A chara, – Michael McDowell is right to outline the range of degrees of federation that the entities on this complex island could adopt in achieving a lasting and beneficial political arrangement (“Confederacy is only model of Irish unity likely to garner wide support”, Opinion & Analysis, December 14th).
While accommodating the cantonal identities in the six counties, it would be possible to achieve a regional, nine-county, provincial reintegration, a united Ulster, which could exist as a geopolitical entity within these islands and as an independent region within Europe. – Is mise,
PAUL ARNOLD,
Dublin 6.
A chara, – Michael McDowell is always worth reading, even when I don’t agree with him, but his contribution on the supposed need for a confederal structure to achieve Irish unity is ill-founded.
His assertion that confederacy is the only model of Irish unity likely to garner wide support seems to me to reflect his own view more than that of a wide support base that he doesn’t reference.
More importantly, he writes as if the six county area remains the redoubt of a Protestant unionist community that it was designed to be (with all the discrimination against and suppression of the once nationalist minority that were considered necessary to maintain it).
Demographic reports already show that neither unionism nor Protestantism are in a majority, and future indications are that a Catholic and nationalist majority instead will get stronger and more entrenched.
This community, to put it bluntly, will not accept second-class status any longer.
But, in relation to Michael’s McDowell’s argument, if the six county area is no longer essentially Protestant and unionist, what is the purpose of maintaining that area in a separate association with the rest of Ireland?
I am not against a devolution of power to areas to ensure that present-day unionists (or indeed people from the West of Ireland) are comfortable with a united Ireland, but this will not work on a six county basis.
A different form of devolution of powers, protected by an effective civil rights legislation, will have to be found – and the nature of such devolution presupposes that it will be in the context of full participation in a united Irish state, preferably a republic rather than a European province. – Is mise,
EOIN Ó MURCHÚ,
Baile Átha Cliath 22.