A chara, – Discussion of a “united Ireland” at this time is premature. It threatens the welcome convergence between all communities in Ireland that has been quietly developing over, at least, the past 50 years. Observers of the more senior generation can scarcely comprehend how quick and radical this transformation has been.
The discussion has been precipitated before its natural time by the unwelcome intrusion of an alien nationalism into Irish affairs, principally from the extreme right of post-imperial politics in London.
The Ireland of the immediate future, if it emerges through social, political and economic evolution, is unlikely to be a unitary state. Cultural differences at the extremes in Ireland are too stark to find such an arrangement comfortable. A federal arrangement is more likely to be acceptable to such a disparate spectrum and a suitable accommodation for its differences.
Unfortunately, “synthetic” stopgap arrangements, such as the experimental Stormont Assembly power-sharing compromise, will be necessary steps along the way, though decidedly temporary expedients. By contrast a federal arrangement, being more realistic, would be stable.
The future requires separate parliaments in Belfast and Dublin to take sovereign decisions on collaboration and convergence free from the unwelcome and unhelpful intrusion of an unhelpful neighbour who though it has declared it has “no strategic interest in Ireland” persists in upsetting the Irish applecart. – Yours, etc,
BRENDAN FLANAGAN,
Inishowen,
Co Donegal.