The decision of the Republic's two scouting organisations to investigate a merger "is really because scouting is scouting," according to Mr John T. Murphy. He is chairman of a steering committee set up on Sunday by Catholic Scouts of Ireland (CSI) and the once predominantly-Protestant Scouting Association of Ireland (SAI) to prepare proposals for a merger. The new association is expected to be called Scouting Ireland.
Merger proposals are to be presented to the associations next May. If these are agreed, they would lead to the new association being set up in May 2000. The Scouting Association of Northern Ireland (SANI) will have observers on the steering committee.
"Young people today are not interested in the colour of the uniforms or what religion their colleagues belong to," said Mr Murphy, "what they are interested in is scouting activities."
He agreed, however, that the Belfast Agreement had created a climate whereby ideas which would normally have taken years to bring to fruition were being acted upon now.
Scouting, as a worldwide phenomenon, began in 1908, when Lord Baden-Powell founded the first scouts' movement at Brown Sea, near the Isle of Wight.
Within six months of its founding in England scouting had arrived in Ireland. The first SAI units were set up in Dublin and Dundalk, and were closely associated with British army garrisons wherever they were set up in Ireland. A consequence was that Catholic boys did not join.
In 1927 Father Tom Farrell, a curate in Dolphin's Barn in Dublin, set up the Catholic Boy Scouts of Ireland. It was encouraged by the Catholic Church. In parishes where it was set up the local Catholic curate was the automatic scout leader.
In the South, through the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s, both scouts associations lived separate existences while carrying out the same activities. The CBSI was a 32-county organisation, while the SAI operated only in the South. In the North there was SANI.
Membership of the CBSI averaged about 5,000 for the whole island during those early decades, while SAI's (26-county) membership was about 2,000.
As with recent events, both southern organisations were brought together through the influence of outsiders. In the early 1960s the World Organisation of Scouting Movements (WOSM), an international body representing scouts in 130 countries, decided that each country could send only one representative group to its international jamborees.
At the time there was a proliferation of scouting groups internationally, with seven in Belgium and four in France, for instance. WOSM's demands led to the creation of the Federation of Irish Scouting Associations in 1965, to which both the CBSI and the SAI were affiliated and to which SANI sent observers.
Another advance came in the early 1970s when the Irish associations agreed to accept girls as members. In 1973 the CBSI decided that people of any religion could join, though it has retained its "Catholic" title. (In 1965 it had been decided that a lay person, rather than a Catholic priest, should be leader of each unit).
In 1985 a "memo of agreement" was signed by the three associations on the island. This involved them in running a series of international jamborees together.
The first took place in Portumna, Co Galway that year. It was attended by 10,000 scouts, 4,000 from outside the island. It was a great success and was followed by similar jamborees in 1989, 1993 and last year.
Working closely together on these projects brought home to members of the associations, at all levels, just how much they had in common.
This focus on the positive prompted the resolutions passed by both associations on Sunday. Scouting Ireland SAI (a name it adopted in 1994), at a meeting in Dublin, voted unanimously in favour of the resolution setting up a steering committee with the aim of merger, while in Waterford 92 per cent of Scouting Ireland CSI (a name it adopted in 1996) did likewise.
Currently Scouting Ireland CSI has 40,000 members, greatly increased with the admission of girls, while Scouting Ireland SAI has about 10,000 members. In the North SANI has 8,000 members.
