Brexit Impact on Northern Ireland

Fionn1952

View wrote: »

The important word in your post is the first word - currently.

As I described previously that was not the case when the IFS left the U.K. so there was a different situation in the past.

The current situation in U.K. law is, I believe, as a direct result of EU directives written to cover people who retire to another (EU) country. Current U.K. laws are in many parts rolled over EU regulations and EU influenced U.K. laws.

It is a major assumption though that Brexit Britain will continue with its current laws in any area, since many Brexiters are committed to diverging on principle from EU laws (and irrespective of the cost or inconvenience to Britain).

Populism is the name of the game in current U.K. politics and any of the UK’s current laws could easily be sacrificed for the populist vote.

Until such time as a “withdrawal agreement” to cover NI leaving the U.K. and joining a UI is finalised and there is a cast iron guarantee on pensions in NI being paid by the r-U.K. (and, without a corresponding stream of NI contributions going from NI to the U.K. Treasury to help cover part of the cost of those pensions), it would be a major assumption to make that r-U.K. would cover pensions in NI.

Rather the assumption we would have to work on is that the r-U.K. would not cover them and plan accordingly.

Britain and Ireland's current situation is not tied to EU directives. It is based on the Convention on Social Security between the Government of Ireland and The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

This was presented in February 2019 as a direct reaction to Brexit, so it is not tied in any way to Britain's EU membership or lack thereof.

View

Fionn1952 wrote: »

Britain and Ireland's current situation is not tied to EU directives. It is based on the Convention on Social Security between the Government of Ireland and The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

This was presented in February 2019 as a direct reaction to Brexit, so it is not tied in any way to Britain's EU membership or lack thereof.

In the event of a UI becoming a probability (ie negotiations on it actually opening up), the continuation of many of the separate bilateral arrangements between Ireland and the U.K. would have to be in question, as many of them were written to avoid causing problems wrt NI.

If, for instance, the land border is due to disappear, what value to the U.K. would the current U.K.-Ireland CTA be? Likewise, the issue at EU level, would be how soon we join Schengen, not if we join Schengen? Equally, we’d have to assume that the rights of Irish citizens to vote in U.K. elections would probably be eliminated since there would be no more reason for Irish citizens to have such votes than those of any other EU country.

Podge_irl

Ireland has no reason now to have freedom of movement to the UK but it does. I don't see Irish settlement rights in the UK under threat

bilbot79

I think with the EU vaccines business and simmering unionist anxiety that's likely to become the new 'fleg' protests once lockdown is over, everyone needs to dial down the UI conversation for a while and just let the dust settle on Brexit

Fionn1952

View wrote: »

In the event of a UI becoming a probability (ie negotiations on it actually opening up), the continuation of many of the separate bilateral arrangements between Ireland and the U.K. would have to be in question, as many of them were written to avoid causing problems wrt NI.

If, for instance, the land border is due to disappear, what value to the U.K. would the current U.K.-Ireland CTA be? Likewise, the issue at EU level, would be how soon we join Schengen, not if we join Schengen? Equally, we’d have to assume that the rights of Irish citizens to vote in U.K. elections would probably be eliminated since there would be no more reason for Irish citizens to have such votes than those of any other EU country.

You make your points as if for some reason Ireland would be a rule taker. As I've said before, I'd be very surprised if NI left the union with no part of the UK national debt, but what makes you think that Ireland will or should just doff the cap and take whatever the UK's first offer happens to be? We are a very different state, in a very different situation than we were 100 years ago.

BorneTobyWilde

If it was a United Ireland would we then use the Pound, and be allowed to import uk cars for free.

Strumms

I’d say it will happen. But but I’d say only those about 25 and younger will see it... still a generation and a half of hardliners would need to be diluted and thinned out....

When they haven’t got a pot to piss in, realize their brethren on the mainland couldn’t give a rats about them. Brexit and the rest of the brits fûcked them under the bus... they’ll continue to be fûcked under the bus...

BUT.... do we really want them, or the NI and it’s baggage as exists now ? If it was put to a democratic vote in the Republic, it could be close.. if United ireland wins... I’d say you might see for a few years..trouble here... real hardcore Unionist heads despite a democratic change... just not accepting...they’d have lost in a way... everything.

breezy1985

bilbot79 wrote: »

I think with the EU vaccines business and simmering unionist anxiety that's likely to become the new 'fleg' protests once lockdown is over, everyone needs to dial down the UI conversation for a while and just let the dust settle on Brexit

Why dial it down?


Shut up or we will use violence to bully you into it is what you are suggesting. Brexit is why we are talking about it and now you say we should shut up cause the brexit voters are not happy

Charles Babbage

View wrote: »

In the event of a UI becoming a probability (ie negotiations on it actually opening up), the continuation of many of the separate bilateral arrangements between Ireland and the U.K. would have to be in question, as many of them were written to avoid causing problems wrt NI.

If, for instance, the land border is due to disappear, what value to the U.K. would the current U.K.-Ireland CTA be? Likewise, the issue at EU level, would be how soon we join Schengen, not if we join Schengen? Equally, we’d have to assume that the rights of Irish citizens to vote in U.K. elections would probably be eliminated since there would be no more reason for Irish citizens to have such votes than those of any other EU country.

I would expect continuation of the CTA would be a unionist objective in negotiations re unity arrangements.

bilbot79

breezy1985 wrote: »

Why dial it down?


Shut up or we will use violence to bully you into it is what you are suggesting. Brexit is why we are talking about it and now you say we should shut up cause the brexit voters are not happy

Because it's the clever thing to do in the long term

6541

I think I heard Arlene Foster hint at violence and warn the Dublin government to be careful. Correct me if I am wrong. I heard whilst channel hopping. I was thinking the neck on her ! When is the penny going to drop. She and her community do not own the North, you own half the North. You have to live with the other half, who are unapologetically Irish.

View

Podge_irl wrote: »

Ireland has no reason now to have freedom of movement to the UK but it does. I don't see Irish settlement rights in the UK under threat

That’s incorrect.

Many people in NI only hold Irish citizenship.

Were the U.K. government to alter Irish settlement rights in the U.K. and attempt to introduce immigration controls and/or residency permits for Irish citizens in the U.K., they’d have a huge and inflammatory problem in NI wrt to those NI Irish citizens - telling Irish citizens in NI they’ll have to register as “foreigners” in the U.K. would be explosive.

The U.K. government would also have a major problem with distinguishing, in GB, between Irish citizens from NI and those from Ireland.

View

Fionn1952 wrote: »

You make your points as if for some reason Ireland would be a rule taker. As I've said before, I'd be very surprised if NI left the union with no part of the UK national debt, but what makes you think that Ireland will or should just doff the cap and take whatever the UK's first offer happens to be? We are a very different state, in a very different situation than we were 100 years ago.

Okay, fine, so a majority in NI votes for a UI tomorrow. The U.K. government says that’s fine with us but you’ll have to cover the cost of NI pensions and what then? Are you suggesting that we would say no and reject a UI over the cost of pensions?

It is unrealistic to assume that NI would come with any form of “dowry”.

View

Charles Babbage wrote: »

I would expect continuation of the CTA would be a unionist objective in negotiations re unity arrangements.

Schengen is a fundamental part of the EU Treaties. There would be no excuse for us not to immediately join it in the event of the land border disappearing as a result of a UI.

FrancieBrady

View wrote: »

Okay, fine, so a majority in NI votes for a UI tomorrow. The U.K. government says that’s fine with us but you’ll have to cover the cost of NI pensions and what then? Are you suggesting that we would say no and reject a UI over the cost of pensions?

It is unrealistic to assume that NI would come with any form of “dowry”.

There is nothing unrealistic about expecting the economy that benefited from the lifetime of work paying the pension commitments.

FrancieBrady

View wrote: »

Schengen is a fundamental part of the EU Treaties. There would be no excuse for us not to immediately join it in the event of the land border disappearing as a result of a UI.

Yes there would if it was an issue. The current arrangements for NI in the EU are a direct result of the 'special' situation.

breezy1985

Charles Babbage wrote: »

I would expect continuation of the CTA would be a unionist objective in negotiations re unity arrangements.

The situation would most likely reverse with UI needing to let unionists keep British passports and have equal voting rights in the UI regardless

bilbot79

6541 wrote: »

I think I heard Arlene Foster hint at violence and warn the Dublin government to be careful. Correct me if I am wrong. I heard whilst channel hopping. I was thinking the neck on her ! When is the penny going to drop. She and her community do not own the North, you own half the North. You have to live with the other half, who are unapologetically Irish.

The problem is that for her and whoever pulls her strings in the background, a return to violence could well be the correct option for their goals. It would undermine the purpose of the protocol i.e. to prevent violence.

If they instigated violence it would be excruciatingly difficult but absolutely necessary for Republicans to turn the other cheek and then put the onus on the UK to police it's criminals.

Sam Russell

breezy1985 wrote: »

The situation would most likely reverse with UI needing to let unionists keep British passports and have equal voting rights in the UI regardless

If we did get a UI, then we would join Shengen quite quickly.

I am nor sure how us joining Shengen would affect the CTA. Schengen would make FOM much easier for Irish citizens, and would require British passport holders coming from GB to have their passport stamped.

How would that affect British passport holders from NI? Would they have a special stamp or visa in their passports? I would think that there is a relatively simple solution to this.

How would British based Irish passport holders be affected? Would they be treated as now, or would they be required to be put through the wringer like other EU passport holders? I would hope that the current arrangement would continue.

Seth Brundle

Sam Russell wrote: »

How would British based Irish passport holders be affected? Would they be treated as now, or would they be required to be put through the wringer like other EU passport holders? I would hope that the current arrangement would continue.

I assume that they would be affected in pretty much the same way as the blue passport holders in Gibraltar.

Sam Russell

Seth Brundle wrote: »

I assume that they would be affected in pretty much the same way as the blue passport holders in Gibraltar.

Do the British passport holders in Gibraltar hold a UK passport, or is it a different one? Can a border guard distinguish between a Gibraltar passport and a British holiday maker/resident from Malaga?

Can a Gibraltar resident go and reside freely in the UK on the same basis as a British UK resident person can?

Seth Brundle

Ok, I now see that there are slight insignificant differences between the two...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_passport_(Gibraltar)

tdf7187

While Osborne is basically correct, what he possibly, and perhaps understandably, doesn't grasp is that the real opposition to re-unification these days doesn't come from the northern unionists at all, it's from the southern partitionist Cruserite/Harrisite class, who have a wholly disproportionate voice in media circles (Ruth Dudley-Edwards, Eoghan Harris, Michael McDowell, and just today an article from some nobody in the Irish Times - basically an anti-Irish paper - he's probably auditioning for Eoghan Harris's job - condescendingly lecturing to 'united Irelanders' as though we are a fringe group). While their views are not shared by the majority of Irish people, they do influence an easily swayed section of the population. Their lackies are over-represented on this very website.

The constant whingers along the lines of "oh but we can't afford dem uns up north" are depressing. Bean-counters and penny-pinchers totally lacking in vision. As the saying in the movie goes, "if you build it they will come". If we can't afford it now, with our economy in such robust good health that it is brushing off the lockdowns, when in the hell can we afford it?

I think the partitionists should be more honest and less disingenuous about their true motives. It isn't really about the costs or the paranoid fantasies of thousands of loyalists ready to take up arms at the hint of re-unification (they really aren't). The partionists either just don't like northern Irish people and/or hate the idea of Irish nationalism full stop. It's basically a form of racism combined with a weird type of post-colonialist self-hatred.

murphaph

View wrote: »

Schengen is a fundamental part of the EU Treaties. There would be no excuse for us not to immediately join it in the event of the land border disappearing as a result of a UI.

Seriously, the EU is not going to jeopardise Irish unity over Schengen. I would literally bet my house on that.

In time it might come but a continuation of the CTA would be very important, perhaps the most important thing to the unionists in NI and I would be dumbstruck if it wasn't included in any permanent settlement on NI.

I would actually prefer Ireland to join Schengen as I live in Germany but I know it's politically impractical for at least a generation after unity, whenever that may be.

Sam Russell

murphaph wrote: »

Seriously, the EU is not going to jeopardise Irish unity over Schengen. I would literally bet my house on that.

In time it might come but a continuation of the CTA would be very important, perhaps the most important thing to the unionists in NI and I would be dumbstruck if it wasn't included in any permanent settlement on NI.

I would actually prefer Ireland to join Schengen as I live in Germany but I know it's politically impractical for at least a generation after unity, whenever that may be.

I doubt that the CTA would be greatly affected by Ireland joining Schengen. It would affect positively NI GB passport holders, and GB residents would get their passports stamped when entering Ireland, and any visits to other Schengen areas would be included in time allowed to stay.

Outside of that, what are the effects of Schengen on the CTA?

murphaph

Sam Russell wrote: »

I doubt that the CTA would be greatly affected by Ireland joining Schengen. It would affect positively NI GB passport holders, and GB residents would get their passports stamped when entering Ireland, and any visits to other Schengen areas would be included in time allowed to stay.

Outside of that, what are the effects of Schengen on the CTA?

So currently there are no passport controls whatsoever at GB ports and airports on arrivals from the island of Ireland because we broadly follow the same visa regime with few differences so each country can be fairly certain that nationals from country X that require a visa to visit, have at least managed to obtain that visa for the other country in the CTA.

Schengen has a different set of rules with many more differences.

We could not open our borders to the Schengen area and expect to see flights from Ireland to Britain treated as domestic arrivals with no passport controls and of course Schengen rules would compel us to check all passports in entry (happens at airports in the Republic already but not at airports in NI or at any seaports on either side of the border)

Perhaps there's some conflation of the CTA and of Irish and British people's freedom of movement/right to residency in the others' country?

Sam Russell

murphaph wrote: »

So currently there are no passport controls whatsoever at GB ports and airports on arrivals from the island of Ireland because we broadly follow the same visa regime with few differences so each country can be fairly certain that nationals from country X that require a visa to visit, have at least managed to obtain that visa for the other country in the CTA.

Schengen has a different set of rules with many more differences.

We could not open our borders to the Schengen area and expect to see flights from Ireland to Britain treated as domestic arrivals with no passport controls and of course Schengen rules would compel us to check all passports in entry (happens at airports in the Republic already but not at airports in NI or at any seaports on either side of the border)

Perhaps there's some conflation of the CTA and of Irish and British people's freedom of movement/right to residency in the others' country?

If it would just mean passport controls at IRL/GB borders then that is next to nothing. Schengen is much more than passport controls - it is about database of people 'of interest' and overstayers, migrants and undesirables. It is the single market for people.

The CTA is not the same - more like a customs union.

I think they could co-exist.

murphaph

Sam Russell wrote: »

If it would just mean passport controls at IRL/GB borders then that is next to nothing. Schengen is much more than passport controls - it is about database of people 'of interest' and overstayers, migrants and undesirables. It is the single market for people.

The CTA is not the same - more like a customs union.

I think they could co-exist.

The CTA is about travel. In fact during most of the CTA's existence, Ireland and the United Kingdom were not in a customs union and goods were the only things checked at the border, not passports.

Mr.Nice Guy

Good recent programme on BBC Radio 4 about reunification. Goes into the various ways in which a border poll could come about:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m000rlmr

blanch152

FrancieBrady wrote: »

There is nothing unrealistic about expecting the economy that benefited from the lifetime of work paying the pension commitments.

Cormac Lucey destroyed that argument in the Sunday Times at the weekend.

He basically adopted my view that we should look realistically at the costs and have a mature discussion about them.

Some of the comments included:

"Her (Mary-Lou) party's economic plan is not realistic".

"These (Sinn Fein's) assumptions are questionable"

"This (extract from Sinn Fein's policy) is verbiage masquerading as economic logic"

Basically, he rubbishes Sinn Fein's document on unity in a way that has already been done on here. He also makes clear it will cost money, a lot of money.