If you thought that the MetroLink was pricey, it’s nothing compared to cost of a united Ireland
TWO weeks and two different academic reports about what it might take to get a united Ireland.
I tend to side with Leah – a woman who was quoted in the research conducted by Jennifer Todd and Joanne McEvoy – who, when it was suggested that the unification debate was considered ‘a hot topic’, shot back: ‘By whom? Because I don’t know anybody outside of certain political groups where this is a hot topic.’ Indeed. Nonetheless, the reports threw up some interesting results. Of course, the one that grabbed all the headlines was the paper by the Institute of International and European Affairs (IIEA), which came to the bald conclusion that slotting Ireland back together again would cost €20billion, every year for 20 years.
Blooming heck. How much is that MetroLink to Dublin Airport supposed to cost again?
The consequences of such a massive outlay were equally grim, according to the analysis by John FitzGerald of Trinity College and Edgar Morgenroth of DCU, and would include a ‘dramatic increase’ in taxation, substantial cuts to public expenditure and increases in social welfare spending.
‘Even though Ireland has a much higher national income, funding the needs [of the people of the North] in a united Ireland would put huge financial pressure on the people of Ireland, resulting in an immediate major reduction in their living standards,’ said Professor FitzGerald.
Lots of voices were quick to rubbish the research, including Sinn Fein’s Pádraig Mac Lochlainn and Caoimhe Archibald, who is the Minister for Finance for the North.
‘Economic performance in the North has suffered enormously as a result of partition and more recently the negative impact of Brexit,’ Minister Archibald said in a statement.
She added that ‘reunification would best serve Ireland’s ecoa nomic interests and would deliver economic and social benefits for the whole island’.
And he pointed to research done by Professor Kurt Huebner, who worked on German reunification and looked at the model they used, and how it could be applied to Ireland.
His acclaimed research, Minister Archibald said, ‘reported that Irish unity could boost the all-island economy by €35billion over eight years.
‘The key now is planning and preparation,’ she added.
Preparation? Hold up, are we actually there yet?
Maybe we should take another look at the other academic report that was recently released – the result of five years of research by Joanne McEvoy, of the University of Aberdeen, and Jennifer Todd, of UCD.
This report, titled ‘Mapping Diversity, Negotiating Differences: Constitutional Discussions on a Shared Island’, delivered some far more nuanced revelations, after the authors ‘realised that we needed to talk to lots of those diverse people North and South who hadn’t got engaged in debates on Irish unity and whose perspectives no one really knew about’.
Included were some women’s groups, who got tetchy at questions about unity and constitutional change.
‘When I hear people talk about united Ireland, it’s a very ideological discussion,’ one participant said. ‘That doesn’t really cut the mustard.
‘You’ve people going, “Oh yes, absolutely”, and they’ve no sense of what the reality or the practicality of the lived experience is like, or would be like.’
This participant, called Anne, added: ‘You’ve to be very clear, are we having practical conversations, are we having ideological conversations.’
Barbara, from a rural location in the North, said that for her to make an informed decision about a united Ireland, she would need to know exactly how her life would change if she said yes. ‘How is life down South? How does that work?’ she asked. ‘I’m sure somebody in southern Ireland would want to know how things worked up here because it will obviously be some type of compromise between our two lives, I’m assuming.’
AND that’s the thing – of course there are the exact same concerns, on both sides of the border, as everywhere else: cost of living, lack of housing, access to healthcare and decent education for your kids. But how would these two systems be melded together? And, forgive the crassness of the question, who stands to benefit the most?
The answer to that was neatly highlighted again this week by Robert Watt, the highest-paid public servant in the Republic.
The Department of Health’s secretary general, already notorious for his salary shenanigans, is set to benefit from seven pay rises that will run into 2026 and bring his annual pay packet up to around €326,000.
In the North, their highest-paid public servant is Jayne Brady, head of the civil service, who is currently on €207,500 a year.
And the discrepancies in state pay don’t end there.
Scaremongering and ideological rhetoric are equally irritating. It’s the proven practicalities, as all those women elucidated, that will count.