Creating a space for cooperation: Soft spaces, spatial planning and cross-border cooperation on the island of Ireland

Politically, the island of Ireland is divided between two territorial jurisdictions, the Republic of Ireland in the South and Northern Ireland in the North. Northern Ireland (NI) is part of the United Kingdom while the Republic of Ireland (RoI) has independent status as a unitary parliamentary republic. Both jurisdictions lie within the European Union. The population of NI is approximately 1.8 million (3% of the total population of the UK) whereas the population of RoI is approximately 4.6 million. The partition of the island dates from 1922. Between the late 1960s and the late 1990s, NI was marked by armed conflict between republican and loyalist paramilitaries. While republicans sought a united Ireland, with one jurisdiction for the whole island, loyalists sought to maintain NI’s existing status as a region or province within the United Kingdom. Loyalists drew support from the Protestant, unionist2 majority; the republicans from the nationalist Catholic minority. In this context, NI has developed a distinct ‘political consciousness’ characterised by ‘ethno-national domination and resistance’ and a mentality of competing, mutually incompatible territorial claims and socio-spatial imaginaries (O’Dowd and McCall, 2008: 86; McCall, 2011).