven't. But what I can say is that the advisory group were really helpful, and they guided us towards our first, series of activities. And one of the things that the advisory group were very keen on was getting a comparison between the health services north and South, because the point they were making very strongly is that whenever people talk about the potential change in constitutional arrangements North and South, the concern that people have in the North is the loss of the National Health Service. However, we were all talking about the fact that a lot of problems in the NHS in the North in terms of waiting lists and waiting times. So do you want to read out this?
Paul Gosling:Do I go to Stalin or someone now?
Gerard Deane:I I'll refresh my own memory apart from anything else. So it was Raymond Dean, Brian Daugherty, Seamus Farrell, Colin Harvey, Maureen Hetherington, Johnson McMaster, Peter Sherlow, and Orna Young. And I think they were really useful, Paul, in helping to guide the whole program over both phases.
Paul Gosling:Yeah. And and it was very much from them that, on behalf of Holywell, I looked at the comparison between the the health services north and south. Yeah. And then broadly, that said what I think a lot of people would recognized on the ground, which is we got serious problems with the Northern NHS. Yeah.
Paul Gosling:We don't necessarily have a consistency of outcome across all the different health boards, but more problematic, we're losing GPs. A lot of people feel the need to go private because they're on waiting lists and waiting times for so long. So the sense that we've got our free at point of delivery health care service, well, is only true if your needs can be met quickly and if you basically don't have to put up with it. For a lot of people Yeah. It's a matter of paying.
Paul Gosling:And how does that compare with the South? Well, about half the people in the South do have free health care and and that I think is one of the things that, people were surprised about, not recognizing otherwise. A lot of people obviously are insurance based. And in terms of the European Union, Irish health system is pretty good in terms of outcomes.
Gerard Deane:Okay. So the health research that you did, you did it in both phases of the project, which kinda arrived at because people that we met it's like we held a number of engagement sessions with the community, particularly with the Protestant unionist loyalist community. They find out what they wanted to know about this topic, and health was one of the ones that was really prominent. Another piece, Paul, then so we commissioned three pieces of research to start away. There was Paul, your own piece about the the health research.
Gerard Deane:We also then had David McCann's piece. Do you wanna chat briefly about what David's face was?
Paul Gosling:Yeah. I mean, David, I think, did the first piece of research looking at this in a fairly comprehensive way. Others have done it since, but what David did was to basically write a short paper saying, who's looked at this before? Who's looked at the constitutional question before in terms of Ireland? He put together a fairly comprehensive list of of work, that's been done.
Paul Gosling:I think one of the other things that David brought to the conversation in his presentations was that we're not alone here, you know, we need to learn from what happened in Scotland and the point that he made both in terms of Scotland, but also in terms of the, Quebec, independence referendum in in Canada is it was the conversations that took place during the campaigns before the referendum that changed the outcome quite significantly. You know, people who assumed one outcome at the beginning of a conversation when the votes actually came in, they were a lot tighter. In some cases in Canada, it was very, very tight, and it had been assumed in advance.
Gerard Deane:It was It had the 1%.
Paul Gosling:Yeah. That's right. You know? So a a substantial number of people voted, yet a very few was the margin one way or the other.
Gerard Deane:Yeah. Final piece of research that we'd had during phase one then was carried
Paul Gosling:out by Brenton Sturgeon. And, again, that was off the back of the suggestions from the steering group. They were very keen in drilling down into what the attitudes were of those Protestants in Donegal that might be regarded as having ended up on the wrong side of the border at partition. So you've got significant number of people, who are Protestants, in the Raffoe area and and Johnson and places. So so who is their loyalty lie with?
Paul Gosling:And the outcomes were very, very interesting and very significant because, basically, their loyalty wasn't either with Dublin government nor with the Belfast government, not necessarily with the UK government either. So they've been a bit marooned there. There wasn't any great hostility towards Dublin, but it was a feeling that they had been forgotten about. And I think the Irish government was very content in the sense to be given those research findings because they were very keen to learn from that experience. Yeah.
Gerard Deane:I think there's other parts of Donegal with feeling marooned by the Donald Dublin government in general as well. Yeah.
Paul Gosling:I mean, that's right. Everyone in Donegal, in much the same way as people in Derry feel, a bit forgotten about by Belfast. People in Donegal very much feel that they are not, you know, they're overlooked by Dublin.
Gerard Deane:Yeah.
Paul Gosling:But I think in particular, it is the Protestant communities of East Donegal that feel that, and I think that research was very useful indeed.
Gerard Deane:Yep. So that we had planned to do four pieces under phase one, four pieces of research, But we had a a bit of a challenge when it came to doing the fourth piece. Do do you wanna give us a a short version?
Paul Gosling:Yeah. And, again, this came from the steering group, and it came and it needs to be stressed as it came from unionist members of the steering group.
Gerard Deane:Well, the steering group and the people that we met and And the people we met there.
Paul Gosling:Right. Who were basically saying the the debate in the media around the future constitutional arrangements of the island was basically orientated towards the republican and nationalist view, and they wanted analysis that was objective as to what was happening within the media in terms of that debate. But unfortunately, not least because of a front page story in the Sunday Independent, there was basically the guy that got sidetracked because people assumed that because the whole program was financed by the Irish government, not that the Irish government had any say whatsoever in the details of the program or this piece of research being chosen, It basically became a media storm on behalf of Holywell's on the Stephen Nolan show. I mean, it became a big issue. Newsletter ran with it.
Paul Gosling:Some of the DUP, MPs were very unhappy about it, and so that basically had to be dropped because it just became too contentious and misunderstood. Yeah.
Gerard Deane:I think people were fine with it once we explained what we were doing and where the, you know, the reason for the research or where it had come from, their rationale behind it, but it
Paul Gosling:was getting to that point. It was Yeah. Philosophical. Certainly on the Stephen Nolan show, once it was explained that this actually had come from UNIDIS because of their concern about Republicans leading the conversation, then basically, it ceased to be a controversial matter, but it didn't seem sensible to to to relight the flame and go back to that piece of research.
Gerard Deane:No. I did. Think we'd all been burned by Yes. Okay. So phase two then, we're delighted to get funding for an extension of the project, or the the the next phase of the project is probably more accurate.
Gerard Deane:You did a couple of things directly, Paul, for the second phase. First thing you did was update the health research Mhmm. Some of the things you've already talked about. Yeah. And then the other piece that you did kinda reflects maybe some of the direction of, if you like, the people on the Northwest anyway where you looked at the Northwest as an economic zone?
Paul Gosling:Yes. I mean, I I think if you speak to almost anyone in Derry, they will they won't regard their their home region as simply the city of Derry. For for lots of us, we travel across the border a lot of the time. We go for a day out across the border. We go maybe shopping across the border on a Sunday morning when, you know, the hours are different at the to the north.
Paul Gosling:You know, it's just like a normal part of our lives to be cross border, and I don't think that is even restricted by religion. You know? It's just to an extent, if you live on the city side, you're more likely perhaps to go to Donegal than if you live on the the water side, but broadly, and it's just part and parcel of our life. And there's a lot of people who work in Seagate, who commute in from Donegal, a lot of people who work at Vertiv, formerly E and I Engineering, who commute into Burnfoot from Northern Ireland. So there was a our feeling was, to what extent is that recognized?
Paul Gosling:What extent the decision makers in Belfast and Dublin recognize that? How has this impacted? Now employers certainly say there's a real problem in terms of the fact that the tax and benefits and working from home arrangements, the law behind them are different on two sides of the border. A lot of employees are very unhappy because it's very difficult to get a mortgage if you earn in one currency, but you spend on the mortgage and the other currency. So there's a lot of those things, but there was other matters as well, which is our public transport system.
Paul Gosling:And now, really, I'm talking here about the outcomes of the research. The the the public transport system isn't it doesn't really work on a cross border basis. It bits does, some bits it doesn't. We got serious problems with the roads on the border roads. You know, we've got a very high death toll on the roads, disproportionately high on those roads that are cross border, and we've got other problems as well.
Paul Gosling:And so it seems sensible to ask the question, what structures do we have? How do those structures compare with what was expected by the Good Friday Agreement? And the answer is we've got a lost lot less cross border cooperation than was greenlighted by the Good Friday Agreement. But also, we've not learned from best practice internationally. And I know one of other Holywell programs has has gone to the Basque country to look at arrangements there, but I looked as part of this research on academic studies about what happens in Thailand and Laos, and what happens between The United States and Canadian border, what happens in Switzerland in the areas that are very close to the French and German bodies, and what you see is much more coherence and integration on an economic basis than those other places.
Paul Gosling:Yeah. But we should say in terms of The United States and Canada, that has changed as a result of the the most recent Trump presidency. And that shows that these things can go backwards and forwards.
Gerard Deane:Well, one of the things and I should highlight, we're recording this on the thirteenth of or sorry, the June 11, and there's been a lot of fallout about an attack in Belfast that took place a couple of nights ago. There's been subsequent violence on the streets of Belfast in particular, and the British government has today come out and talked about tightening up the common travel area and things like that. So that might have an impact, and that's the type of thing the unexpected things that unpacked on the likes of our project that we could never force for China in the future or in the past.
Paul Gosling:Yes. But equally, of course, I mean, we've seen as a result of Brexit that arrangements between Great Britain and the island of Ireland and particular Rubble Republic have changed. But equally, they've not changed in the lot way a lot of people that support Brexit would have wanted, and so there was a big demand from parts of the community for a border to be tight between the North and the South. That didn't happen instead. The trade border has been created between the island of Ireland and Great Britain, and it may well be that when people call for a tightening of the common travel arrangements, what will happen is stronger controls on passengers between the island of Ireland and the island of Great Britain.
Gerard Deane:Yeah. Okay. Well, we'll we'll wait and see. It's early days on that one. Yes.
Gerard Deane:Okay. Sarah, wanna bring you you've been sitting there smiling the whole time thinking, my god. That sounds like an amazing project that I came on at near the end. But the you arrived in in Holywell as we were about to do the final piece of research on the project or as the project was winding up and we had commissioned Lusatalk. They do a piece of research on cross border attitudes on what was the main what was your impression of the project, first of all, as you came in, and then what were the main findings from the research?
Sara Duddy:I suppose whenever I joined, which was about a year ago, I was really impressed just the amount of research that had already gone before and the extensive community engagement as well. The fact that this wasn't Holywell imposing what they thought people wanted to find out about. There there was actual real genuine engagement, listening to the fears, the concerns, the the questions of the community that you were engaging with, and then going and binding out your commission and research if the data wasn't there. So I joined Holywell just as listed talk where, you know, looking at some of the research that Paul had done around this cross border Northwest cooperation. You know, what what was in place, and was there an appetite for greater cooperation, integration across a number of areas?
Sara Duddy:And I think some of the conversations in those early days when we were speaking to Lissa Talk was, how are we gonna capture the views of people on both sides of the border? Who's the target audience or the target people in this poll that we wanna hear from? So that was really important that the results would actually reflect the people who would be impacted, whose opinion we really wanted to to hear from. And the findings, you know, there was I was first of all, I was overwhelmed and just the metadata. No.
Sara Duddy:I think if we were we got it in February, and we could we're now in June, and you could probably spend from there then, you know, analyzing it, and getting through, you know, the different demographic breakdowns, age differences, political community backgrounds, and, you know, a really nuanced wealth of of data and information, but there was headlines there and and sort of key takeaways that we then have used now to inform other work that that Holywell's involved in. So I suppose one of the main questions or the top question that we asked was, you know, well, the the whole Northwest Of Ireland should be seen as a single economic subregion, and that this should be recognized for The UK and Irish governments. You know, we asked people, is this what they wanted? And over two thirds of people says that it should be recognized in its own right as an economic subregion. Then we kinda looked further on specific issues such as health, transport, etcetera.
Sara Duddy:There was a rate of 84% of people on both sides of the border felt that there there was a need for an integrated cross border approach to health services within this Northwest economic subregion. You know, they felt that that would be beneficial. So that's, you know, 84%. Huge. That's Yeah.
Sara Duddy:Huge. You know, transport, even bigger, 90%. 90%. Like, that's that's crazy numbers. But it just you know, going back to what Paul said, there's people recognizing the real faults or flaws or challenges just navigating the Northwest.
Sara Duddy:And if we had a bit more structure and thought of it as a cross border region, then things you know, people's lives would be better. You know? People work, love, socialize on both sides of the border, and it seems nonsensical that we have two completely different structures in place. Mhmm. You know?
Gerard Deane:Right. And it it makes it a more attractive region is I've heard John Kelby talking about this when you look on a a regional basis, you move from talking about a 100,000 or a 110,000 people in a council area, a 140, I think it might be, to 300,000, nearly half 1,000,000, you know, the further you go, and that makes it more attractive for investment pool and things like that as well.
Paul Gosling:Yes. But one of the problems, negatives that we found in the research that we undertook as as part of the the cross border study is the fact that we've got two investment agencies that don't really communicate very well together, that have different criteria, that don't have data that is easily compared. So neither Invest NI nor IDA Ireland recognizes this economic single region as such, nor do they properly promote it, recognizing all the skills available on the travel to work area and that clearly is a negative in terms of attracting investment to Derry under the regional Northwest.
Gerard Deane:So as we wind down then, it's like we held a final conference and around others to talk stuff, and we give out copies of Paul's reports, etcetera. But the whole time that we've been winding down future relationship conversations project, we've been starting a new project that's looking at the same issue, the forward thinking. Talk us through a wee bit about that and also and the knowledge that we're gonna do a full podcast on the forward thinking project and the impact that it's had.
Sara Duddy:Dear, dropping a swoop. Yeah. The forward thinking project is a SCUPB Peace Plus funded project. It's part of the Derride, Straban, Duster Council Peace Plus local action plan, and it's their flagship dialogue project. And it again, it's focused on the constitutional future question.
Sara Duddy:But this time, you know, it did I I have to say we really took the learning from FRC in terms of bringing in expertise, engaging with the participants, not assuming the areas of interest that people may have, but actually listen to them and then trying to find out information that can inform the the debate. But a big part of that project was the study visits. So we took a cohort of participants to Scotland just before Christmas last year. We went to the parliament. We we spent two days and met a whole range of of different, stakeholders, campaigners, politicians, etcetera, and just learned about not just their referendum, in terms of independence, but also where that debate does now, and the issues that are important to Scottish people.
Sara Duddy:And I should say that was an advance of the most recent elections. You know, we we have seen them at we've now, like, seen the SNP again really, really strong on the on that independence agenda. We also recently took 27 people to the Basque region, visited parliament, met victims and survivors, met community organizations, a whole range of different views on the independence debate. And, as a post conflict society, it was interesting to draw comparisons on how that has impacted their campaign. But what can we learn here?
Sara Duddy:I think, although we're coming towards the end of that project, there's such an appetite to keep it going, and they further develop the conversations, defer, you know, update the learn and update the research. And I think people are more willing to sort of get in a room and and have really difficult challenging conversations. And and one of the things as the newbie here at Holywell, they love is the fact that we are seen as that safe space. You know, it's not a we're not like a fluffy community organization where we all hug each other. You know?
Sara Duddy:There's actually really difficult challenge and conversations that go on, and it's really nice to be part of that and to see that work and the kinda outworkings of that.
Gerard Deane:So we're gonna continue that project and a new iteration. Yeah. And I think we're gonna be looking at one of the assumptions that people make around the conversation about the the constitutional question. We're gonna look south.
Sara Duddy:Yeah. Well, that's what we hope subject to fondness, a lot of this work is. And I think we were really inspired by the recent workshop with Emma Rooney from European Movement Ireland, where they have sort of looked at the different views on different issues north and south of the border, and even things like which social media platforms people get their information from. You know, I would never thought there would be such a big difference between both sides of the border. So the next RV is to go and sort of bring cohorts from both sides of the the Irish border to sort of listen to each other and learn from each other and see what's the issues that we have in common that may be important when people if we ever get a situation where there is a border pool.
Sara Duddy:And homage is not on people's agendas either. And I think it's important not just to inform the public, you know, the the people who'll be voting, but also policymakers and decision makers. You know, sometimes there's a bit of disconnect or disengagement. And, again, one of the things I liked about Holywell is the fact that people feel comfortable having those conversations with and in front of us.
Gerard Deane:Yeah. I I think we're gonna cast the assumption too that there's a a sense that everybody in the republic just wants a united Ireland again. Yeah. And I think that's gonna be really interesting conversation as well.
Sara Duddy:Absolutely.
Gerard Deane:Okay. So if I had to ask AG for a takeaway from the project, the future relationship conversations, I'll start with you, Paul. What would you what would your main takeaway be?
Paul Gosling:I do think that it's been an excellent program of work. I we've heard from experts. It's been really valuable input, and I think it's very you know, we need to recognize the the valuable contribution of units as well as people who want constitute constitutional change. And I think that willingness both to engage on an open basis, but also to learn internationally. I think one of the the risks we have in Northern Ireland is we look inward too much, and that certainly is something that's happening over the last few days, except other people are looking at us as well in a very negative way.
Paul Gosling:But we, in this program, have looked at lessons from Thailand, from Spain, from Switzerland, from The United States and Canada, and I think that is extremely valuable. And I think, you know, similarly forward thinking has been doing something very similar in terms of looking outward, and I think that's the value of the work that Holywell has been doing.
Gerard Deane:Daryl. Anything different for you, Sarah?
Sara Duddy:I think that well, two things. Just keep listening, actively listening. And the other thing is data and information and research and stats are not static. You know, they capture a moment in time. And one of the things I liked about this project is some of the people the forward thinking project is some of the people we met or you met in terms of future relationship conversations came back and updated the forward thinking participants in terms of how attitudes on particular issues have changed.
Sara Duddy:And I think that's something that's valuable as well to sort of not take a status set as that's it. Yeah. Game over. You know, it changes and people's reaction to things and priorities change too.
Paul Gosling:Yeah. And I think one of the other elements to that is that within the peace process analysis sector, too much we talk about CNR and PUL, and I think in particular, the lucid talk has broken down very interesting ways that actually these are not blocks. There is a difference between the c and the n and the r, and there's very much a difference between the p and the u and the l, and I think that needs to be drilled into much more.
Gerard Deane:Yeah. I do think we need to get the nuance of the conversation because we do make broad assumptions when we're talking about this issue for sure. But, look, thank you both. Thank you both for that summary. I I found it really useful, found the whole project really useful over the last few years, and I'm really looking forward to our next iteration of the forward thinking project.
Gerard Deane:So thanks to our funders, the department for foreign affairs, and our core funders, the commuter relations council for Northern Ireland, To everybody that took part on the project, came to seminars, helped we researched. We're on the advisory panel. There are too many of you still lost, but thank you all, and look out for a Comencer podcast that will be on the Forward Thinking Project. Chat to you soon.