Weighing up a united Ireland

Last Easter weekend marked the 25th anniversary of the Belfast Good Friday Agreement. At Tertulia, we were very lucky to host Padraig O’Malley in a west of Ireland launch of his new book, ‘Perils and Prospects of a United Ireland’, just published by Lilliput Press.
O’Malley was interviewed by Enda Kenny as part of the O’Malley Clan gathering in 2022, and it was great to welcome him back to Westport. His parents, originally from Co Mayo, moved to Dublin, which is where he himself grew up. He is currently the John Joseph Moakley Distinguished Professor of Peace and Reconciliation at the University of Massachusetts, specialising in the promotion of dialogue amongst divided societies particularly in South Africa, Ireland and the Middle East. In 1997, he arranged for the Good Friday negotiators to meet President Nelson Mandela and the team that negotiated the end of apartheid in South Africa.
In this his latest book, O’Malley maps out the ‘perils and prospects’ that surround the prospect of a united Ireland. The book couldn’t be more urgent or more significant, given the current lack of a functioning executive in the Northern Ireland Assembly.
O’Malley draws on his experience and the relationships built up over 50 years across the political divide He set himself the mammoth task of conducting 97 interviews with all the relevant political players. He also looks at democratic shifts, surveys and stats to present us with the realities of what a united Ireland might look like and what the journey to that place might entail.
In the Republic, for example, have we as citizens really thought about what a United Ireland would be like on a cultural, economical, spiritual, identity level; questions like would we need a new flag, how would religion in schools work, what are the real costs of integration, what kind of health care and social systems could work? In the North, “approximately 40 percent of the electorate now define themselves as neither orange (unionist/loyalist) nor green (nationalist/republican)” calling into question how the power sharing structures of the Belfast Good Friday Agreement represent this substantial cohort.
In the 2022 elections, 20 of the 90 seats (22.2 percent) were won by neither Nationalists nor Unionists, compared to just 8 of a total of 108 in 1998 (7.4 percent). O’Malley’s interviewees all feel that devolved power sharing is dysfunctional.
And what about the prospect of a Border Poll? The Belfast Good Friday Agreement states that the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland could announce a border poll ‘if at any time it appears likely to him that a majority of those voting would express a wish that Northern Ireland should cease to be part of the United Kingdom and form part of a united Ireland’.
However, recent surveys on desire for unity in the North are interesting. In August 2022, a poll by Lucid Talk (Sunday Life) found just 41 percent in favour of unity, 48 against and 11 percent undecided/won’t vote. Last December, an Irish Times/Ipsos poll found that in Northern Ireland, 50 percent are in favour of staying in the UK (including 21 percent of Catholics) and 56 percent favour a referendum in the next ten years. In the South, 66 percent were in favour of reunification and 76 percent favoured a referendum in the next five years – however, only 20 percent saw the issue as a priority, while 52 percent said unification is not important to them thought they would like to see it someday.
Whatever the future holds for the North, O’Malley’s beautifully written and accessible book will certainly be thought provoking for anyone interested in what a united Ireland means to us today on the island of Ireland, and in how it might come about and what shape it might take.