As Brussels and London try to find some kind of grand Brexit compromise, Ireland’s fate appears to be hanging in the balance.
Much of the attention has been focused on the danger that would result from a no-deal Brexit: the erection of a border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland that would grind cross-border trade to a halt and potentially plunge the island back into conflict.
But the real risk lies elsewhere — in the possibility that Brexit will lead to the reunification of Ireland as a single country governed from Dublin.
Proponents of unification — an eventuality many on the island have come to consider almost inevitable — paint it as nothing more than a giant counselling session. They like to toss around buzzwords like “citizens assemblies,” “mutual respect” and “tolerance.”
In reality, the economic and social instability that would arise from Northern Ireland rejoining the south would dwarf the pain of a no-deal Brexit. A united Ireland would represent a very serious challenge to the viability of the Republic.
Politically, support for a united Ireland is high in the Republic, but what’s less clear is whether voters would back significant increases in their taxes to pay for it.
Let’s start with the economics. Northern Ireland receives approximately €10 billion a year in subsidies from Westminster, a transfer of funds that equates to nearly 25 percent of annual tax revenues in the Republic.
Were Northern Ireland to break away from the United Kingdom, that money would have to come from somewhere — either in spending cuts north of the border, or taxpayer money flowing from the south.
Politically, support for a united Ireland is high in the Republic, but what’s less clear is whether voters would back significant increases in their taxes to pay for it.
Are the Irish people ready to accept an adaptation of the German model under which western Germans were taxed an additional 5.5 percent on income — a so-called solidarity surcharge — to pay for the costs associated with integrating the former East Germany?
The Berlin Wall coming down did not bring equality to Germany| Gerard Malie/AFP via Getty Images
And even measures like that don’t guarantee long-term success. Some 30 years after German reunification, the east of the country operates at a significant economic disadvantage and public discontent has made the region a breeding ground for political extremists.
And then there’s the politics. Those calling for a united Ireland gloss over Northern Irish history and the ongoing influence of Ulster unionism.
The north and south of the country have been fundamentally different since at least the beginning of the 20th century. At the time the island was partitioned in 1922, the six counties of Northern Ireland — particularly the areas east of the River Bann — were overwhelmingly protestant.
They were also the only part of the island that had experienced significant industrialization. Belfast, for example, had more in common with the great industrial engines of Birmingham or Sheffield than with the struggling cities of Dublin or Cork.
To be sure, demographics are changing in Northern Ireland. The previously unionist bastion of Fermanagh & South Tyrone now has a nationalist MP. But the actual split of the population between unionist and nationalist in the six counties is, ultimately, irrelevant.
Arlene Foster, leader of the DUP | Charles McQuillan/Getty Images
A significant proportion of the unionist population in Northern Ireland will never countenance living in a united Ireland. And their view is represented by the likes of Arlene Foster and Nigel Dodds in the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), for whom Brexit is the perfect opportunity to strengthen the ties that bind them to the British motherland — notwithstanding all the historical ironies associated with the Ulster unionists’ past dalliances with the British Tory party.
It’s very easy in the Republic to dismiss the DUP’s positions as out of date and bigoted. There’s an element of truth to both accusations. But, ultimately, the DUP’s position on a united Ireland is perfectly consistent with over a century of Ulster unionist policy — and it’s not likely to change now.
After all, this is a unionist cause that was willing to risk war with the British crown in 1914 (with the tacit support of the British Conservative Party) in order to remain full members of the empire. This is a unionism that successfully built a “Protestant parliament for a Protestant people” by controlling the levers of economic power and excluding those with different political viewpoints. But most of all this is a unionism defined by the overarching goal of preventing a united Ireland.
The demographics of Northern Ireland may have changed, but the political objectives of mainstream political unionism have not. There can never be a peaceful transition to a united Ireland when such an organized minority are willing to do anything (and everything) to oppose it.
The reality is that a united Ireland, not a no-deal Brexit, is the biggest threat to our Republic’s hard-won stability.
Ironically, for a state supposedly traumatized by partition, very little about the Republic today is defined by our separation. As political issues, water and property taxes brings more people out onto the streets than a crusade against the division of the islands.
Irish nationalists are deeply deluded in thinking that a hard Brexit will somehow convince Ulster unionists to back a united Ireland. If the U.K. crashes out of the EU without a deal, ties between the conservative unionist community and the British crown will only grow stronger. The DUP knows this.
The reality is that a united Ireland, not a no-deal Brexit, is the biggest threat to our Republic’s hard-won stability. And no amount of solidarity from the European Union will change that fact.
Eoin Drea is senior research officer at the Wilfried Martens Centre for European Studies and research fellow at the School of Business at Trinity College, Dublin.