Opinion

Enda Kenny lays down important marker on Irish unity

Brian Feeney

Brian Feeney

Historian and political commentator Brian Feeney has been a columnist with The Irish News for three decades. He is a former SDLP councillor in Belfast and co-author of the award-winning book Lost Lives

Enda Kenny raised the prospect of the north being brought back into the EU within a united Ireland. Picture by Niall Carson, Press Association
Enda Kenny raised the prospect of the north being brought back into the EU within a united Ireland. Picture by Niall Carson, Press Association Enda Kenny raised the prospect of the north being brought back into the EU within a united Ireland. Picture by Niall Carson, Press Association

THE Taoiseach made a very important speech to the British-Irish Association in Oxford at the weekend.

It didn’t get the publicity it deserved perhaps because most of the speech was a pretty bland broad brush affair full of platitudes about the Fresh Start agreement and joint commemorations of 1916.

Perhaps because some of what he had to say wasn’t too pleasant for unionists and their friends in the NIO to hear.

First Enda Kenny pointed out that he will be the only leader from these islands at the EU summit in Bratislava this week where the EU’s response to Brexit will be discussed.

He reminded his audience that: ``The EU is the answer to so many historic questions for Europe.

Questions that led to bloodshed 100 years ago, and questions that go to the very heart of peace and prosperity in Europe today.

That is why nobody in Britain should think that the negotiations ahead will be easy, or that they can be viewed through a purely economic lens.''

In this context he talked about the important EU support for the Good Friday Agreement and the funding such as the Special EU Programmes Body that could be lost as a result of the disastrous decision by England and Wales to leave.

He then went on: "The possibility of unity by consent must be maintained as a valid democratic option into the future.

"That means that, if there were democratic consent to Irish unity at some time in the future, there must be a mechanism to ensure that democratic decision can be implemented within the European Union, as was the case in Germany.''

Here is the Irish government laying down an important marker for the future. It is vital that the British government responds in negotiations to this fundamental position so that there will be an agreed procedure for the north to return to the EU at some time in the future.

Despite unionist crowing about last week’s poll on Irish unity it is now firmly on the agenda not least because of Brexit and the growing fear in Dublin of a hard border.

The results of last week’s poll were entirely predictable for the simple reason that no respondent knew what they were talking about.

No one was given an idea of what a united Ireland is, what it would look like or what it entails because no political party has drawn up a blueprint.

However, that is due to change for we learn Micheál Martin has established a Fianna Fáil working party to produce a document in twelve months on the practicalities of a united Ireland.

Looking at two elected bodies is one option Martin will consider. Sinn Féin is already toying with the idea. It was first mooted by John Redmond in 1911 and provision for a subordinate parliament is in Bunreacht Na hÉireann. Could the two health services be merged? What about education?

One reason Sinn Féin has been pushing for a border poll (which legally can’t happen at present) is that it focuses on all such issues exactly what happened in Scotland when people began seriously to ask the questions.

Relevant questions here like unemployment benefit, €188 for over twenty-fives in the south: here £72.40. State pension €219 in the south: here £119.30.

On the other hand you have to pay €100 to go to A&E in the Republic. Answering the equivalent questions for Scottish independence led the SNP to produce a 670-page tome in 2014 detailing exactly what an independent Scotland would look like.

Offering answers meant support for independence zoomed from 28 per cent to 45 per cent in a year.

Meanwhile poor Arlene is running around unionist districts assuring people ‘the constitutional question is settled’.

Only in so far as there is an agreed mechanism for changing the constitution. With Fianna Fáil planning to put up candidates here in the 2019 council elections and a nationalist voting majority predicted by 2023 the constitutional question is dynamic.

One interesting aspect is the consequential Fianna Fáil/-Sinn Féin rivalry in the next election in the Republic which will take place long before 2019. Both parties arguing about the practicalities of unity will dramatically increase both interest and support.