If there was a referendum tomorrow - how would you vote?

For me, the main concern would be:

1) Cost. We can't even afford to pay our own deficits, never mind NI's massive one. NI runs a deficit of roughly £9bn / €10.6 billion / year.
The Republic's deficit during the crisis is €20.2 billion / year and it aims to close that down to very little over the next few years.

NI's actually not in very good economic shape when you pull out the UK's support. Particularly when you consider that there's no plan to reduce that massive deficit.
That NI figure doesn't include many things e.g. cost of servicing of the NI bit of the UK national debt, or various other services that may be provided into NI as benefit in kind from the UK.

2) Social unrest / serious violence spreading south of the former border.

.....

If partition hadn't happened, I think Ireland would probably have avoided a lot of the problems it had on both sides of the border as the various political movements / populations would have balanced each other out.

I don't think Northern Unionism would have gone to the excesses it did in the 60s and 70s and I don't think in the Republic that the Catholic Church + assorted cronies would have had the influence they ended up having during the 1930s-70s.

However, the problem now is that the Republic has matured into a stable democracy, which despite the current economic crisis, is well capable of functioning within the EU on its own two feet.

While Northern Ireland has kind of fossilised all the social unrest from another era and continues to battle out those old arguments while being totally dependent on the rest of the UK for state-back up in terms of subsidy.

They've grown apart very dramatically in the last few decades too. I don't really see all that much in common in terms of politics / economic between the two anymore. Politically speaking, I can't really see how you'd reconsile what is a fairly bland, liberal, Northern European style democracy in the South with a very conservative unionist community and a perhaps slightly less conservative nationalist one.
I just find some of the debates you see in NI are like something from the 50s here, especially on issues like gay marriage or stuff like that. There's a lot of overtly religious stuff in politics that reminds me more of the US deep south than Europe. While I think in the Republic, that kind of dogmatic approach to life has kind of died out over the past few decades.

I just can't really see how the two would function as one state at present.

As much as it would be nice and would be satisfying all sorts of national ideals, I can't really see how we can practically integrate the two, or what the benefit would be to either jurisdiction.

I think we just need to leave well enough alone and let it tick away. Perhaps 30+ years down the line, the Republic could be booming while the UK might not be so attractive, who knows. Minds may change, generations move on, old ideas and prejustices die.

For now, I just think integration of the two would be WAY more hassle than it would be worth. If it happens it will have to happen by osmosis all by itself and totally consensual.

Crooked Jack wrote: »

The north is as much "ourselves" as Dublin, Cork or Galway.

I think the issue is if you rush/force any kind of integration of the two, it will cause chaos, unrest and probably violence.

At present, NI is still in the UK and it doesn't look like it's very keen to do anything different. The only way you can change that is by political persuasion and making the Republic a very attractive place to be part of tbh.

Basically, if we want a united Ireland in the future sometime, we have to make the sales pitch!

If the Republic's a booming (genuinely), open, friendly, safe, progressive place, I honestly think that's 3/4 of the battle.

We are where we are, and I think we just have to be practical about it. It's got to be about consensus or it will just always be violent.

Galwayguy35 wrote: »

If the loyalists decided to go back to Scotland I would like to see a UI but as long as they are on the Island I want to be seperate from them.

Things might have been a lot different if O Neill and O Donnell didn't high tail it to the Continent 400 years ago as there would have probably been no plantation of what was the most Gaelic part of Ireland.

Hmm... how far do you want to go back though!

I blame it all on those pesky Vikings and the Romans!

Meh. I'd like to see a UI but I don't think conditions are right currently. I'm not voting because the choices are reductive.