Gavan Reilly: Questions without answers: doing our homework on a United Ireland

With the events of Creeslough rightly casting a long shadow over the ‘normal’ news agenda, this week I want to turn back to a side note from last week’s column. I mentioned that many journalists attending the Fianna Fail Ard Fheis were more piqued by the live stream of the Ireland’s Future conference, on the structure of a United Ireland, taking place elsewhere in Dublin on the same day.

With that in mind, I wanted to go back to some questions that might arise in those circumstances. They’re not questions to which I have answers, but they’re points that might need some thought and, perhaps, might prompt some consideration among those in charge.

Firstly: who gets to vote in a border poll? Frankly, we don’t know. In the Republic the terms are clear, because any vote on unity would be an amendment to the Constitution, which has its own clear body of voters. But the UK doesn’t have a written constitution so it’s not quite so clear. Is it the same electorate as Westminster, which includes Irish and commonwealth citizens? Is it the same as Stormont, which includes other EU citizens too? Or would it include all residents of NI, including immigrants with other citizenships, who pay prefer the status quo? Could it include 16 and 17-year-olds, who are disproportionately in favour of unity?

Is it appropriate to plan ahead or not? If Ireland is supposedly wedded to the Good Friday Agreement it might be argued as destabilising or inflammatory to start openly planning for the dismantling of partition and the redrawing of an all-island State. Moreover, there are plenty of recent examples (Australia and monarchy, Scotland and independence) where a popular idea has been defeated because voters didn’t like the version of the question on the ballot. Yet, it would repeat the worst elements of Brexit to hold a referendum without knowing what a new Ireland might look like, or how it would function. Plus: imagine if a referendum passed, with no roadmap for what comes next, leaving unionists unhappy with the outlook and nationalists restless as the world delays the unity they voted for.

Speaking of which: how might unionism actually look in a united Ireland? We often talk about the concessions that might need to be made to a unionist community, but those ideas are based on what unionists argue for today. But in the event of unity, is there still some prospect for Ireland to be repartitioned? If not, what exactly is the purpose of Unionism? Political ideologies and movements ultimately rest on the premise that the goal can be realised. Does unionism still argue for some or all of Ireland to rejoin the UK, or does it merely evolve into a lobby for the interests of British citizens within the Republic?

That question raises another. What’s the value, or role, of Stormont? Leo Varadkar and Jim O’Callaghan both told the Ireland’s Future conference that there would be some role for the current devolved legislature in Stormont even after unity. But even if unionism retains its current form and advocates for Ireland to be re-partitioned, there’s a question about the value of Stormont remaining in existence. What would be the value to unionists of retaining a local parliament in which they still make up the minority? Would some localised gesture to them not equally be a message to Ulster nationalists that unity exists in name only?

But then again, is Stormont actually locked into place come what may? Differing views about the future of the island are one thing but there are differing beliefs on what we’ve already signed up to. Some would tell you that the Good Friday Agreement is merely a charter for devolved government in the North, and would be redundant in the event that the UK peacefully acceded the territory to the Republic. Others take the view that it’s a binding agreement on both governments, so the bodies it establishes would remain in existence, whether they still serve a purpose or not.

With Nicola Sturgeon ramping up the momentum for a second attempt at Scottish independence, these are questions worth dwelling on. Many in Dublin underappreciate the importance of the Ulster-Scots link to unionism; if the UK is already fragmenting and unionists find their anchor to the UK suddenly unmoored from the Union, these academic questions will suddenly seem far less academic.

One under-reported speech from that Ireland’s Future event was from a former Ulster Unionist staff member, who said there was no need to wait for a border poll for the Dublin government to start considering constitutional changes that would make Ireland a more comfortable and amenable place for those who don’t share an Irish identity. It was a shame nobody got a chance to ask him to flesh out those ideas: getting our house in order might not be the most foolhardy idea.