A United Ireland. Opening up the discussion.

[marty34]

Many a man died trying to free Ireland from British rule, things are obviously different now than they were 50 years ago and no one wants to go back to that. We all just have to accept each others cultures and get on with it, the Unionists accepting our Irish culture will be more difficult buy they know it's coming and they don't really have much choice. The first 10-20 years will not be much different to the way it is now and things will gradually be introduced through a generation or two.
I will vote for a united Ireland all day long and twice on a Sunday...

They did and natural colonialism died off in many countries with minimum destruction.

We've finally got to a point for unification by sheer numbers rather than bombing and shooting

Yeah we have but you and most other people forget a lot of us wouldn't be here today if it wasn't for the IRA in the late 60's and early 70's. The Catholic population were targeted and would have been a lot less today only for taking up arms. Now please don't start throwing back the atrocities that happened after that as I'm not condoning them by no stretch and there was some bad sh1t that went down in a dirty war. All i'm saying is make no mistake about it the IRA had no choice but to take up arms and defend their people. What followed wasn't acceptable...

I'll say this, Australia had no issues, no major bombings no sectarian murders and the end goal was is a county run by itself

Now, that said Australia has suppressed the ingenious people since its initial plantation, but at what cost in terms of conflict was it?

There was a choice, so don't think for a second that the choice was to take up arms during the last troubles, there was.

As we have shown that the ballot box is actually stronger than the gun in

Strange post. Which, when with hindsight is very noble.  And that's the problem I think. You're looking at history from an end point.

After years and years on unionist misrule and discrimination etc. when the whole thing 'kicked off', no one knew how and where it was going to end.

I remember doing a Bloody Sunday tour and even years I felt angry about what happened that week and I wasn't even from the area. I heard the story of the city wards being gerrymandered etc. and unionists then in control.

As I say, a lot of people look at the situation backwards, rather than from the starting point.   

[armaghniac]

Like all countries occupied by the British Empire, they cannot sort out the way forward until Britain leaves. Hopefully that path is peaceful. But if not it still has to proceed without British governance. All Irish people regardless of religion or skin colour will learn to live together on this island once Britain goes.

Britain might go , but the  British will remain . 

A lot of   planter stock haven't integrated in  over 400 years , so  I doubt they'll integrate under a foreign flag, when they didn't under their  own.

That's not very strong logic. The setting up of NI offered privilege to those who did not integrate. The situation will be quite different in the future.

[Tubberman]

Many a man died trying to free Ireland from British rule, things are obviously different now than they were 50 years ago and no one wants to go back to that. We all just have to accept each others cultures and get on with it, the Unionists accepting our Irish culture will be more difficult buy they know it's coming and they don't really have much choice. The first 10-20 years will not be much different to the way it is now and things will gradually be introduced through a generation or two.
I will vote for a united Ireland all day long and twice on a Sunday...

They did and natural colonialism died off in many countries with minimum destruction.

We've finally got to a point for unification by sheer numbers rather than bombing and shooting

Yeah we have but you and most other people forget a lot of us wouldn't be here today if it wasn't for the IRA in the late 60's and early 70's. The Catholic population were targeted and would have been a lot less today only for taking up arms. Now please don't start throwing back the atrocities that happened after that as I'm not condoning them by no stretch and there was some bad sh1t that went down in a dirty war. All i'm saying is make no mistake about it the IRA had no choice but to take up arms and defend their people. What followed wasn't acceptable...

I'll say this, Australia had no issues, no major bombings no sectarian murders and the end goal was is a county run by itself

Now, that said Australia has suppressed the ingenious people since its initial plantation, but at what cost in terms of conflict was it?

There was a choice, so don't think for a second that the choice was to take up arms during the last troubles, there was.

As we have shown that the ballot box is actually stronger than the gun in

Strange post. Which, when with hindsight is very noble.  And that's the problem I think. You're looking at history from an end point.

After years and years on unionist misrule and discrimination etc. when the whole thing 'kicked off', no one knew how and where it was going to end.

I remember doing a Bloody Sunday tour and even years I felt angry about what happened that week and I wasn't even from the area. I heard the story of the city wards being gerrymandered etc. and unionists then in control.

As I say, a lot of people look at the situation backwards, rather than from the starting point.   

That's a very fair point.
Judging from the comfort of knowing how things panned out isn't a privilege that they had.

[Rossfan]

Mick Clifford in D'Examiner....
When the island of Ireland is united as one political entity it will be a seismic and historic event. That's when, rather than if, because it will happen. When exactly may or may not be in your lifetime if you're on the wrong side of, well, let's say, 60.

Some people want this constitutional change to happen tomorrow. They don't know what would happen on the day after, nor have they any blueprint for the whole panoply of change and structure that would be required.

They appear to envisage the united entity as being more or less officially Gaelic with a few bits and bobs thrown in for the unionists. All that matters is that we are a nation once again.

Mary Lou McDonald wants it to happen in the next five years. She and her party are calling for a border poll by 2030. The mad rush she and Sinn Féin appear to be in has also prompted her to blame others for holding up this reclamation of the fourth green field.

Who is stopping the poll?

At an event in Dublin last Saturday she repeated that the referendums would be before the end of this decade. "And the day is coming when people will have their say," she said, sounding like she believes somebody is preventing the people having their say right now.

On Sunday, she was in Liverpool at the Labour party conference.

"British prime ministers raising obstacles to unity referendums flies in the face of the spirit of progress that made history in 1998," she told a gathering. So successive British prime ministers have been blocking the people having their say?

The following day, Micheál Martin said there wouldn't be a border poll before 2030, which was a surprisingly definitive declaration but he's almost certainly correct. In response to that, McDonald declared that we're moving "inch by inch" to a united Ireland.

"The only person pretending that is not the case is the person whose job it is to lead and prepare for the constitutional change that is coming," she said. So Micheál Martin is the one holding up the march to a United Ireland?

Now, according to McDonald, we have unknown persons, British prime ministers and the Taoiseach all lined up to prevent the march of a nation which is being led from the front by Sinn Féin.
The reality is that the only people holding up the prospect of a united Ireland are the people of the six counties, the North, Northern Ireland, whatever you want to call it. That reality is just too unpalatable for those in a mad rush.

There is a sense of Alice in Wonderland in some quarters about the pace this island is moving at towards unity. For instance, look at the extensive poll conducted by ARINS project, overseen by the Royal Irish Academy and the University of Notre Dame in the US, along with The Irish Times.

In the last three years the intention to vote for unity in the North has gone from 27% to 34%. Notably, the intention to vote to stay in the UK has dropped by only two points, from 50% to 48%. No border poll would come within an ass's roar of winning on those figures, and, by projection, would be highly unlikely to pass muster in the next five years.

United Ireland blueprint

Yet, the approach from Sinn Féin and others appears to be to keep talking about the possibility and you might end up talking all the way to a poll. The party has absolutely no blueprint of what a unitary state would look like.

It has made no effort to come up with anything that might be anyway palatable for unionists. In fact, the party has all the appearance of one which has given up the notion of softening the divide between the traditions and is instead relying exclusively on numbers.

That is precisely what the unionists did in designing the parameters of the six-county state a century ago.

They estimated what precisely would be most advantageous in terms of numbers, taking into account viability, and ensured that to the greatest extent the outcome mapped out their Protestant state for a Protestant people.

And now the Shinners want to do the same thing except with the shoe on the other foot, herding unionists into the unitary state when 50% plus one in the North deem it preferable.

Even though Sinn Féin keeps banging the drum they refuse to walk the walk. At last Saturday's event in Dublin, the gathering was presented with the party's preferred candidate in the presidential election, Catherine Connolly.



"She will be a President who understands the immense opportunity of Irish unity, who speaks with hope and confidence that we can achieve a United Ireland," McDonald told the faithful in DCU. No doubt she will.

But for a party that is pushing against all logic for a referendum in the term of the next president, why didn't they put their own candidate forward who might advocate with conviction? If they genuinely believe that their main political project can be achieved by 2030, surely it would be an historic achievement to be in situ as the head of state.

Sinn Féin baggage

There is a serious consideration that feeds into the Shinners' mad rush for a poll, irrespective of the environment or conditions in which it might take place. The party was founded in 1970 to give political cover to a campaign of killing for a united Ireland by the Provisional IRA.

It is now wedded to exclusively peaceful means to meet its objective, but views its work as a different phase of the campaign that was initiated by the Provos. The actuality of a unitary state is all that matters, not any coming together that might ease the passage into a single entity.

Those who directed and organised the killing are now living though their winter years. They want to see retrospective vindication for why they sent out men and women to kill and die, to bomb and degrade.

They are also anxious to dispel the reasonable proposition that the Provo killing lengthened rather than shortened the distance to a united Ireland. That's the kind of baggage that Sinn Féin carries as it lectures far and wide that others are blocking their attempts to do what they bogusly cast as the will of the people.

Horrible mistakes were made throughout the history of strife on this island. At various points during the late 20th century democratic governments forfeited their moral authority. Human life was cheapened, primarily but by no means exclusively, by those who believed they had a right to kill for their politics.

For those reasons, if none other, it is vital there are no more catastrophic mistakes. Change is coming and it could be hugely beneficial to the island as a whole. But the stampede towards a border poll, informed to some extent in order to justify the past, will do nothing to build a new and peaceful Ireland for all citizens.

[seafoid]

The UK economy is in a bad way
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2025/08/12/a-reliance-on-capricious-foreign-investors-has-left-britain/


"The other part of the explanation is higher and more persistent inflation than elsewhere. These higher inflationary expectations are reflected in elevated interest rates and therefore debt-servicing costs.
Britain has a bigger proportion in its overall sovereign debt profile of index-linked gilts than any other advanced economy. The higher the inflation rate, the greater the cost.
With her "non-negotiable" fiscal rules, Reeves claims to be restoring stability to the public finances. But it is far from evident in the nation's debt-servicing costs, which are expected to reach a jaw-dropping £111.2bn this financial year, and have become a major part of the UK's wider fiscal problem.
Why are we paying more than others? Growing credit risk is one obvious explanation – investors are simply not convinced by Reeves's promise of fiscal discipline.
The Chancellor raised spending by £70bn in her first Budget last October, but only half of that was met by increased taxes. The rest came from higher borrowing.
What's since become clear, moreover, is that she is going to have to tax and borrow even more to honour the Government's growing list of spending commitments."

Growth is very low and there is too much debt. There is going to be a big crash which will affect the north.
Being linked to the UK is not looking great these days.

[weareros]

That ARINS poll is likely the way the NILT poll used to be. They seriously need to look at their interview panel.  NILT must have updated theirs finally, now that there's only a 6% difference.  There is no way the UI vote is as low as 34%. The Lucid Talk poll is much more realistic and given credence in that their election polls are not far off. It's low 40s. But buried in the LucidTalk is the question: how people plan to vote in 10-20 years. And the result: 52% UI, 44% UK.

[Armagh18]

The DUP has said that comments made by Ian Paisely Jr on a new podcast in which he said he would be "open" to having conversations about a united Ireland were made in a "personal capacity" and not "on behalf of the party".

The former North Antrim MP features in a new eight-part BBC podcast discussing what a future border poll could mean alongside former Sinn Féin MP Michelle Gildernew.

During the first two episode Mr Paisley said that he was "open" to conversations about a united Ireland but that he had not yet heard any convincing arguments for constitutional change.

Read more: https://tinyurl.com/y9j3xnac

God forbid a DUP'er be open to listening to a opposing viewpoint..

[Munchie]

If this happened in any of our lifetimes, it won't be because the Republic wants us it will because the Brits can't afford this economic cesspit.

[OakLeaf]

If this happened in any of our lifetimes, it won't be because the Republic wants us it will because the Brits can't afford this economic cesspit.

Bit of a sweeping generalisation there. I think the polls put those who want us at well above the 50% mark. The second part is definitely true.

[Snapchap]

Great to see the conversation broadening. In the last few weeks we've seen Irish Unity being one of the questions put to candidates on the televised election debates (something that would have been nowhere near the agenga at previous presidential debates), we've had a BBC podcast series about a border poll (yes,...BBC. With even Paisley Jr getting on board to actually discuss it) and today, the main story on BBC Talkback is about former Fine Gael leader (Varadkar) calling out the sitting FF Taoiseach for "putting artificial barriers up" to prevent a border poll.

[AustinPowers]

The DUP has said that comments made by Ian Paisely Jr on a new podcast in which he said he would be "open" to having conversations about a united Ireland were made in a "personal capacity" and not "on behalf of the party".

The former North Antrim MP features in a new eight-part BBC podcast discussing what a future border poll could mean alongside former Sinn Féin MP Michelle Gildernew.

During the first two episode Mr Paisley said that he was "open" to conversations about a united Ireland but that he had not yet heard any convincing arguments for constitutional change.

Read more: https://tinyurl.com/y9j3xnac

God forbid a DUP'er be open to listening to a opposing viewpoint..

I hope  those loyalists have  left  enough room on that wall beside  Jimmy Nesbitt's name, for Ian Og.

No  doubt it will appear any minute now.

[Munchie]

Great to see the conversation broadening. In the last few weeks we've seen Irish Unity being one of the questions put to candidates on the televised election debates (something that would have been nowhere near the agenga at previous presidential debates), we've had a BBC podcast series about a border poll (yes,...BBC. With even Paisley Jr getting on board to actually discuss it) and today, the main story on BBC Talkback is about former Fine Gael leader (Varadkar) calling out the sitting FF Taoiseach for "putting artificial barriers up" to prevent a border poll.

What did he do to facilitate it when he was at the helm?

[weareros]

Great to see the conversation broadening. In the last few weeks we've seen Irish Unity being one of the questions put to candidates on the televised election debates (something that would have been nowhere near the agenga at previous presidential debates), we've had a BBC podcast series about a border poll (yes,...BBC. With even Paisley Jr getting on board to actually discuss it) and today, the main story on BBC Talkback is about former Fine Gael leader (Varadkar) calling out the sitting FF Taoiseach for "putting artificial barriers up" to prevent a border poll.

What did he do to facilitate it when he was at the helm?

Nothing for a poll, but keeping North in EU for trade and preventing a trade border on island makes economic integration much more seamless. He stood up to UK in ways an Irish Taoiseach rarely did.
Took a lot of abuse for that and of course it wasn't worth one vote in 26 where people seemed obvious to the impact of a trade border, where milk for example would no longer be able to be sent to across the border for processing, and any old animal or plant disease could be imported into island via Larne without any consideration of checks and all-island standards. A border poll will also be a vote to rejoin EU and the way is set for easy passage, something Scotland will not have if they ever grow a pair and vote for independence.

[Hereiam]

The good Friday agreement has not worked for Nationalists, our culture and way of life is being tramped on by unionist Politian's at every opportunity.

Irish language is not to be promoted or encouraged
Gaelic games are not to be promoted or encouraged
Irish history is ignored
The west of the statelet to this day see little or no investment except for the unionist strong holds like Fivemiletown etc.

Its time for change but I don't think SF are the party to deliver it, I think they done the right thing by sticking to the ballot box and what they have done for nationalists has to be commended but its time for the SDLP to get their affairs into order and get their asses into gear and drive for a border poll and put an end to this shit place.
 

[maldini]

Gildernew pretty poor in the discussions that I've seen