Who, on this forum, is in favour of a 32 county Republic?

m@cc@

Sleepy wrote: »

Actively against the notion.

The north has been too dependent on an even more bloated public sector than we have for decades, there's more violent thugs on both sides of the fence than I'd care to have as countrymen and finally just because I couldn't stand to see all the armchair terrorists in the republic so happy.

What an utterly ignorant post! Want to hazard a guess at why the public sector is the main source of jobs? Might it have something to do with a 30-year bombing campaign making NI look as attractive for investment as Damn Edna without make-up. It's still bloated, but give it time and it'll be back on it's feet. Furthermore, as a offshore state of the UK, of course it's going to be more difficult to manage. Unification would solve a lot of these problems.

Plus you're living in dreamland if you think there are more scumbags in Belfast than in Dublin or Limerick. Only difference is that in the North, they plant a flag on it.


To answer the OP's question, I am in favour of it but only when the will of both countries is there (I believe that will come).

Sea Sharp

No, I don't want a 32 county Ireland.
I wouldn't wish our government on anybody else.
I hope that we will be reunited by means of a United States of Europe.

I can't see any real benefit to a United Ireland. Vague, romantic, republican dreams don't agree with practicality or reality.

seanybiker

Government cant run 26 counties properly. Cant see how having another 6 on top of it being any help at all to be honest.

Zambia

I would love to see the island of Ireland united but the price is too high.

Joey the lips

SLUSK wrote: »

Why would anyone in ROI want a united Ireland? Germany is still suffering financially from reuniting east and west Germany. The old West Germany would have been much more prosperous today if they did not reunite with East Germany.

Northern Ireland would just be a financial burden which the ROI cannot afford.

ehhh.... the same reason that germany wanted unification...

SLUSK

Joey the lips wrote: »

ehhh.... the same reason that germany wanted unification...

There are many people both from the east and from the west who are not very happy about the unification.

Joey the lips

SLUSK wrote: »

There are many people both from the east and from the west who are not very happy about the unification.

How many 100, 150, 200 yes these are all members of the nationalist front i reckon. This is rubbish. or have you actual stats.

There is people in the west that did not want east germanys debt, there is people in the east that did not want to loose there soviet previllages.

I am sure it will be the same with ireland

however there is an over whelming majority as television pictures showed that supported east and west unification and i cannot see the political elite being any different with ireland.

If it happened in the morning I forcast Eamonn Gilmore saying he was instramental, enda kenny would have to think about it and Brian Cowen well he held secret talks.

When it all boils down anyone who does not want a united ireland is in the minority. A pole would have proved this.

Blazer

I couldn't give a rat's arse whether we've 26 or 32 counties.
To me it is meaningless..I'd much rather people realize the world over that we should all be united rather than killing each other but the chances of that happening are practically nil.
At the end of the day if people cared less about their land boundaries we (human race) might actually get off our asses and do some proper good in the world.

Sleepy

m@cc@ wrote: »

What an utterly ignorant post! Want to hazard a guess at why the public sector is the main source of jobs? Might it have something to do with a 30-year bombing campaign making NI look as attractive for investment as Damn Edna without make-up. It's still bloated, but give it time and it'll be back on it's feet. Furthermore, as a offshore state of the UK, of course it's going to be more difficult to manage. Unification would solve a lot of these problems.

And exactly what am I ignorant of?

You admit the public sector up there is hugely bloated. Unification would result in one of two things:

Keeping the bloated public sector and ignoring any overlaps with our own costing billions a year.

or

Culling most of the public sector in NI leading to mass unemployment.

Both options bring a fairly heavy likelihood of Ireland having to default on it's debts.

Just this morning we had another car bombing in Northern Ireland, do you think we wouldn't have "dissident unionists" in a united Ireland?

Finally, I don't feel any more of a 'cultural kinship' with northerners than I do with the English. To be quite honest, I feel we have more of a cultural kinship with the Spanish.

I'm not ignorant of the situation in the north at all m@cc@, I'm just not as blinded by ex-pat romanticism as you are.

bobbysands81

trapsagenius wrote: »

I have to say, given your username is Bobbysands81, I'm surprised you're even contemplating the commonwealth (That's an observation btw, not a criticism!).

I'm not. It would mean subservience to a sectarian, outdated, unelected incestuous monarchy - how could anyone deem that a step forward?

I would be in favour of a "Council of the Isles" or some such thing where closer ties could be established between ourselves and Great Britain. We need to be practical and realise that GB is our biggest trading partner, we need a relationship based on friendship not the one we currently have whereby we play the battered wife always seeking approval from the abusive husband.

EDIT:

This post backs my assertion up nicely...

Koloman wrote: »

If I was living in Northern Ireland then I would have all the benefits of being in the UK like the NHS, cheaper prices, better governance etc...

I would also be allowed to proclaim my Irishness under the Good Friday agreement so the question should be "Why would you want a United Ireland?"

A unified island is probably out of the question for the next 50 years minimum, if ever.

Maybe we should have a 32 county Northern Ireland? We'd be all better off and no amount of misty eyed dreams could deny that fact.

bobbysands81

Sleepy wrote: »

We can't remedy our own public sector so let's not even consider taking on someone else's.

We've too many violent scumbags of our own without taking in more from families that have been engaged in generations of blood feuds and criminality.

And 'armchair terrorist' isn't exactly a new term - it's perfect description for the Wolfe Tones loving, Celtic Shirt wearing, Sinn Fein voting imbeciles that consider the murder of innocents acceptable and have absolutely no understanding of why the economic policies put forward by the party they vote for would leave them destitute.

But a United Ireland would remove the biggest gangsters and murderers from the equation.

The reason the public sector up there is so bloated is because of Unionism and attempts to appease it by "jobs for the boys".

gandalf

Theoretically yes I am of course in favour of a 32 county Ireland.

Practically at the moment we are not ready on either side. The vast majority will have to want to become united and its going to take at least several more generations before we come close to that situation.

stakey

So if a "United Ireland" came about based on the wishes of the majority, I assume the North can opt out again and unite with the UK if the majority swings in the Unionist favour again?

sirromo

I would love to see a united Ireland. I couldn't bear the thought of my country being permanently partitioned.

Dannyboy83

No way, we have enough crap to pay for, without another 1.5million dolites to shoulder.
We should be sending our dolites packing, not annexing foreign ones.

Government spending in the North is something like 67% of GDP - thats higher than Cuba FFS!

Scary thing is that it may happen.
UK is near bankrupt, Tory win on the cards, massive public sector layoffs, good chance for Salmond/SNP to pull off Scottish independence.

Who knows where that may lead.........more taxes for yours truly probably.
The incentive for the middle class to stay here diminishes by the day.

Deedsie

In a perfect world I would welcome it. I actually think the solution is joint rule, the UK and Ireland both having an influence. It would bring Northern nationalist under the government of the country they wish to associate with, would stop the waste of money that is stormont. I think its very easy to say from an ROI point of view that why would we want to reunite, financial burden, social division etc.

But there are 700,000 people in the North who recognise themselves as Irish as the rest of us. Which they are. I would like to see our government offer more support to these people and all the people of the North.

maggy_thatcher

The only way I could see a "United Ireland" work is the formation of a new country altogether -- neither the current 26-county republic, nor the 6-county colony could absorb the other. This new country would have to inherit the national debts of ROI (plus potentially approx. 1/28th the national debt of the UK), and have a newly drafted constitution directly voted with a 66% supermajority of all citizens of the island.

Would I vote yes? To me, it would mainly depend on how the constitution was written.

m@cc@

Sleepy wrote: »

And exactly what am I ignorant of?

You admit the public sector up there is hugely bloated. Unification would result in one of two things:

Keeping the bloated public sector and ignoring any overlaps with our own costing billions a year.

or

Culling most of the public sector in NI leading to mass unemployment.

Both options bring a fairly heavy likelihood of Ireland having to default on it's debts.

Just this morning we had another car bombing in Northern Ireland, do you think we wouldn't have "dissident unionists" in a united Ireland?

Finally, I don't feel any more of a 'cultural kinship' with northerners than I do with the English. To be quite honest, I feel we have more of a cultural kinship with the Spanish.

I'm not ignorant of the situation in the north at all m@cc@, I'm just not as blinded by ex-pat romanticism as you are.

Choose what you want to read, eh? As I already stated, the private sector will improve and hopefully it will lead to less reliance on the public sector. But the public sector is bloated in most European countries, they are run on bureaucracy and waste.

Of course there will be dissent unionists and they will have to be addressed before any unification. It cannot happen without the will of both countries and it will be a long-term plan. But I don't see either issue that you've mentioned as anything like terminal.

Dannyboy83 wrote: »

Government spending in the North is something like 67% of GDP - thats higher than Cuba FFS!

A large proportion of that would be on defence. You'd hope that as time goes on, the need for that spending will decrease (granted, recent events don't help). I'd hazard a guess that it's still a lot less than it was 20 years ago.

bobbysands81

stakey wrote: »

So if a "United Ireland" came about based on the wishes of the majority, I assume the North can opt out again and unite with the UK if the majority swings in the Unionist favour again?

Isn't that what democracy is???

If a majority of people on the island of Ireland want "X" then "X" happens.

When there's an artificially created gerrymandered statelet then things are different though. You have to remember that the 06 was created in an effort to falsely create a Unionist majority - that majority seems to be eroding over time. Whether that continues and whether the majority want to re-unite with the rest of the Republic remains to be seen though...

bobbysands81

maggy_thatcher wrote: »

The only way I could see a "United Ireland" work is the formation of a new country altogether -- neither the current 26-county republic, nor the 6-county colony could absorb the other. This new country would have to inherit the national debts of ROI (plus potentially approx. 1/28th the national debt of the UK), and have a newly drafted constitution directly voted with a 66% supermajority of all citizens of the island.

Would I vote yes? To me, it would mainly depend on how the constitution was written.

I disagree with the 66% - we live in a democracy. 50%+1 vote is all that's needed for something to carry.

1/28th of the debt of Britain? Not a hope...

Sleepy

bobbysands81 wrote: »

whether the majority want to re-unite with the rest of the Republic remains to be seen though...

It also remains to be seen if we'll have them or not. We voted away our claim on the north.

I doubt most Irish people would vote for the annexation of NI when it was outlined how much it was going to cost them.

maggy_thatcher

bobbysands81 wrote: »

I disagree with the 66% - we live in a democracy. 50%+1 vote is all that's needed for something to carry.

A lot of democratic systems use a "super-majority" for major events (e.g. to amend the US constitution), especially when minority groups (i.e. in this case, unionists) are being directly affected. If it only got in at 50.0001%, that's a substantial portion of the population unhappy; resulting in substantial tension. We'd probably want to have 66% of the population, rather than 66% of turnout as well (another common way of handling this kind of thing).

bobbysands81 wrote: »

1/28th of the debt of Britain? Not a hope...

Okay - after recalculating it a little more accurately (I was using out-of-date figures), it should really be approximately 1/35th (basing it on an NI population of 1,775,000 and a GB population of 61,500,000) If you're out to dinner in a group, after everyone's finished eating the bill is divided up between everybody present. If you walk out before dessert, you'd still be expected to pay out your share.

Martin 2

Sleepy wrote: »

..... Finally, I don't feel any more of a 'cultural kinship' with northerners than I do with the English. To be quite honest, I feel we have more of a cultural kinship with the Spanish....

Are you sure that you're not letting your prejudices cloud your judgment because in general I would say that culturally the Northern Irish and (Southern) Irish are closer than any other 2 populations... just look at our shared history, sports, music, dance, language & dialect, food, drink, etc etc

Bottle_of_Smoke

Martin 2 wrote: »

Are you sure that you're not letting your prejudices cloud your judgment because in general I would say that culturally the Northern Irish and (Southern) Irish are closer than any other 2 populations... just look at our shared history, sports, music, dance, language & dialect, food, drink, etc etc

You're right we are pretty much culturally identical to those from nationalist communities, but I would also say we're only slightly more similar to unionists in the six counties than we are to people from Great Britain.

Sleepy

Martin 2 wrote: »

Are you sure that you're not letting your prejudices cloud your judgment because in general I would say that culturally the Northern Irish and (Southern) Irish are closer than any other 2 populations... just look at our shared history, sports, music, dance, language & dialect, food, drink, etc etc

A history of being at war with each other, sports that large groups were barred from playing, music about ousting parts of the population / 'glorious' victories over the other side, assume you're referring to Irish dancing which is a fairly minor part of our culture when not being sold to the yanks, our common language is English and most northern dialects seem to have more in common with Scottish ones than those in the Republic (to my ear at least). Food and drink I'll grant you though I do still know people who castigate others for drinking Bushmills due to it's Unionist heritage.

I honestly find the attitude to life of the (non ETA supporting) Spanish to be more culturally similar to that of myself and my friends than that of the average northerner I've encountered socially.

Bottle_of_Smoke

Sleepy wrote: »

I honestly find the attitude to life of the (non ETA supporting) Spanish to be more culturally similar to that of myself and my friends than that of the average northerner I've encountered socially.

Well I can hardly disagree because its you and your friends, would would you actually say people in general from the Irish Republic have more in common with the Spanish than those in Northern Ireland

I'm from Dublin, live in Derry, have relations in Spain, and that notion is patently absurd.

stakey

bobbysands81 wrote: »

Isn't that what democracy is??? If a majority of people on the island of Ireland want "X" then "X" happens.

I perhaps should have expanded on my point, instead of worrying about what flag is flown over government buildings and what government head you swear allegiance to would the people of the north not be better off building a unified society.

Let's not forget that this society is still massively fractured. Politicians from both sides within and outside of Northern Ireland should be concentrating on normalising society. The very question of the North's status within a United Ireland or the United Kingdom shouldn't even be raised until both sides no longer exist.

Shea O'Meara

Riddle101 wrote: »

I would love to have a United Ireland, but I'd first like us to fix our own problems first before considering unity, I wouldn't want to rush into anything we're not prepared to accept. I'd also like to know if we can indeed support a United Ireland, for instance how much would it effect us as a whole and could it lead to worse things in the future.

Firstly, the north being occupied is our problem, it's Northern Ireland not Northern Finland. We should only unify if there's something in it for us?
From an economics viewpoint I can see what you're saying, and no insult intended on choice here, but should we say, disassociate ourselves with Limerick because it may save us a few bob?

Biggins

From a historic point of view alone, I like to see ireland a a one united state. - but if Ireland is EVER to become a united island as one complete state - this (I suspect) will only come about when those of the unionist/minority section feel completely at ease with those they encompass as a community and country.

Acts of violence now and those doing it are only shooting themselves in the foot.
They do their long term goal no favours - just made it even longer to reach yet again.
Thats not called progression - thats called stupidity.

We are advanced creatures with possible levels of higher thinking and only by using our collective heads will the dream become reality.

arybvtcw0eolkf

I'd love to see a united Ireland, and I do believe this will happen (although maybe not in my lifetime).

My greatest fear is what the British will leave in its wake, if thats a devoided people & another civil war then thats too high a price.