Micheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail)
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The Government’s Shared Island initiative is working to take up the full potential of the Good Friday Agreement to enhance cooperation and connection on the island, and engage with all communities and traditions to build consensus around a shared future.

To support development of a more ambitious agenda for cooperation and connection on the island, the Shared Island unit in my Department is commissioning a wide-ranging research programme, working with the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI), the National Economic and Social Council (NESC), the Irish Research Council (IRC), and other partners.

Strengthening social, economic, cultural and political links on the island and the promotion of all-island approaches to the strategic challenges facing Ireland, North and South, are key objectives. North/South and East/West collaboration is a key feature of the research work.

My Department is operating a joint research programme with the ESRI on ‘The Economic and Social Opportunities from Increased Cooperation on the Shared Island’ with a funding commitment of €220,000 in 2021 and 2022. Research published to date has focused on education systems and outcomes, primary healthcare, foreign direct investment and the services economy. Research in 2022 is examining productivity, renewable energy supports, migrant integration, and early years care and education on the island.

The National Economic and Social Council was requested by my Department to prepare a comprehensive report to Government on Shared Island, which was published on 12 April, following broad consultation by NESC across the island. NESC made recommendations on a range of environmental, social and economic issues, which the Government will positively consider in consultation with our partners in the Executive and UK Government. My Department provides annual funding to NESC for the delivery of its work programme and there was no specific funding for the Shared Island research work.

The Shared Island unit in my Department has partnered with the Irish Research Council (IRC) to issue a competitive call for academic contributions to the Shared Island research programme, as part of the IRC’s New Foundations scheme, with project awards of up to €20,000. Eleven successful research projects were announced by the IRC in December 2021 in areas extending across culture, science, education, law, equality and community relations. Final reports will be published through the second half of this year. A second Shared Island funding call with the Irish Research Council will issue later this month.

The Shared Island unit has also partnered with the Standing Conference on Teacher Education, North and South (SCoTENS), and a funding call was conducted for action-oriented research, to inform professional and policy development considerations in the education sector on a shared island basis across themes of educational attainment and curriculum delivery. Five projects received funding awards from SCoTENS of up to €25,000. Two projects on educational attainment issues will report in Q4 2022 and three on curriculum delivery in Q4 2023.

The Shared Island unit in my Department is also working with other Departments to co-commission research on Shared Island policy priorities for Government. The first instance of this is with the Department of Transport which issued a tender in January for research to examine the safety, regulatory and infrastructure frameworks for renewable hydrogen on the island of Ireland, and the result of this tender will be confirmed later this month.

Finally, the Shared Island unit has commissioned research to contribute to the Shared Island Dialogue series. Professor Deirdre Heenan conducted scoping research for the unit on ‘Collaborating on Healthcare on an All-Island Basis’ which was published as a discussion paper for the Shared Island Dialogue on Healthcare in July 2021.

Funding commitments to date for the Shared Island research programme led by my Department are set out in tabular form below.

Separately, the Government allocated €40 million from the Shared Island Fund to the Department of Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science for delivery of the new North South Research Programme, which is administered by the Higher Education Authority (HEA). In March, a total of €37.3 million in awards by the HEA to sixty-two collaborative research projects between academics and institutions in Ireland and in Northern Ireland were announced. The awards range in value from €200,000 over two years to €4 million over four years. A second call will be launched in 2023.

Shared Island unit research programme funding commitments*

	2021	2022 to date
ESRI	€220,000	€220,000
NESC	-	-
Irish Research Council	€220,000	€200,000
SCoTENS	€ 50,000	€ 75,000
Co-funding projects with other Departments		€ 50,000
Other research projects	€ 5,000
Total	€495,000	€545,000

*Payment of the above funding commitments to research partners is spread across calendar years, and funding is dependent on agreement of final costs for each research output.