REMARKS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE AT A CONFERENCE ON MEDIATION, “MEDIATION WORKS”, HOSTED BY THE MII
REMARKS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE AT A CONFERENCE ON MEDIATION, “MEDIATION WORKS”, HOSTED BY THE MEDIATORS’ INSTITUTE OF IRELAND
Dia dhaoibh a chairde. Tá mé buíoch díbh as an bhfáilte sin. Thanks to Karen Erwin [President of the MII] for inviting me to participate in today’s symposium and thank you all for that warm welcome. Just a few weeks ago I was at a well-attended conference on Collaborative Law and now almost within days another very impressive cohort has gathered to bring the good news that “Mediation Works.” It is no accident that these advances on traditional, adversarial modes of problem-solving are coming into their own alongside the generation which is manifestly the best problem-solving generation our island has ever produced.
In the sphere of macro politics the winner-takes-all method of dispute resolution has a history of serious limitations not to mention a harvest of often bitter long-term failure. Resolution of our own island conflict eluded generation after generation and provoked a legacy of violence, loss and mistrust which constantly reseeded the future with toxic spores. It was only when a fresh imagination was brought to bear that a more inclusive - you might say a mediated settlement - was arrived at and for those who point to its tortuous and protracted nature, its few decades in the making compare favourably to the previous eight centuries of abject failure. Today we have a peace wrought by a process that was inclusive of and sensitive to all the parties to the conflict. The integrity of that process gradually persuaded virtually all the protagonists, including the most recalcitrant, that 90 percent of something is a whole lot better than one hundred percent of nothing. Each side has emerged with dignity and respect. Each side has invested in the process and has ownership of the outcome. No angry loser is lurking, vengeful in the long grass. A shared future holds great possibilities for all.
You always knew it could, but old attitudes, cultures and practices die very hard and for mediation to garner the level of both interest and success that it has to date, has taken considerable faith and effort. Its value was, of course, revealed in the vexed area of family disputes where it was obvious that the sustaining of lifelong relationships around children and dependency was not always well-served by an adversarial system. At the collaborative law conference in Cork earlier this month, the Attorney General was emphatic about the ability of alternative forms of dispute resolution to maintain this critical human dignity in family law cases, and, of course, Carol Coulter’s Report on the Family Law Reporting Pilot Project, offers a range of recommendations to enhance the role of mediation across this area of law, recommendations which will be addressed, I understand, in the new Rules of the Circuit Court. While happiness and misery are not always easy to measure there can be little doubt that the experience of being an active participant in a process that drives towards consensus has to be a considerable improvement on being a passive participant in a process where outcomes are imposed with all the potential for longitudinal resentment that can seriously blight many lives, but especially the lives of children.
The wider application of mediation has also been an important part of the business of the Mediators’ Institute of Ireland in its nine short years of existence. Today, thanks to your pioneering efforts, mediation offers an alternative problem-solving tool in the commercial arena, in the workplace, in labour disputes, as part of the Social Partnership and before the Equality Tribunal. In fact the cooperation that has been developed between the Equality Tribunal and the Mediators Institute of Ireland has produced a very impressive set of statistics with three-quarters of the cases referred to mediation last year brought to closure through that process and a full 60% of them being directly resolved at the mediation table. By any measure, this is a hugely encouraging result which translates into a lot less stress, uncertainty and expense.
At the international level, the European Union represents the most successful example of the benefits that flow from operating within a culture of consensus rather than conflict. The single market, in particular, has been a stellar success, and in an ongoing effort to improve its efficiency, an intra-Community mediation framework has recently been established, promoting and encouraging mediation as a solution to disputes which might otherwise entail expensive and complicated court proceedings. This exciting development offers to expand mediation’s sphere of activities far beyond its limits of today and the enthusiasm with which the commercial world has embraced mediation is a convincing indication of its success.
Perhaps the most innovative and certainly the most controversial applications of the mediation approach are in macro-political, post-conflict reconciliation and in the micro-social field of restorative justice. A number of bodies both North and South are wrestling with these concepts and trying to navigate a pathway through the doubt and cynicism, the fear and reticence that these concepts can evoke. Here, our National Commission on Restorative Justice is considering a number of possible options for incorporating restorative justice into the Irish criminal justice system, in preparation for its final report due to be published next year. It would be wrong to prejudge the outcome of the Commission’s deliberations, but if mediated approaches are to be tested in such a highly charged atmosphere then undoubtedly the services of mediators of the highest level of skill, experience and integrity will be essential just as they already are in so many other areas. That is why this conference is necessary and reassuring. Here is a body striving for excellence in its services, anxious constantly to update and modernise in pursuit of best and most effective practice, willing to meet like this to share the growing body of expertise and skill so that it is distributed and used wisely and widely. Sharing wisdom is not like sharing a bar of chocolate. The maths are exponentially the opposite.
This conference follows on from a watershed period in the history of the Institute when it moved coherently out of an “early days” mode where proving your worth from a standing start was the challenge. Now as this conference asserts, the evidence is in that “Mediation Works” and there is a new level of confidence, the kind you expect from an accepted part of mainstream services. Your incorporation as a company, your review and accreditation of approved training courses, your review of your assessment requirements and all of the administrative changes that have accompanied this have placed the profession on a very sure and sound footing and placed at the service of our people a very different way of sorting our their problems. No winners, no losers but consensus builders, the tattered fragments of whose relationships are much more easily held together over the lifetime that inevitably follows a problem solved well - but for everyone concerned.
Gurb’ fada buan sibh ‘s go raibh míle maith agaibh.
Thank you.