In the event of united Ireland could DUP attract a significant vote in the Republic / 26 Counties ?

Peregrinus

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121913018#Comment_121913018

Can you point to any accounts of TDs or public representatives of the post-unionist parties, or supporters or activists, being targetted? There were post-unionist parties, as already pointed out, and if you want to make the case that they were suppressed by intimidation, I am open to hearing it.

Francis McM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121913064#Comment_121913064

 Even moderate nationalists like John Bruton was daubed "John Unionist Bruton" by some as an insult. His protestant colleague in Fine Gael, Billy Fox from co. Monaghan, was called a "B Special" in the Dail by two FF ministers, some time before Billy Fox was murdered by the pIRA.

The like of completely innocent unionist politicians "up north" like Edgar Graham and Robert Bradford were murdered by the pIRA. When the pIRA murdered completely innocent people up north because they did not agree with them, do you think everyone down here would tolerate such a viewpoint without any intimidation at least from some. And look what happened poor Charlie Bird 18 years ago on O'Connell st Dublin: he was knocked to the ground and assaulted by a mob who called him "an Orange Bastard". I have heard people taunted and called "West Brits" in a very menancing tone over less.

If there was a U.I., there would be no danger of  the DUP attracting a significant vote in the Republic / 26 Counties, because they would be intimidated or out. The railway stations were named after "patriots" when the British left the last time: if the British left N.I. , I bet the government would not be long re-naming the port at Larne " Bobby Sands port" or "Pearse McAuley Port".

PeaSea

No, the DUP won't attract votes from the 26 counties. Post unification, the Unionists parties will face an existential crisis, the union that they are all named after will no longer be. So what do they do - and at this point it will be individuals who decide a trend - do they continue as-is and fight (politically) for a re-unification with GB, do they band together as one party (likely the DUP) and do the same, do they start to join parties from the Republic, do they stand as independents, do they give up politics altogether, do they follow as Arlene Foster suggested and migrate to Scotland, etc, etc. Also at this point don't forget the parties in the Republic will also have to figure out what they do, do they field candidates in the 6 counties immediately - would there be a leakage from the moderate parties to existing parties in the Republic ? Similarly will there be some level of public migration from Ireland to NI where there is cheaper housing which might dramatically alter voting patterns ?

Lets say all Unionists band together under the DUP banner (unlikely as they're a fractious bunch but still), will they field candidates in any of the 26 counties ? Highly unlikely as their funding would not likely be sufficient (it may even reduce) but more because to field candidates would give some sort of credence to a new Ireland that they would not want to give. They are much more likely to field candidates in areas they know they will win (so maybe not even in parts of Tyrone / Fermanagh, say) and fight for a re-partition of Down and Antrim. imo anyway.

PeaSea

Another point worth noting, there are 18 MPs in Northern Ireland, one per 110,000 people (not voters) or thereabouts, whereas in the Dail there is 1 TD per 30,000 people (not voters) or thereabouts, so the number of TDs arriving from what used to be N. Ireland would be proportionally around 50-60 and not 18, so quite a significant number.

L1011

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121913311#Comment_121913311

The makeup of those would not map directly to a larger number, due to PRSTV. Better to look at the split in Stormont, which has 5 MLAs per MP, PRSTV in the same constituencies. UUP, Green, PUP, TUV and Independents represented who do not have MPs

Constituency boundaries would likely change as they're out of the limits for being under-represented if given 3, or over-represented if given 4.

Francis McM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121913311#Comment_121913311

Thats a good point. If there was a U.I. ( which there will not be for a few generations at least, but say if there was ) , would the number of TDs from "the 6 counties " increase, or the number of td's in the 26 decrease?

L1011

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121913469#Comment_121913469

The number of TDs is population based, unless the constitution is changed.

NI would need a minimum of 63 on its current population, but its normal to give a tiny bit of padding to make constituencies easier to align, so say 65 for now.

ROIs would not change from the 177 that there will be at the next election.

Seth Brundle

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121913504#Comment_121913504

Presumably Dáil Éireann would need substantial works to fit that number of seats or else we'd have to change the representation ratio

L1011

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121913586#Comment_121913586

From memory of being very bored while waiting for something to break in the media rooms and counting the seats, there's not even enough seats for the 177 TDs we're about to have.

With in-seat voting, that is going to be problematic...

I'd be in favour of cutting the ratio to 1:50k, and in return increasing the powers and salaries of councillors and ordering TDs to ignore parish pump stuff or stop whining about the workload

Sam Russell

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121913586#Comment_121913586

Or change the number of TDs to a fixed number - say 165, as that is how many the current chamber can accommodate.

The DUP would be further right than any party represented in the current Dail, but some independents might be that far right. However, there are more parties in NI than the DUP who only get south (see what I did there) of 30% of the vote. Now the population of NI is about one third of the republic, which would put the DUP at less than 10% of the TDs in the Dail. Now that might make them a possible candidate for a coalition, but I doubt it.

No, I think the DUP will disappear, but the members might gravitate to other parties - like the Communists in Eastern Europe did after the fall of the USSR. In a UI, the battle of Unionism will have been lost, but new fissures will appear to fight over.

Shoog

Just completing a tour of the north and absorbing the plantation history. It surprises me that our northern brothers of the unionist persuasion are not lynched whenever they cross the border. The sort of separatist superior attitude that drips from the DUPs every pore makes it impossible to see how they could achieve a foothold in the south.

Before anyone calls me a bigot, my heritage is Northern Protestant and I am a naturalized Irish citizen who was born In England.

Francis McM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121913708#Comment_121913708

Minorites tend to keep their heads down when they are only 10 or 15% of the population or less. As noted before, the minority population ( ie Protestant ) decreased from 10% of the population to 3 % in the Republic of Ireland, where in N. Ireland in the same period the minority population there ( ie Catholic ) increased from 31% to forty something per cent. What does that tell you ?

FrancieBrady

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121913749#Comment_121913749

People carried on living in their native homelands while people attached to a departing military/government infrastructure left?

Fr D Maugire

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121913749#Comment_121913749

Catholics have more children and are outbreeding Protestants!!

Francis McM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121913805#Comment_121913805

The vast majority of the Protestant population was not working for the "departing / government infrastructure". The 13 innocent protestant farmers /16 year old boy murdered in Dunmanway in 1922 for example were just innocent folk, as were the 100 Protestant farming families around Dunmanay who were so intimidated they upped sticks and fled to England, many with not much more than they were wearing.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121913815#Comment_121913815

The Catholic church influence on banning all contraception applied to people of all religions.

Edited for typo

FrancieBrady

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121913859#Comment_121913859

They were by their colonial heritage very 'attached' to the departing military/government infratstructure. They supported it and left with it. Some still miss it and would like us to attach ourselves to it again.

Francis McM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121913936#Comment_121913936

Dire economic conditions push people of all religions and backgrounds out of Ireland in the 20th century, but in the case of the 100 protestant families who were intimidated out of Dunmanway Co Cork in 1922, they left because there were 13 innocent Protestants killed by the IRA then in the area surrounding their village.

FrancieBrady

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121914042#Comment_121914042

How many Irish Catholics were displaced from their own homes in the decades before this unprecedented and not repeated event which is claimed by some as ethnic cleansing and by others as reprisals for informing and spying Francis?

Capt'n Midnight

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121913504#Comment_121913504

NI assembly has 90 members and there's 18 MPs. But not all will be standing at the next election. Some could take a seat in the Lords or retire or go back to their day job.

Then again the Seanad has 60 members. So there's some wiggle room there.

For 65 seats the 18 constituencies could be mapped to 9 three seaters and 9 four seaters. ( NI Wards map - https://www.communities-ni.gov.uk/sites/default/files/publications/communities/dfc-ni-council-ward-map.PDF )

But it's not quite that simple as we have an Independent body to look at constituencies

https://www.electoralcommission.ie/constituency-review-submissions/

Francis McM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121914063#Comment_121914063

"Unprecedented and and repeated" says you? There were loads of other murders of innocent Protestants south of the border in that era too by the IRA, and thousands of houses burnt down, animal and land seized, belongings looted etc. Look at the case at Coolacrease in Co. Offaly in 1921 for example, where Richard and Abraham Pearson were shot by an IRA gang and their house was burnt.

FrancieBrady

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121930417#Comment_121930417

Killing that amount of people was unprecedented.

Nobody is suggesting there were no sectarian attacks.

There was no systemic and coordinated sectarian discrimination on the scale of what happened in the 50 year one party system created by Unionists for Unionists in the north. And no history of any credibility states that.

Francis McM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121930581#Comment_121930581

There were elections in N.I., it just so happened one part was more popular than the others. If FF and FG combined here it would have been the same "one party" for 50 years. As pointed out to you before:

60 or 80 years ago there were virtually no protestants in the Irish army or Gardai: yet in the early days of even the UDR it was 18% Catholic.

There was a huge controversy when a Protestant librarian was appointed in Co. Mayo. DeVelera said, and I paraphrase, if he had one job to offer and two applicants, one protestant and one catholic, he would always give the job to the catholic.

In Co. Wexford in the fifties, when a Protestant partner in a mixed marriage insisted the child be brought up Protestant, the local priest arranged for all the Protestant shops in the town to be boycotted.

Which state do you think there was the most discrimination in : the one where the minority population ( ie Protestant ) decreased from 10% of the population to 3 % , or the where in the same period the minority population there ( ie Catholic ) increased from 31% to forty something per cent. ( N. Ireland) ?

FrancieBrady

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121930617#Comment_121930617

Ah, the librarian again. 😁

Research gerrymandering and the voting system and get back to us.

There is no comparison to what happened in the south which is why you cannot find a credible history that says they were comparable.

Seth Brundle

Mod: nipping this in the bud here. The two of you go for a walk (separately) before I end up getting cross!

Francis McM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121930637#Comment_121930637

You are right, there is no comparison when you look at the facts and they are not comparable.

Even though 3000 of the 7000 jobs in the RUC were reserved for Catholics when it was set up, why did Devalera say, and I paraphrase, if he had one job to offer and two applicants, one protestant and one catholic, he would always give the job to the catholic.

mariaalice

Arlene Foster was very popular with the anti-abortion cohort emphasising good Christian family values would build them a base in the 26 counties.

FrancieBrady

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121931585#Comment_121931585

Once things settle down I can’t see why that wouldn’t happen.

Seth Brundle

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121931585#Comment_121931585

Maybe she would join Aontú!

Suckler

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121930617#Comment_121930617

Still peddling the 18% catholic UDR as a shining light nonsense despite being directed to the truth I see?

And the Wexford and Cork cases you constantly lean on…I'm sure the librarian will be brought out to bat again.

If your going to decry the Protestant 'discrimination' in ROI you'll have to use some of the more prominent reasons they left and numbers declined at some stage in your blather.