NEW IRELAND ÉIRE NUA
Building the
all-island economy BY CAOIMHE ARCHIBALD MLA
There is no doubt that Irish unity is now a part of the mainstream political debate on the island of Ireland. Brexit is often cited as a game changer and it was, but what is also increasingly obvious is that Irish unity makes sense, including economically. The so-called subvention figures have been exposed as a myth, the economic benefits have been modelled, and more people are looking at the potential offered by a unified Ireland. Standing in stark contrast to that is the status quo. The Northern state in particular has suffered under partition; the lowest economic growth, the lowest productivity, and the highest economic inactivity in these islands. One fifth of workers earn less than a basic living wage and there is a 12% gap in average disposable income compared to the south. These things are the result of decades of structural inequalities that won’t be fully addressed in a constitutional set-up which relies on the British block grant and the whims of Tory Chancellors.
Delivering constitutional change to create a fairer, more equal, and more prosperous Ireland for all its citizens unites and drives those of us involved in the campaign for unity and it is what piques the interest of those ambivalent or even opposed in the past. Brexit completely exposed the democratic deficit of the political make-up of the ‘United Kingdom’. One hundred years ago, partition was imposed against the democratic wishes of people on this island. In 2016, the majority of people in the North voted to remain in the European Union, but our vote was ignored. In fact, the outcome of the Brexit referendum would not have changed even if every single citizen in the North had voted to remain. And for many, that is hard to take. Over the course of four years, the ignorance of many English MPs to the North was laid bare; that they didn’t care about our interests or peace, even more so. Painstaking negotiation over those four years was not helped by the belligerence of the DUP
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