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How much capital can you raise?
If any of us were asked this question we would most likely begin to think about our finances. But we might also need to take into account other possessions or assets that could enable us to raise money, perhaps through liquidising or using as collateral to support borrowing from financial institutions.
Not many of us would be likely to consider the value of our social capital as an asset to be taken into account. However, this type of asset can also be a powerful enabler towards the securing of resources and the achievement of objectives. It is more a feature of communities than individuals and denotes the benefit that can be derived from people’s association and connectedness with each other. As a theory of political science it has gained increasing attention and respectability over the past 20 years or so, particularly in the United States. It is described by one of its leading advocates (Robert Putnam, 1995) as ‘features of social life – networks, norms and trusts – that enable participants to act together more effectively to pursue shared objectives’. Social capital may be regarded as anything that facilitates individual or collective action. One of the best expressions of it can be seen in organizations that are formed and sustained by groups of people, acting voluntarily and without seeking personal profit, to provide benefits for themselves or for others. Such organizations are often based on a defined local area to which the participants feel some kind of association or loyalty. Putnam has identified the “vibrancy of social life” as seen in participation in such organizations as a critical component in effective local government.
When attending a meeting of NILGA (the Northern Ireland Local Government Association) in Belfast on Friday 4 April, I had the opportunity to ask the Minister for the Environment, Arlene Foster, how she saw the future of the proposed Omagh/Fermanagh council within the context of her new configuration of 11 district councils. I thought it particularly appropriate to pose the question since she had just announced that her department would now be undertaking a ‘critical mass analysis’ of the new administrations. This was not defined, but presumably it would mean examining issues of whether individual councils could provide the full range of services that she had just outlined to the meeting or whether certain functions should require to be delivered by groupings of councils, or maybe even centrally, in order to maximise ‘efficiency’. I pointed out that the new ‘South West Council’ with a population of just 105,000 was by far the smallest of the 11 in numerical terms yet it covers the largest geographical area. The next smallest, Dungannon/Cookstown/Magherafelt, has over 120,000 and the others range upwards to well over 200,000. I wanted to know if the critical mass analysis would be considering matters such as relationships within and between communities, social networks and people’s local identities and sense of place and if she thought these were relevant factors that local government should take account of and reflect. I also wanted to know if any adjustments might be made by the proposed boundary commission to redress anomalies such as the placing of Castlederg in the Derry City council area rather than within the hinterland of Omagh.
Rather than addressing my questions directly the Minister began by wondering aloud what might be the most appropriate name for this hybrid embryo and jokingly suggested perhaps ‘Greater Fermanagh’ might be a suitable choice. Whatever about the appropriateness of this suggestion, the Minister appeared to me to be implicitly acknowledging the importance of the Fermanagh identity – and rightly so in my opinion. The ancient territory of the Maguire, McManus, and McGrath chieftains has a proud history where so many of the influences that have shaped and moulded the character of its people are still to the fore – the lakes and islands; the crannógs and monastic sites; the mountains and the woodlands; the rivers and the valleys. Even the accents that indicate which side of Lough Erne you belong to are still clearly discernible by the accustomed hearer. The imposing castles such as Florencecourt and Castlearchdale and the ‘dreary steeples’ are mostly the product of the Plantation settlers but no less impressive for that. Nor are the Fosters any less entitled to take pride in the contribution that their ancestors have made to making Fermanagh a place that all her people can be proud to call home.
Fermanagh, like the rest of Ulster, was shired in 1585, completing the process of imposing the English legal system on Ireland which had begun nearly four centuries earlier with the shiring of the lands close to Dublin into a county unit for the administration of justice. It is worth noting that the Irish judicial system up to the present day is still based on the county system introduced at that time so that we continue to have county court judges in Northern Ireland and county coroners as well as other county quasi-judicial officers throughout the island of Ireland.
The county was the key unit in the administration of the Plantation of Ulster in the 17th century and the extensive records of that massive undertaking remain a rich source of information for students of the ancient place-names, many of which disappeared when the Ordnance Survey cartographers condensed the old divisions of tates and balliboes into manageable chunks that could be recorded easily on maps and in notebooks.
The development of a system of local government throughout Ireland during the 19th century brought about a strengthening of the county identity. In 1898 the administrative counties that eventually became County Councils were formed from the existing judicial counties. These remain very much the same in South up to the present time, despite the concoction of the new ‘counties’ of Finglas and Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown out of County Dublin in recent times. Here in the North the county councils were victims of the re-organisation of local government in 1973 - with the singular exception of Fermanagh, which not only survived in its entirety but even acquired a few townlands from Tyrone. It would appear that there are now designs to acquire of a lot more!
In 2002 the Northern Ireland Executive announced its intention to review local administration (the RPA) in order to make local government more ‘democratic’ and ‘accountable’, the criticism being that too much power was then concentrated in the hands of unelected ‘quangoes’. Bodies such as the Education & Library Boards, the Northern Ireland Housing Executive, the Health & Social Services Boards and some 150 other administrative bodies would be overhauled and possibly abolished. The so-called ‘democratic deficit’ would have to be addressed, so the argument ran. Omagh District Council established a working group to consider the implications to the RPA proposals. I had the privilege of chairing this committee, which was composed of councillors representing all parties.
Much of the language that featured in the early documentation contained terms borrowed from European legal theory. A new word was to be introduced into the language of administrative government here – subsidiarity – supposedly meaning that decision-makers should be close to the people affected by their decisions.
And another underpinning theory introduced was the one I have already mentioned – social capital.
In 2004 The Office of the First Minister and the Deputy First Minister commissioned a study into the relative strengths of social capital in the catholic and protestant communities in Northern Ireland (Social Capital, Collectivism-Individualism And Community Background In Northern Ireland, February 2004). The purpose was to evaluate the extent to which community infrastructure impacted on community development in each of the communities and the implications this might have for public policies. Why for example was there a seemingly greater uptake of grants and incentives to community action in working-class catholic communities than in protestant areas? This might be seen in the greater participation in voluntary community associations, credit unions, GAA clubs and similar activities in the nationalist sector as against local engagement in the unionist sector with more vertically structured organizations like the loyal orders and church-related groups where individualism was more to the fore than collective action. One of ways in which the effects of this have been tackled at district council level is by providing for a balanced cross-community membership composed of a mix of elected representatives and social partners in local strategy partnerships and other bodies that are empowered to allocate funding to community groups. It would appear to me, judging by the amount of funding that is now being sought by bodies such as the Orange Order from Omagh District Council’s Community Support scheme, that there is now a vastly increased awareness of the availability and benefits of grant-aid for community development within the unionist communities. I think it is fair to say that the policy of power-sharing practised by Omagh District Council, coupled with improved understanding between the representatives of the different communities arising out recent political developments, has fostered greater levels of trust and common purpose than existed heretofore.
In a paper entitled ‘Social Capital and County Identity in Ireland’ (July 2006) three academics from Trinity College Dublin suggested that county identity was one means of generating social capital and explored the way in which voluntary organizations use county identity to speak to their audiences and to attract resources. Based on research in County Cavan they showed how voluntary organizations within that county have generated social capital through reliance on the sense of sameness and connectedness that arises from their strong county identity. What the study showed was that an individual’s sense of what he/she is, or feels he/she is, can be shaped by their county identity through the perceived similarity which arises out of being from the same place - “A shared sense of place can create conditions for network generation and forming. It can also facilitate the organization of voluntary participation across different social groups within a county on the basis of an over-arching sense of similarity”. This would explain why people from any given county appear to have a kind of instinctive bond to each other that generates trust and loyalty not just to individuals concerned but to anything which is seen as promoting the shared values that people associate with their native communities and their county. Among the organizations included in the study were Cavan County GAA Board; Cavan Ploughing Association; Cavan-Monaghan Rural Development Co-operative and Bailieborough Drama Group. From their analysis of responses to in-depth interviews with representatives of these and other local organizations the authors concluded that county identity could be used to generate linking social capital where access to power or resources at county level are important, for example in seeking funding from an institution of local government or from local politicians. This will come as no surprise to those of us in Omagh District Council who, over the years, have been competing with Fermanagh District Council for investment and resources. The battle for the location of the acute hospital for the Rural West is just one example.
One of the more significant findings of the Cavan study was that respondents for one of the participating organizations (Enable Ireland - Cavan Early Years) reported that they were having some difficulties fund-raising locally because of the absence of a specific county identification in their brand. The authors suggest that being part of the national organization may not be sufficient in fostering relationships or in generating social capital within the county.
So what then is to be the effect of the carving up of our county of Tyrone as proposed under the Review of Public Administration by Arlene Foster? The members of Omagh District Council’s RPA Working Group did not need to rely on political scientists to tell them that the best option for the administration of local government here ought to be a restoration of a Tyrone county council. The personal experience of many of the councillors in organizations like the Tyrone Farming Society, the GAA, the Orange Order - and perhaps their frequent visits to the (Tyrone) County Hall for consultations with the various government department officials who are based there - would have provided them with a full appreciation of the importance that attaches to the Tyrone identity in so many aspects of local life.
EU principles – social partnerships/
social capital ofmdfm
