PROTESTANTS ‘MUST BE PROTECTED’ IN UNITED IRELAND

Posted by Jim on July 28, 2018

DUP leader Peter Robinson has said he believes reunification
could happen because of Brexit and has called for a debate on
“protections” for the unionist community.

His remarks came as an official report showed that people in the north
of Ireland would be better off in a united Ireland inside the European
Union.

Speaking at the McGill summer school on Friday, Peter Robinson, who
retired as the Six County First Minister in 2016, said he believes the
North must now prepare for the possibility of a united Ireland.

The former leader of the hardline Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) said
he would accept the results of a border poll which could led to the
North joining the South, if there is a majority within the Six Counties.

“As soon as that decision is taken every democrat will have to accept
that decision,” he said in response to a question from the audience. But
he said holding a border poll without preparation for reunification
would be “madness”, and compared it to the British decision to leave the
European Union.

While he said he did not believe it would happen, he said he could not
rule it out. The unionist community should have “protections” in the
event of reunification, as the nationalist community currently enjoys in
the North, and he called for “a working north-south institution” to
smooth relationships across the two islands.

In a response to Robinson’s comments posted on Twitter, Sinn Fein’s
spokesperson on reunification Matt Carthy said: “Something big is
happening — change is coming. We all need to prepare for unity.”

Earlier this week a committee of the Dublin parliament circulated a
report internally which confirms the financial benefits of reunification
in the aftermath of Brexit. The main author is a German economist, Gunther
Thumann, who worked as a senior economist at the German desk of the
International Monetary Fund at the time of German reunification. He
brought his understanding of that process to the situation in Ireland.

The Six County budget, which currently faces an annual deficit of some
nine billion pounds, would be near balanced in a reunification scenario,
he reported. Some three billion could be saved be ending the North’s
contribution to British defence expenditure and debt interest, among
others, while almost two billion could be saved by combining public
services across the island.

It also argues that there wold also be a significant adjustment due to
pensions, as these would remain the legal responsibility of the British
government since the pension liabilities accrued under British rule.

Sinn Fein has long argued that unification would be beneficial to
Ireland and published a report two years ago to dispel what it calls the
“unaffordability myth”.

The Thumann research has inexplicably not been published, apparently at
the request of Irish diplomats, but it was passed on to members of the
Dublin parliament by the Committee on the Implementation of the Good
Friday Agreement.

Its ultimate conclusion was that everybody in the North of Ireland would
be better off in a united Ireland, and inside the EU.

“This is of course, before taking into account the likely potential for
growth in Northern Ireland following unification as happened in East
Germany following its reunification,” said Fianna Fail Senator Mark
Daly, who co-authored the report.

Reports of the research emerged as a historic meeting took place of the
British-Irish Intergovernmental Conference (BIIGC) in London, its first
meeting in eleven years.

With the collapse of the devolved institutions at Stormont, the
conference gives Dublin a consultative role on most issues affecting the
north of Ireland. Dismissed by unionists as a talking shop, many
nationalists see it as a possible first step to joint authority of the
North by the two governments, and therefore a potential stepping stone
to reunification.

An agenda for the meeting was not released to the public.