It is no longer a question of whether, but when and how Ireland and its people will be united. Since the Good Friday/Belfast Agreement (GFA) of 1998, the momentum towards Irish unity has intensified, propelled most dramatically in recent years by the departure of Britain from the EU. It has also been driven by economic and social progress in the South and by political and demographic trends in the North.
The challenges posed by the process of uniting two societies on the island – both with different traditions and diverse communities, contrasting health and education systems, and dual economies – are immense. They are, however, not insurmountable, and the benefits of reunification, as illustrated by the experience when divided countries have come together in other parts of the world, can be hugely rewarding.
The GFA, supported by a clear majority of people in both parts of the island, is a negotiated settlement underpinned in Irish, British and international law, which ensures that national reunification can only be achieved with the consent of a majority of people in the North. That commitment is balanced by an equally significant guarantee that the Irish people, North and South, can vote for a united Ireland in binding referendums. The decision to call a referendum will be made by the British government on the recommendation of its secretary of state for Northern Ireland when he or she considers that there is a real possibility that a simple majority of people in the North would support a proposal for Irish unity.
With the GFA approaching its 25th anniversary in 2023, the public debate on the timing of a referendum is well underway. Discussions on how to prepare for the outcome of a decision by voters, North and South, in favour of reunification have also commenced. For several years, detailed deliberations on the constitutional future of Ireland in the wake of a positive vote for unity have been taking place among academics, in research institutes and universities, and, increasingly, in media and political circles on the island and abroad.
At the centre of these discussions is the key question of accommodating in a unified Ireland, the large numbers of people in the North who identify as British and unionist. By definition, these people oppose the breaking of the link with the UK and its political, legal and cultural institutions and traditions.
In the 2016 UK Brexit referendum, 56 per cent of those who voted in Northern Ireland (including a considerable number of those who had previously supported unionist parties) expressed their wish to remain in the EU; while across the rest of Britain, the majority of those who voted chose to leave. As protracted negotiations on future trade and other arrangements continued between the British government and the EU on the terms of their separation, the numbers of those in NI wishing to retain EU citizenship further increased, according to an opinion poll by The Detail news website in February 2020, eight months before the EU–UK Withdrawal Agreement was made.
The impact and disruption of Brexit on business, trade, farming, international travel and other aspects of daily life in the North became apparent following the implementation of the Withdrawal Agreement in the first weeks of 2021, and the concerns about the long-term benefits, or otherwise, of the UK decision to leave the EU continued to grow.
An opinion poll by LucidTalk, published in the Sunday Times in late January 2021, found that 47 per cent of respondents in Northern Ireland wished to remain in the UK, with 42 per cent in favour of a united Ireland and 11 per cent undecided. Some 50.7 per cent said there should be a vote on whether NI remained in the UK at some point before 2025 (Sunday Times, 23 January 2021). A further poll by LucidTalk for BBC Spotlight in April showed that 37 per cent of respondents believed there should be a border poll within five years, with a further 29 per cent supporting a poll ‘at some point after 5 years’ (Spotlight, 20 April 2021).
The Protocol on Ireland/Northern Ireland – commonly known as the Northern Ireland protocol – agreed during the negotiations, allowed the North to remain within the EU free trade and customs areas, but business and farming organisations in particular, expressed real fears about their loss of revenue and income as a consequence of Brexit. Many NI citizens who previously identified exclusively as British applied for Irish passports in order to circumvent potential obstacles to their free movement for work, study and leisure in EU states under the new dispensation.
During April, there were protests in loyalist areas across the North, although these were much smaller than those during the conflict years. There were riots against the police; some vehicles, including a bus, were burnt; and there were attempts by gangs of young men to engage with nationalist youths across the peace line in west Belfast. The protestors raised objections to their partial detachment from Britain under the protocol and to their continued relationship with the EU under the terms of the trade deal. On 1 November 2021, another bus was burnt out in Newtownabbey, just north of Belfast, in protest against the continuing protocol.
Unionist political leaders unsuccessfully called on the British government to override the protocol due to the disruption caused in the early months of 2021 when there was a significant delay and reduction in the importation of, often essential, consumer goods from the UK into the North due to the bureaucratic and other difficulties arising from the Brexit deal.
By September 2021, a substantial increase was recorded in the trade of goods, in both directions between North and South, as manufacturers and other suppliers found new markets for their products and fresh sources of supply on the island. Imports from the North to the South increased by 60 per cent over 2020, while there was a 45 per cent rise in the opposite direction following the disruption to trade with the UK. Two months later, the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI) told an Oireachtas committee that imports from North to South rose by 90 per cent due to the withdrawal of Britain from the EU. This accounted for 5 per cent of total imports into the South, up from 1.5 per cent in 2015.
Just as Brexit was a catalyst for changing attitudes to a referendum on, and raised the prospects of, a united Ireland, the catastrophic and tragic loss of life and economic disruption wreaked by the coronavirus since it first emerged in early 2020 led to intense public debate in Ireland over the potential benefits of a single health service on the island.
The failure of the authorities in the North and South to develop an all-island response to the crisis was criticised by public health experts as gross negligence, resulting in many unnecessary Covid-related deaths and causing debilitating illness and suffering to tens of thousands of people. By early 2021, the death toll from Covid-19 of some 2,800 in the South and over 2,000 in the North exceeded the number who lost their lives during Troubles. A year later the number of Covid-related deaths was approaching 10,000 across the island, according to the CSO and the equivalent body in the North, the Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency (NISRA).
In addition, the introduction of progressive legislation to permit same-sex marriage and abortion over recent years has marked a change in the perception of the South as a socially-backward state, overly influenced by the hierarchy and teachings of the Catholic Church. The successes of the feminist and LGBTQ+ movements, and wider political and civic society, in the constitutional referendums on both issues built upon the radical departures of the 1970s and 1980s, when legislation to allow for divorce, contraception and homosexuality were first introduced.
By the 1990s, the dominance of the Catholic Church over the reproductive rights of women and the private lives of citizens was already diminished. This was not least because of the disclosures of appalling mistreatment, including sexual and other physical abuse, of children in its care, of women in mother and baby homes and other facilities, and of boys and young men in detention centres over previous decades in the South. Inquiries in the North revealed similar abuse in state and Church-run institutions of both main religions. This contributed to a gradual but significant weakening of Church control over people’s lives; a reduction in the numbers participating in religious services and organisations; and a growing movement towards the secularisation of education, North and South.
These fundamental and ongoing social changes were mirrored by previously unthinkable shifts in political allegiance in the South, with a steady decline in support for the parties that had traditionally dominated electoral politics since the foundation of the state, a trend most evident in the results of the general election in February 2020.
In the North, election results since 2017 have reflected a narrowing of the gap in support for the larger unionist and nationalist parties and a substantial growth in the numbers supporting neither. In elections to the Northern Ireland Assembly, to local government and to the Westminster and European parliaments over recent years, the nationalist and other non-unionist vote has equalled and, on occasion, surpassed the combined support for the unionist parties.
As an insight into demographic trends for the overall population of the North, the figures for school, university and other third-level education enrolment suggest a continuing growth in the number of those who identify as Irish/Catholic/nationalist and a corresponding decline of those from the British/Protestant/unionist community. A September 2020 article in the Irish Times noted that ‘The North’s Department of Education figures for the year 2019/2020 show that from nursery up to second level, Catholics made up 50.6 per cent of the schools’ population … while Protestants made up 32.3 per cent’. The ratio is similar in the enrolments for university and other third-level education.
While demographics are an unreliable indicator of political choice, the 2021 census in the North is expected to confirm this trend, along with an increase in the number of people declaring their nationality as Northern Irish rather than Irish or British.
None of these trends can diminish or deny the prospect that a very large section, and possibly a majority, of people in the North who vote in a forthcoming referendum on Irish unity will reject the proposition and assert their wish to remain part of the UK. However, the economic, political, social and demographic trends post-Brexit, suggest that there is a greater likelihood now, than at any other period since the partition of Ireland, that a majority of people in the North will choose to sever its constitutional ties to the Britain and to join an agreed, unitary state.
In 2017, the EU Council of Ministers agreed that, if the people of Ireland, North and South, endorse a proposal for reunification, the new country will automatically be admitted to full EU membership. In advance of such an exercise in self-determination, as envisaged in the GFA, prospective voters should, at the very least, have an idea of the nature of the future constitutional, political, economic and social arrangements on the island.
In the event of a vote for unity, the large numbers of those who identify as unionist are entitled to certain assurances and guarantees, legally or constitutionally enshrined, which will protect their rights in this new Ireland. This includes their right to hold British and Irish citizenship, as set out in the GFA.
This right was reinforced following a legal action by Derry-born Emma DeSouza, who successfully challenged the insistence by the Home Office that she was a British citizen. DeSouza commenced the action after the Home Office denied an application by her US-born husband, Jake, for a European Economic Area residence card. She argued that, under the terms of the GFA, she was entitled to be recognised as Irish, and so held the same rights as all other Irish citizens – her husband was thus eligible for residency in the North. In May 2020, after five years of legal argument and in a significant climbdown from its earlier position, the British government accepted that all Irish and British citizens of NI will be regarded as EU citizens for immigration/family unification purposes.
Equally, the GFA states that those from both jurisdictions have a right to live, and see their children grow, in a country where all citizens can avail of fair and equal access to housing, health, education and other public services, to equality under the law notwithstanding their gender, race or religious affiliation and to work and live without exploitation or discrimination.
That is what the majority of people on the island decided when they voted, in May 1998, to support the GFA, which asserted that, whatever choice the people make in a referendum, it ‘shall be founded on the principles of full respect for, and equality of, civil, political, social and cultural rights, of freedom from discrimination for all citizens, and of parity of esteem and of just treatment for the identity, ethos, and aspirations of both communities.’
Since that decision, the population of the South has increased by over 1.4 million, to 5 million people, while in the North it has reached over 1.9 million, according to figures from the CSO and NIRSA respectively. The number of non-Irish nationals living in the South rose to 645,500 by 2020, or just under 13 per cent of the total population and has made for a more diverse, multicultural society.
There are huge challenges ahead for those who want to create a fitting place for these, almost 7 million, people, and in convincing a majority in the North that a united Ireland will be in their best long-term interests. While the trends, as outlined above, suggest movement towards a unitary state in Ireland, there is no agreement as to when the mechanism to achieve this objective, a referendum, should be triggered. Nor is there agreement on what constitutional and political structure, and what sort of society, people will choose in a future border poll.
In the following pages, I examine what such a new Ireland might look like based on the opinions and experiences of various informed and engaged individuals across the island, in Europe and the US on the challenges involved in building a new Ireland. This will incorporate analysis on constitutional matters, the development of the all-island economy, new health, education and other public services, and what such fundamental change means for the diverse cultures and identities that inhabit the island. The work will also track the intensifying debate on the timing of, and preparations for, a unity referendum as it has developed since the decision by UK voters to leave the EU in 2016, and the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on the health services in both jurisdictions since March 2020.