IN June 1926, a doctor based in Fermanagh, Dr John Caraher from Tempo, requisitioned an ambulance from the Enniskillen Board of Guardians to transport a maternity patient across the border to the Coombe Hospital in Dublin, where she recovered.

After being criticised for doing so, he responded that there was nowhere in Northern Ireland where the patient could be treated and declared that “medicine knew no boundaries”.

Common sense subsequently prevailed and the Enniskillen Board of Guardians allowed for ambulances to cross the border if necessary, and ambulance drivers were granted Free State driving licenses.

Another common sense approach to cross-border cooperation is the Shared Island Initiative, which funds more than 35 projects including healthcare ones, such as the Daisy Lodge respite and therapeutic centre for children with cancer, cross-border emergency responses, and nursing education.

Heads of state lead by example on Anglo-Ireland relations - The Irish News view

Critics of Micheál Martin claim the Shared Island Initiative that he devised in his first term as taoiseach in 2020 is an attempt to abdicate from his responsibility to advocate for a united Ireland.

Former diplomat Ray Bassett recently claimed there is a timidness about the initiative he finds unsettling and it is “being used as an excuse to avoid the prospect of a border poll”.

At his Fianna Fáil ard fheis address last Saturday, exactly 100 years after the party’s inaugural public meeting, the taoiseach refuted those claims, saying: “In line with the........

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