Preaching to the Converted

I attended an Ireland’s Future gathering at St Mary’s College on the subject of the road map to a border poll which turned out, to no surprise, to be an evangelical lecture about the virtues of Irish unification. As a “Persuadable” I am up for a thoughtful, socially progressive, and economically progressive-driven road map, but this was not it. This event was designed to appeal to the converted a “fait accompli”, out of which would evolve a social, political, and economic utopia. There was no critique of the process, the vision or the public policy agenda that should have underpinned this road map. I commented that the road map as laid out had the same amount of credibility as Long John Silver’s map in Treasure Island which was not well received. Nationalists and Unionists were akin to the two tribes of Israel, missing from those who would see themselves as “socialists” was the term working class. To remind the esteemed panel, one of the great tragedies of our past is that working people were pitted against each other based on the narrative that, working-class William and working-class Seamus had nothing in common. Brian got rounds of applause for quoting Socrates and saying, “It was over Unionism”. The panel, on the one hand, highlighted the failures of majoritarianism and then went on to blow the demographic dog whistle. At no stage was there a comment about building an island on shared values, no mention of the complexities of integrating public services, no talk about an Ireland built on a secular constitution and more importantly no talk about how to build social cohesion. They could not even agree as members of the same pressure group on the “New Ireland “structure, unitary or balkanised.  When I challenged the economic assertions by Brendan O’Leary at an event organised by Ireland’s Future in May 2023 and their own economic report, the response was, “I know nothing” and we stand over the veracity of our report. I agree with Niall that the protestant hegemony created in 1921 was both a political and economic failure. However, the idea that the Eu which is £10.0 billion short after Brexit and the US which is engaging in economic nationalism are going to throw money at Irish unification, on top of funding a European war is, fanciful. Just a few other economic facts to consider Ireland has been a net contributor to Eu funds for the last 3 years, Ireland’s public debt per capita at €44,000 is one of the highest in the world, 60% of Northern GDP comes out of the public sector with the public sector making up 27% of the workforce against 15% in Ireland. Civil servants make up 1:70 of the population in NI and 1:110 in ROI. Finally, I suggest to the panel members read Paul Gosling’s report and the paper from the former Governor of Ireland Central Bank Patrick Honohan called “Is Ireland really the most prosperous country in Europe “and remember economics is a social science.

Suneil the Persuadable

6^th August 2023