Sir, – I have two major concerns with the way Prof John Garry and Prof Brendan O’Leary formulate the choice between whether the exact model of a united Ireland should be specified before or after any unification referendum (“United Ireland comes with dilemmas for British who don’t want to become Irish”, Opinion & Analysis, December 13th). They present voters with a false choice. And they neglect to address a major implication of that choice.
The choice is not between, on the one hand, a referendum on just the principle of unity without any details of what unity might look like and, on the other, a referendum on a fully-detailed model of a united Ireland. There is another way, as the 2014 Scottish independence referendum shows. It was a referendum on the principle of independence but abundant details were available. The Scottish government provided many of those details in its 670-page guide to an independent Scotland that was published 10 months before the vote. This document laid out the government’s vision and priorities for action. It discussed the transition to Scotland’s new constitutional status and set out the direction in which the new state might go regarding finances and the economy, social services, education, human rights, international relations, justice and security, culture, and democratic development. The Scottish Electoral Commission found that voters had exceptionally high levels of knowledge of referendum issues. The vast majority felt that they had enough information to make an informed choice in the referendum.
This alternative way, or some variation of it, should be part of the constitutional debate, especially because of a stark and hidden consequence of the professors’ approach. If the referendums are explicitly about the precise model of Irish unity on offer, as O’Leary and Garry suggest in their “before” scenario, the North will have a comprehensive veto over the form and content of a united Ireland. Nothing about a united Ireland – its constitutional structures, political institutions, national symbols or major policies – can be established without the approval of the North. Such a far-reaching Northern veto violates the Belfast Agreement’s notion of consent. It also disregards the agreement’s democratic ratification. And it pre-empts a decision about whether the North should even have this kind of comprehensive veto. That decision properly belongs to the citizens of a united Ireland after unity has been approved.
There needs to be open discussion of this implication of the false choice the professors offer. It might well temper the strong survey support they find for having the exact model of a united Ireland on the referendum ballot. – Yours, etc,
MIKE BURKE,
Associate Professor
Emeritus,
Toronto Metropolitan
University, Canada.
Sir, – The recent poll published in The Irish Times, in which voters in the Republic would like to see an end to Stormont if a unity poll were to pass, raises an interesting question as to whether that would be legally possible under the Belfast Agreement.
It is my opinion that that would not be legally sustainable under the terms of the agreement, because in the words of Mr Justice Richard Humphreys, in his authoritative study of the agreement, Beyond the Border, the agreement is intended to endure after unity. The agreement is a legally binding international treaty and as such, it cannot be unilaterally changed without the consent of the other party, in this case the British government.
There is nothing in the agreement to the effect that the internal institutions (ie the Executive and Assembly) fall away because of unity. All the elements of strands one, two and three would remain extant. In addition, the agreement expressly provides for a right to continued British citizenship in perpetuity for the people of Northern Ireland.
A recognition of these legal parameters should provide a solid foundation for a serious debate about what a future united Ireland might look like.
Although a significant minority of unionists, specifically the DUP, were opposed to the agreement, it is becoming abundantly clear that the agreement’s provisions are in fact the best protection for unionists in the event of a united Ireland being achieved through a unity poll.
Maybe this is why unionists, in your interesting opinion poll, now wish to maintain those well-crafted and prescient provisions of the agreement within any future united Ireland. – Yours, etc,
ALBAN MAGINNESS, BL
Belfast.
Sir, – While Fintan O’Toole makes many good points about the irrationality of our views on Ireland and its unification, he is perhaps harsh is suggesting we are peculiar in this regard. The ability to “genuinely love our home … and yet be quite ruthless in getting the hell out of the place” is common, if not universal (“Doublethink on united Ireland part of who we are”, Opinion & Analysis, December 13th).
In his essay Imaginary Homelands, Salman Rushdie argues that the “present is foreign and that the past is home” with emigrants like himself destined to “create fictions” living in “Indias of the mind”. The past he says “is a country from which we’ve all emigrated” and the migrant is “the central or defining figure of the 20th century”.
In many ways perhaps the problem is the word “home” itself. It appears to refer to a location. However, it is often striking in encountering people with dementia how they frequently speak of a desire to go “home”, including when they are there. Often they will mention one or other address from their lifetime, that of where they grew up, or a house long destroyed. Despite their illness, such patients articulate a feeling we all have at times. It’s what will fill our airports for the next few weeks, with throngs of people going, or coming, home.
The word “nostalgia”, literally homecoming pain, precisely captures the impossible dream of the emigrant, similarly, to return to a non-existent location that is immediately familiar and palpably safe. If a united Ireland ever comes about it will, despite the unchanged geography, be a new state and require a new state of mind. Perhaps, some generations hence, it will truly feel like “home” to our descendants, and they will be as irrational about it as we are about ours. – Yours, etc,
BRIAN O’BRIEN,
Kinsale,
Co Cork.
Sir, – It would have been interesting if the recent survey on a united Ireland asked those in favour who live in the Republic whether they had ever spent any time visiting Northern Ireland. Day trips to Newry for cheap alcohol or one-day trips to see the Titanic Quarter would not count. It surprises me how few people I meet have been in Northern Ireland for any length of time.
For that matter, it surprises me how few people I meet have ever even been in Donegal. – Yours, etc,
JOHN BURNS,
Blackrock,
Co Dublin.