Northern Ireland 2125?

Coming up on five years of the NI Protocol and ten years on Brexit and I'm still not seeing this alleged prosperity. Ironically the parties most in favour of continued membership of the UK are doing their best to dismantle and block it too.

NI is fundamentally dysfunctional, be it through Unification or another way, it'll continue to be so unless there is absolute root and branch reform.

That does absolutely nothing for your claim about the big Brexit benefits coming NI's way.

The question was simple, if the NI Protocol was going to bring NI to the economic promised land, why do we see absolutely f*ck all of it almost five years later?

While we could discuss the potential downsides impending for the Irish economy and overdependence on FDI, we've been hearing that it's all going to come crashing down any day now for years too. It's not a coincidence that your totally unsupported predictions always happen to land down on the side to justify your preexisting position. I'm absolutely confident you work back from your position to find the point instead of the other way round.

I don't believe it is an entirely economic argument for a lot of people, Downcow. I imagine some people value their connection to the UK and their Britishness more than they value the benefits I might value in a United Ireland. For others, we see in all parts of live that some people are risk averse and inherently reluctant to change. Rightly or wrongly, some might feel like Unification would lead to unrest and more instability.There are an awful lot of reasons that people vote the way they do, none of those reasons change the fact that economically and politically, NI is an absolute sh*t show.

If you disagree and feel like people favour remaining in the UK solely because it's better for their pocket, I'd be curious to hear the cash value per year that your vote would cost?

First point, unsupported speculation. I can say with just as much authority and evidence that it may do much worse than the South over the next decade.

Second point.....that's an awfully definitive statement. Why hasn't it for the last five years if you're basing this all on the magical Protocol?

If the UK is doing so badly that NI is outperforming the rest of it by any reasonable metric, the UK is as good as dead.

Ah come on now, Blanch. Closing the gap and outperforming aren't even close to the same thing. The kid in the classroom who has gone from an F grade to scraping a D isn't outperforming the kid who dropped from an A+ to an A.

You still keep dodging the substantive point; if the NI Protocol is the panacea for all economic ills of NI, why are we sitting five years later with no progress of note towards your prediction? If you can't answer, say so and I'll move on, but otherwise I'll keep asking so long as you keep pretending to miss the question.

I don't disagree that NI becoming less of an economic burden is a positive, I just don't believe it happens without the level of reform I can't see happening without a hard reset like Unification would present.

There is no doubt successive governments here have not had the competency to sort the HSE. But your system is equally failing the people and getting worse. Here's what your favourite Internet resource ChatGPT throws up, I would have thought you'd have used that before coming here to gloat like Jamie Bryson:

Northern Ireland: Performance in EDs is poor. A large share of patients wait over 4 hours. For example, in the quarter ending 31 March 2025, about 44.4% of patients spent less than 4 hours in an ED, slightly up from previous years, but only ~34.2% at Type 1 EDs. 16% waited over 12 hours in some cases.

Republic of Ireland: Data is less fully comparable in what I found (at least in the sources I checked), but ROI has also been under pressure in EDs, especially during winter surges. However, ROI has made some improvement in scheduled care and reducing long waits in recent years. The more structured “Waiting List Action Plan” and regular publication of outpatient/inpatient wait times suggests more active management.

• Resource levels / funding: ROI has committed funding via WLAP (Waiting List Action Plan) and has targets under Sláintecare, with regular reporting. NI has less stable funding, and system disruptions (e.g. political, workforce) affect capacity.
• Cross‑border dynamics & private sector: ROI uses a mix of public/private and also sometimes refers people to private providers to clear backlogs. NI’s system is more strictly public, with fewer options for private referrals or moving out of trust boundaries.
• Population size & density, geography: Differences in scale and how dispersed populations are can affect service delivery especially in rural areas.
• Management & policy agility: Ireland’s reforms (Sláintecare etc.) emphasize reducing waiting times and building capacity; NI has had more challenges in implementing reforms.
• Workforce issues: Both jurisdictions face staffing shortages, but NI’s are acute in some specialities, often exacerbated by budget constraints and recruitment/retention difficulties.

What we need, and anyone genuinely interested in patient welfare would agree, is root and branch reform of BOTH systems and an island wide system that isn't stupidly doubling up on services and staff.

I'll let @blanch152 field those questions.

FF and FG governments have made a mess of the HSE as the British government make a mess of the NHS.

SF cannot even field a candidate for the Presidency so what hope would you have of running the HSE?

That is what you get with SF in charge of health in N.I.

Never happened before that.