Sir, – I would not have expected anything different from John Bruton, a fully paid-up member of the EU sycophancy brigade, to come up with any other opinion than the one he espouses in his recent article in The Irish Times (“UK exit from EU would take big toll on Border area”, Opinion Analysis, December 21st). He essentially suggests that the Irish diplomatic service should lobby the British government against a referendum on their relationship with the EU. A referendum, he argues, would be detrimental to the economic and cultural interests of the Border region in Ireland. This is an absurd argument on two fronts.
Firstly the British government controls the entire United Kingdom and to suggest that that government is going to base its decisions on what’s best for the entire country on the interests of the 2.5 per cent of the UK population that live in Northern Ireland is plainly ludicrous. Secondly the British government is not going to pay the slightest attention to the Irish diplomatic service when it says, “Don’t leave the EU as it doesn’t suit us Irish!” They will say that they will take the Irish view into consideration, to be polite, but then completely ignore it. He also argues that the northern nationalists would feel more cut off from the Republic if the UK left the EU. Would that be more cut off then using a different currency, a different judicial process, a different school system, a different police force, a different system of local government, etc? Northern Ireland already consumes more than twice it earns and the gap is filled by the good people of London, Manchester, etc. The idea that northern nationalists are only champing at the bit to join the broke Republic and throw all that money away is simply wrong. – Yours, etc,