What’s the point of reunification if Ireland keeps aping the UK instead of forging its own path?

I FIND it both exhilarating and terrif ying to see how Britain’s pathetic Brexit could accelerate the inevitable march for ward of Ireland’s reunification.

Sinn Fein are, of course, slogging it out to be at the forefront of that march; the vast majority of political representatives across the island of Ireland are members of a political party that has Ireland’s reunification as policy.

But, as wonderful as a peaceful reunification of our island would be, what kind of island would it be?

To what extent does Sinn Fein recall that its origins (and name) are entirely wound up in the concept of not just social and cultural but also economic independence from Britain?

The Republic is already one that, in my view, has continued to shout independence, while in various contexts quietly continuing to lazily ape (and be of t-times ripped off by) our neighbours over the water. British standards and British commerce continue to abound across our isle.

If we are so European, Irish and proud of it, why, then, do we put up with (and buy) British red-top media trash, welcome Manchester United more than Paris Saint Germain to Lansdowne Road and, in way too many professional and state department contexts, have a knee-jerk tendency to see what they are doing ‘over the water’ to help us decide what we do at home, as if in some way that is going to move us upwards and for ward. In many instances, it won’t.

Reunification would be amazing indeed; being Irish, European and confident, instead of quietly and lazily Little British, is more to the point.

ADAM O HAOADHA Dublin