A United Ireland - will it happen?

[Workingman]

My granddad and grandma moved from Ireland to England just before WWI.

Granddad was a Scottish Presbyterian serving in the British army who was stationed in the Ashbourne area north of Dublin. He married a catholic and had 11 children. They were not comfortable with their treatment and the events that eventually led to the Irish Free State. Civil war was looming so they and nine of the children left and came to Leeds.

At the time of the Irish War of Independence and later the creation of the Irish Free State (1919-1924) the Northern Irish solution seemed the only one available. 20-20 hindsight shows otherwise. Two sides to every coin.

[Kaz]

I couldn’t agree more.

[Suff]

WM if you change available to "that both parties could agree at the time", I would go with that.

Medsec if you know about the massacre of Glencoe, the wording goes "the Campbell had orders King William had signed".

That particular William was William of Orange. As you can imagine Orange day parades happen in Scotland too and they cause a lot of ill feeling there too. Yet knowing some Orange en it is no longer like that, they te d to be pretty normal people. It is how they are perceived that causes the trouble.

25 years on from now it will all be history for the young.

Hopefully reunited and healed some time in the future.

[Workingman]

If you change available to "that both parties could agree at the time", I would go with that

Semantics: "available" and "that both parties could agree at the time" are the same thing.

Bannockburn, Culloden, Glencoe, the Boyne are history, ancient history, time to move on. We cannot though, and that's the problem. Well, some of us can but you Celts, and I am one, just will not let it go. 350 years+ FGS!

I know, let's revisit Stamford Bridge, Towton, Marston Moor, Tewksbury. They will sort us out. They will set the 21st Century to rights. Jeez.

[miasmum]

What many people outside Ireland don’t realise is that NI was created as a Protestant (Unionist) state for Protestant people and over the decades, Catholics (Nationalists) suffered appalling discrimination- that was the root of the Troubles. So to have a Catholic First Minister is huge, and the DUP fought against that for two years. I am in no way a Sinn Fein supporter but I do like Michelle O’Neill. NI has run a deficit since 1966, so although most people in Ireland would welcome a United Ireland, the economics of it would have to be very carefully considered. I wonder would the UK government pay Ireland to take NI off its hands

Osc, that is exactly what I learned when I read the book I mentioned in my post

[Suff]

Bannockburn, Culloden, Glencoe, the Boyne are history, ancient history, time to move on. We cannot though, and that's the problem. Well, some of us can but you Celts, and I am one, just will not let it go. 350 years+ FGS!

I was explaining that it is not only the Irish Catholics who don't like Orange marches.

But take it how you want.

[Workingman]

Please forget William and Mary, the Jacobites and the clearances of times past.

NI at Brexit voted to stay in the EU. It is essentially in the Single Market and the EU Customs Union, and is also part of the UK. However, there is no border between it and the EU, but there is one between it and GB - the rUK. The GFA allows it to reunite, subject to referendums.

If the Republic and NI want to reunite so be it. The EU will support it, politically and financially.