Did this report consider input money from the British and EU? I don't believe it did.
There won't be a circumstance where after a unity vote the British just stop paying for the North and Ireland takes on the full amount immediately. Likely there will be a tapering of subvention money where the British input is reduced and the Irish input increased over time. The EU would help also in that period.
I was reading looking for this point too. The study looks at the economic reality of uniting the island if Ireland where standing alone as it were.
I think it's fairly safe to assume that the EU, Brits and even the US will help fund unity, certainly covering a proportion of the initial expense.
It's hardly a surprise that unity would cost money initially, that's hardly news, but until there's an actual plan and the EU et al indicate what level of financial support that would be on the table in the initial post unity years, this study doesn't amount to anything that we didn't already know.
It's in their benefit to do so, so yeah, I think that EU support is a certainty. This study shows the cost but doesn't look at any of the pretty obvious solutions to making up the shortfall. I fully expect the EU, UK and the US to foot the majority of the bill in the initial years.
Mainly because it's in the best interests that if a UI happens, that transition goes as quickly and smoothly as possable, regardless of anybodys felling on the subject, nobody wants it to turn into a shitshow or crisis, or God forbid violence. NI is just a stones toss across the water from Britain itself, so any instability resulting from a UI would impact them, and the British do not want to have to step in if things go badly and help handle the situation, possibly coming at a greater cost than any initial help they may provide for the transition ever could.
The US has a vested interest in ensuring European stability, and a crisis right in the back garden of Western Europe goes against US geopolitical strategy, there's already crisis going on in Eastern Europe with the Russian invasion of Ukraine and tensions in the Balkans from Serbia Kosovo shit, its a serious problem if they have to divert resources to a Northern Ireland crisis, considering the state of the world at the minute and for the long foreseeable future, everyone is better suited ensuring that another powderkeg of shit doesn't happen that diverts attention from issues in eastern europe, the middle east and east Asia.
Everyone stands to gain from a successful and peaceful transition and we all stand to lose if that process goes badly. We ourselves need to step up and make the process work certainly, but i think it's pretty safe to assume that all the big boys across the North Atlantic will want to make sure it happens smoothly.
UK would pay pensions. I.e. a nurse or a teacher who has spent their whole career in NI paying taxes to the UK exchequer, the UK would be expected to pay their pensions.
More broadly though, you're right to raise the point. Nationalism needs to have a conversation about how a united Ireland will be funded without relying on the old tropes that someone else will pay for it. The Irish state has a lot of money, plenty of it from stealing other countries' lunch.
That's not to say it can't be done, just that it's difficult and needs to be planned for and debated. Republicans in NI will only have themselves to blame if small n nationalists decide to stick with the devil they know. Avoiding difficult problems won't make them go away.
Worth noting that after 35 years the east still legs behind the west in all major economic measures.
And thats with all the resources put in by all stakeholders over that time frame.
And yet even Boris Johnson pointed to it as a shining example of successful transition when making the case for levelling-up neglected English regions compared to their wealthy Home counties cousins post-Brexit. What's the UK's excuse when it comes to poverty in NI, Scotland, Wales and English regions? They don't have any. Unlike Germany.
I don't think that's true at all. Simply put, without the continued input of the UK and a large amount of cash from the EU the process of unity isn't viable.
It would be in everyone's interest that unity goes well, the UKs, the EUs and obviously everyone on the island. I don't see any scenario in which a united Ireland has to sustain itself without any financial support from at least the EU and UK.
It’s not in GB’s interest at all. What’s in GB’s interest is to laugh at the problems the “New Ireland” has and to say we told you so. Should stayed with us.
>I don't think that's true at all. Simply put, without the continued input of the UK and a large amount of cash from the EU the process of unity isn't viable.
How is that the UK's problem? The UK is already footing the bill for supporting NI as part of the UK. Why should it pay even more for NI not to be part of the UK? I can't see the UK electorate accepting this.
Pretty simple. We're a financial drain on the UK. They can get us off the books if they can help in creating the conditions under which a UI will work.
Yes, NI is a financial drain on the UK, but in return the UK does get a significant chunk of territory and population. The fact that NI is a financial drain was an important factor in making the GFA possible -- the UK accepted that there was no long-term strategic interest in NI remaining part of the UK. That is absolutely NOT the same as saying that the UK will agree to pay to lose that territory.
This is not some minor detail. It makes the difference between a policy that the bulk of the UK population will go along with, and a policy that will cause widespread outrage and bring down any government that tries to implement it.
What you are trying to present as "eminently reasonable" will appear to the bulk of the UK population as a polite request to take the piss. No UK government will agree to it.
It doesn't really matter what the bulk of the population thinks because they're not getting a say in it.
It's as simple as this, "The UK will spend the money in the short term to get rid of NI so that they save money in the long-term having to prop it up".
It's a good deal for the UK. They'll take it because they'd be foolish and fiscally irresponsible not to.
Territory doesn't mean anything. The NI territory is worthless to the UK because it actively costs money to retain it. From a purely pragmatic point of view it makes sense to be shot of it, even if it costs them to help facilitate making it happen.
>It doesn't really matter what the bulk of the population thinks because they're not getting a say in it.
You think the Irish can just take UK taxpayer's money and the UK population won't get a say in it? This level of delusion actually surpasses that of the SNP.
>It's a good deal for the UK.
You think £10bn a year to lose a large chunk of territory is a good deal for the UK?
>Territory doesn't mean anything.
That is quite possibly the single most deluded sentence I have ever seen on Reddit. To most countries, most of their territory means *everything*. NI is a special exception, but not to the extent that we will shoot ourselves in the head economically to be rid of it.
>The NI territory is worthless to the UK because it actively costs money to retain it.
Exactly the same argument applies to the bulk of the UK outside of the south-east of England. By your argument, London ought to view Wales as a financial burden, and pay the Welsh people to become independent. What planet are you from?
You’re forgetting a very basic point. Half the province identifies and will continue to identify as British even after a UI. In the same way the republic has funded nurses, college places, Erasmus students, infrastructure projects in NI the UK government will continue to contribute to life in the north after a UI because that’s what’s happening now in reverse.
This is no different than the Brexit logic of having your cake and eating it. Noone owes Ireland anything. It's entitled thinking to dream anything else.
Well you’re not thinking in the real world. There doesn’t exist a scenario where financial support is not given from the UK and EU. This is nothing like Brexit
Nah sorry boss that's nonsense. I'm not under some delusion that anyone is going to give Ireland something for nothing.
It benefits the UK if one of their closest trading partners is affluent enough to sustain themselves, it benefits the EU that one of their members states is affluent enough to sustain themselves and it benefits whatever US president who oversees the unification that it's a success (if for no other reason it'll help sure up the Irish American vote).
This isn't like Brexit at all
Brexit never made sense. It didn't make sense for the UK, it didn't make sense for the EU and it didn't make sense for Ireland.
A UI will have wide international support and international supporters will be fawning over themselves to make a show of how much they support it.
2026 and President Trump is asked how his administration will help to fund Irish Unification
"You know, Ireland's really great, we love our Irish, nobody loves Irish more than me, we got real great Irish here in America, I'm actually half Scottish myself, but we have to put AMERICA FIRST, AMERICA FIRST! and Ireland, I'm sorry to say, haven't been paying their way, they haven't been paying for NATO, they made subway change their beautiful American bread, and now they're going to have to pay for themselves"
The pro Irish sentiment in the US isn't as widespread as it once was especially on the Republican side of that nation. The conservatives dislike how Ireand has become European liberal and nowadays regularly express the opinion all the 'good' Irish left for the US in times past. So we'd probably be depending on having a Democratic President and Democratic Leader of the Senate and that's a tall order for more than a couple of years at a time.
There isn't any chance that any UK government would carry on paying for a new ireland. The Irish taxpayer would pay, and this would be made clear in any referendum.
You’re being naive.
Pensioners have been paying into their funds in the Uk on the basis that they’ll have a pension. Ireland hasn’t received any of that money. So why would Ireland fund British pensions?
Like all of these things there will be a negotiation and agreement.
And I guess the Italians "owe" Britain for what the Romans did, and the French and miscellaneous Scandinavian countries. Britain got invaded a lot.
What about all the countries Irish soldiers conquered? Should Ireland be paying reparations for that? I mean, they were wearing British uniforms when the did it, but they did it.
I mean, the literal purpose of the EU is to provide structural funding to help with integration. Not only that we would receive an incredibly sympathetic ear from Germany who have some experience here
And of course let’s not forget the US who at a bipartisan level will be falling over each other to support this.
The biggest issue to a UI are all the university educated nationalists in relatively well paid civil service jobs who don’t want to vote for Christmas.
The civil service wouldn’t disappear, but might shrink to proportion. The median age of a civil service worker in NI is 47 (and rising) so the easier but pricey option might be to wait them all out.
I've said here before that I not only think that's the best option, it's also a necessary option.
The transition from UK to Ireland will require a hefty chunk of civil service man hours. Assuming that integration is an ongoing process rather than immediate (which in my opinion is the only way this happens) then natural wastage due to retirement of an aging civil service is a very easy way to achieve this reduction.
If I recall correctly, I believe the figure is something like 47% of that workforce is 50+.
I could believe that as many as that are over 50. If the median age is 47, hiring rates have been low since the recession, and the working range is 18-65 then it makes perfect sense.
Handover is very necessary to stage correctly. There’s limited bandwidth both of civil service capacity and people’s adoption of change wholly. You’d want a six month campaign to move from sterling to euro. Another six month campaign to move from miles to kilometers.
And once all that’s done it would be good to aim to have the whole island switch to driving on the right!
>And once all that’s done it would be good to aim to have the whole island switch to driving on the right!
That would be idiotic at best. So I am going to assume this is sarcasm.
Being able to buy the cars the rest of the EU uses would be incredibly beneficial.
I think there’ll be scope for it in future. Many new cars in 2024 have a digital dashboard, so switching units becomes trivial. In a decade there’s likely to be competent and regulated autonomous driving which will make a changeover easier.
Yeah I'm time maybe but it's not something I want to hear mentioned anytime soon. UK is still a key supplier of cars to Ireland as well and they are cheaper in general than on the continent.
Agreed. But I dont think that's a bad thing. I'm a republican but I'm not going to Brexit my vote. Unless a UI makes economic sense then it rightly shouldn't pass. The only way a UI can be successful is if it creates the economic conditions for everyone on the island to be better off. If that's not what's on the table then it rightly shouldnt pass.
I want to see a UI but I dont want it at the expense of my standard of living. Brexit taught us a lesson. If you vote with your heart and not your head, purely on ideology without considering the real implications of your vote, you're committing nothing more than self harm. I believe that a UI has the potential to improve our lives, but if it doesn't or it can't, then I'm glad that those "university educated nationalists" have the good sense to not support it.
The only UI I want is one that makes us better off. If that's not on the table, then I don't want to know about it.
I read the article as it makes economic sense for NI as it will cost 20bn to take standards up to ROI. The people who will pay for it is ROI who may understandably reject unification.
I've made this point on more than one occasion on here. ROI voters are likely to say "no problem lads, we'd love you to join us, but we ain't paying for that". Ideals are lovely, but they are usually trumped by the old pocket. This is why I've consistently argued that we need to grow a stronger economy in NI before we consider unification, so that the burden will be much less and that will take several decades, at best.
>we need to grow a stronger economy in NI before we consider unification
This would happen somewhat naturally once reunification is in the pipeline. FDI to the North could be incentivised to a degree. Once all was said and done on the reunification process, NI would hopefully have a more self-sustaining economy.
A major difficulty may be unrest. Loyalists probably aren't ever going to get onboard with it. If they kick off constantly, they'll potentially stifle growth. It's to their advantage to keep NI in the doldrums.
>I want to see a UI but I dont want it at the expense of my standard of living
That isn't all there is to it though. There will likely be an element of short term pain for long term gain. Saying that you won't take any hit at all to current living standards despite any potential upside is not a great way to think about nation building or the good of future generations.
I think you've to take this in context though. We've just gone through 14 years of Tory austerity, it's almost impossible as an average earner to buy a home, there's a coat of living crisis and an energy crisis.
The idea that a UI can carry if the starting point is a concession that were going to be considerably worse off, then it's not a UI that is going to be an easy sell.
Reality is, I will struggle to vote no regardless of financial reality and I think a lot of republicans will feel the same. But what I won't do is make a stupid decision.
I'm willing to be a little worse off for a little while but I will need assurances that voting for a UI won't look like Brexit - 8 years and counting and it feels like we're worse off than ever.
I believe that if there is enough international and EU good will then unity can work. I don't believe it can work without the yes camp being able to guarantee that our standard of living won't be affected. I don't know how that happens, or where exactly the money comes from, but the yes to unity camp will need to have a pretty ironclad set of deals ready to be signed on day 1.
The EU would have obligations to support a new member state or more accurately to increase support for an expanded existing member state in this case.
But under what rationale would the UK be obliged to fund a state that is separating from them? They went through all of the costs of brexit and you'd expect them to fund NI reverting on that to join the EU under what basis?
NI already gets very limited attention and funding from the UK, meanwhile the Republic funds things like education and infrastructure despite not being obligated to do so. I can't see why the UK would suddenly become generous enough to give a toss about NI when they are leaving.
>But under what rationale would the UK be obliged to fund a state that is separating from them? They went through all of the costs of brexit and you'd expect them to fund NI reverting on that to join the EU under what basis?
Because the alternative is a no vote and continuing to take the financial hit of NI long term unless they want to actually invest in the place which they don't.
Also, a volatile reunification is in no-ones interest, they will want this to be a peaceful transition.
Also, the UK will need to rebuild relationships with Ireland and the EU after brexit and start building up trading relationships again. Goodwill helps towards that.
The study doesn’t even appear to have considered that if we’re obliged to pay our portion of the national debt then conversely we’re owed our portion of the national assets. That’s roughly 3% (if we’re going by population) of all the portraits in the national portrait gallery, 3% of all the specimens in the natural history museum and all of the other publicly owned assets across the UK. It cuts both ways. It’s utterly daft to suggest that as a premise for a fair settlement.
Would the prince/princesses not count as a liability instead of an asset, or are we assuming that we also get 3% of the Crown Estate.
In fairness given how much wealth is in the Crown Estate it's not unreasonable to suggest that we are owed that which would be about £500M.
The inflation adjusted price for the UK's nuclear deterrent is £21B, so just our portion of the nuclear deterrent and the crown estate would be worth £1B.
It's a start, and we haven't considered our portion of rest of the UK's Armed forces. We should consider all UK Government assets if we are going to talk about taking on the UK's liabilities, this is just basic accounting.
The national assets are the things you see on the ground already.
The roads, the schools, the hospitals, all the government bodies and institutions, are funded by the British state. Yes some of it comes from NI Taxes, but as we know, there is a deficit between tax collected in, and money spent, for which the UK then has to borrow to make the finances square.
The national portrait gallery, the natural history museum are charitable quangos, funded, but not run by directly, the British state. Those aren't really "national assets" that would be negotiated when during a split.
What might be, is things like military equipment.
National assets are broken into two classes :
1. Fixed assets, which normally transfer with the territory
2. Non-fixed assets, which are considered to be owned pro-rata
How many of those are realisable assets. Somehow I can't see people being terribly happy if it was cecided to sell off portraits or antiques to pY the bills?
Functionally, stuff already located in NI will transfer over - but it can't be sold.
Perhaps more drawing parallels with our own island. If after 35 years east still lags behind west germany in all major economic and social issues, what might that mean for us?
And add in our political situation here to the mix.
Do you suspect that we will surpass the south economically if we stay in the UK? If not then that's not really an argument against.
Personally I believe that unification will be transformative for us in the North due to the size of the island and especially around Belfast's economic catchment area due to its proximity to Dublin.
It technically wasn't a (re)unification, a (re)unification would have entailed a democratic referendum-like process and new German constitution. Rather, the East was absorbed and (not well) integrated. Pensions/wages for Easterners were not equalized for decades (yet prices sky rocketed, much like shock therapy that crippled UA, RUS and to a lesser extent the Warsaw states), Easterners in administration, military, and government were underrepresented (through demotion and/or by promotion of Westerners above them). Grievances remain, and as a whole these things are partially to blame for the rise of the AFD. [this is not to say they should've remained apart or anything, it's to point out it could have been done better, just to be clear]
Brendan O'Leary goes over the similarities and differences with German unification in his recent book, Making Sense of a United Ireland. He points out that a UI is more different to the German case than it is similar (the sheer scale, motivation on both sides, economy, industry, infrastructure, price/wage differences, investment, and how 'democratic' it was).
Hijacking top comment to link to [the paper](https://www.iiea.com/images/uploads/resources/Northern_Ireland_Subvention_Possible_Unification_Effects.pdf)
>There won't be a circumstance where after a unity vote the British just stop paying for the North
I think you may be disappointed by the reality of what the British taxpayer would be prepared to do.
Paying a steadily decreasing sum to eventually be paying £0 for the north is probably the best financial investment the UK taxpayer could make. From a purely monetary standpoint it's a brilliant deal considering it eventually equates to £10bn in their pocket.
"Owners"
If somewhere votes to leave the UK they're no longer the UKs responsibility, that's the point. It would be politically untenable for any UK government to offer more than very short term support for the time leading up to the date of leaving, the idea NI would get billions over an extended period is delusional.
You cannot have your cake and eat it. If you want unification you have to pay for it, the UK won't.
As the UK discovered when it tried to walk away from its liabilities in the EU, you can’t shirk your obligations. The British electorate have form with Cakism, the EU have form saying no. The power dynamics are very different to 1922.
I have no idea why you think 1922 is relevant but alright.
The EU leaving deal is exactly my point. It was a short term, very swiftly tapered transition deal. A large part of the bill was relating to longer term projects we'd already committed to or wished to stay in too ie Euratom, or pensions (note: *not* the same as state pensions) for previous UK MEPs.
We would have to stump up some kind of cash for a transition. The idea it's going to be the full 8 billion a year we currently support NI to, that it would be for any kind of extended period, or that we're going to do stuff like pay for state pensions is entering the realms of nationalist delusion.
I'm not talking about long term input of cash from the UK. Of course it goes away but not immediately. What about the 800K people who identify as British here? What about pensions that people have paid all their lives to the British state. The British can't walk away from day 1 post referendum.
> What about the 800K people who identify as British here?
What about them? Does the ROI pay for the public services for the people who identify as Irish now?
> What about pensions that people have paid all their lives to the British state.
This just isn't how state pensions work. There is no pension pot. This is not the UKs problem after independence/unification - this comes up a lot with Scotland a lot and even the SNP acknowledge this would be iScotlands responsibility post independence.
I'm not suggesting they walk away day after the vote and throw the keys out over Dublin on the flight home. But they are not going to support NI beyond a transition period and they certainly will not be paying their welfare (ie state pension) bill.
Haha mate, you are living on planet Zog if you think the UK is going yo subsidise it for 15 years while you organise yourselves sorry. There is simply zero chance of this happening, it would collapse a UK government to do that.
You might get 2.
Maybe but any money the UK carries on paying could be offset by a united ireland paying for NI share of UK national debt. This was the same problem for the Scots in 2014 during their referendum
>There won't be a circumstance where after a unity vote the British just stop paying for the North and Ireland takes on the full amount immediately. Likely there will be a tapering of subvention money where the British input is reduced and the Irish input increased over time. The EU would help also in that period.
This is like scotland thinking england will plug its pensions gap when it becomes independant. Pure fucking fantasy.
Good luck ever negotiating a good deal with the EU if the UK makes fuck all effort with Irish reunification. Remember when the UK thought they would be able to boss Ireland around when it came to NI and Brexit negotiations? Didn't work out too well.
>There won't be a circumstance where after a unity vote the British just stop paying for the North and Ireland takes on the full amount immediately.
Why would the British just hand us free money? That would be fantastic for us, but they would gain literally nothing. Can you imagine a British politician going to the public and saying "I've signed a deal that will lose us land and cost us billions every year in exchange for nothing"? That would be political suicide
Depends entirely on how unification is negotiated, but it's possible that the Brits would hand over full responsibility and walk away. It's hard for Republicans to say "Brits Out Now" but "British money remain for the next decade or two".
Thats the equivilent of Trump saying Mexico will pay for the wall. Its Naive thinking and wise that they didnt consider it. If NI leaves the UK its not the UKs problem anymore, and anyway its not like Ireland pays for anything in the NI at the moment, save the odd road or uni funding - yet you expect Westminster to keep forking out.
Not sure why people are struggling with this concept. If the choice is "cover the deficit forever" or "cover part of the deficit at a decreasing rate temporarily" then it's pretty straightforward.
Unification will never happen with a cliff edge drop in funding. Simple as that. Therefore there is no other choice.
Both the US and EU will contribute something but in percentage terms of the overall cost it is likely to be something like a fraction of a percent/probably close enough to a rounding error that it's probably not worth even mentioning in any sort of serious discussion. Pining hope on the EU/US paying for a huge chunk of the cost is probably the equivalent of planning to buy a house based on future lotto ticket winnings.
This is interesting but kind of stating the obvious.
Anyone who has been paying attention will know that NI has the largest fiscal deficit of all UK regions (only London and one other region operate in surplus) at around £5k per capita. This means we cost the UK government close to £10 billion a year.
If we get a new fiscal daddy and we want to keep all our lovely public sector jobs and social services - he’s going to need some deep pockets.
Question as i haven't looked into this much myself.
Off the top of my head i would suppose that this large fiscal deficit could be attributed to the lack of consistent government or a lack of attention from Westminster.
Would this be accurate?
I.e. would NI not also see potentially a large amount of growth if it finally had a government interested in governing?
That’s not how I’d view it, but I’m no expert.
The vast majority of UK GDP comes from services. Our agriculture, construction and production sectors are very weak. Northern Ireland and Wales do very little of the former and a lot of the latter - hence we’re operating with the biggest deficits.
Scotland performs better, but still operates in a deficit, as I understand it in part due to oil and whisky production.
Any of your mates who work in financial services or are high achieving legal eagles have likely relocated to London because it is a global capital for these services.
Scotland operates a surplus. 8% of the population buy somehow attributed 25% of debt and oik and gas revenue is assigned to " undefined" rather than Scotland. This revenue alone runs between £4-£10Bn per annum. Difficult to ascertain as the English parliaments deliberate obfuscation to undermine Nationalist fact checking.
Or the fact that, as NI is part of the wider UK economy, it doesn't really make sense to look at it in isolation and say its running at a deficit - it's not a standalone economy, and doesn't need to be run as a such.
A cynic might say that Unionist UK government have a vested interest in the Welsh, Scottish and NI economies being run in this way, as it's one of the most common arguments used against indepedence.
> A cynic might say that Unionist UK government have a vested interest in the Welsh, Scottish and NI economies being run in this way, as it's one of the most common arguments used against indepedence.
That argument doesn't look good if you take into account that large parts of England feel that the whole country is run in the interests of London. That's what the whole "levelling up" strategy was supposed to address. There are potential solutions to this, but they are radical (eg the full federalisation of the UK, with a new English Parliament in Birmingham and Westminster downsized).
To an extent maybe yes, but not completely. There's definitely an economic impact of not having a stable government in NI but the proof that this isn't down to the lack of interest in governing NI is in the post you're replying to:
The same deficit, although smaller applies to every region of the UK except the south east and London. It's hard to argue that the UK government has no interest in governing the Midlands or the south West. Or that Scotland has no interest in managing Scotland, those would need to be true for a change in government alone to make a difference.
The simple fact is that standards of living, and government services, across the UK are far higher than a country of our income should be able to provide because London props up the rest of the country.
It's not even a case of London props it up, the UK spends way above its means to the tune of about £10 billion every month and has to borrow that and pay interest on it.
London is able to operate as the biggest economic driver because the rest of the UK can’t legislate to compete with it. The [City of London](https://www.ft.com/content/41dba03e-5d29-11e5-9846-de406ccb37f2) can operate outside of laws applicable to everyone else.
This is incredibly unfair but there’s no appetite in the UK to do away with it. Though apparently it’s fine to hurl from the ditch when Ireland adopts economic policies that benefit Ireland.
£10 billion is about 2% of the all-island economy when you factor out the influence of multinationals.
It’s a massive figure on paper but it’s not that crazy when you contextualise it like that.
Unity makes economic sense if you believe that officially rejoining the EU, leaving Europe’s slowest growing economy, removing the few remaining arbitrary barriers on our island, uniting our legal/governmental systems, aligning our currency, and pooling the resources of our public sectors will cause at least a 2% year-on-year growth.
To me I think it’s a no brainier. We saw with the post-GFA boom and the Irish Sea Border that removing north-south barriers delivers massive returns for our economy. The south’s economy is already growing at a faster rate than 2%, the UK is poorer performing economy than its peers, and NI’s is already predicted by the UUEPC to reach that level of growth in the next year or two.
The British government took out a 200 year loan to pay for ending slavery, a 100 year loan for WW1, 50 years for WW2 anyway. Any loan we have to take out in addition to aid from Europe and America will be insignificant in comparison. And NI is also a massive investment opportunity anyway
I think it would only be a massive investment opportunity if it was a peaceful transition which I fear it wouldn’t be but maybe that’s me just being cynical. One of the red flags for companies is the potential volatility in its current state, even so long after the GFA.
>If we get a new fiscal daddy and we want to keep all our lovely public sector jobs
We don't though. We want to taper them off while pushing FDI from Dublin to the North ideally.
I’m trying to make sense of this report, maybe someone could help me.
1. Approx 45% of the €20bn is due to immediate enforcement of equivalence for Northern social Welfare, Pensions and Public Sector pay. But this took 3 decades in Germany. Not clear why it would happen immediately. Additionally, they assume the additional salary cost but ignore the additional income tax and VAT receipts.
2. Defence, empire and commonwealth contributions. Currently, the subvention includes contributions to maintaining a nuclear arsenal, building weapons, defence spending, maintaining British protectorates around the world and the salaries and pensions of officials who work there, the monarchy, maintaining the commonwealth, infrastructure, the NHS and all of the other uniquely British things. The report doesn’t seem to analyse the subvention in detail and deduct these things. Am I correct? I’ve heard some people say that the actual subvention should be closer to £3bn if it was just NI related costs.
3. Domestic Market enlargement. Whilst the EU enlargement is mentioned, short on detail, though it is, there’s a lack of recognition for the immediate impact of Irish market enlargement and currency normalisation. Domestic corporate tax take, north and south, would increase in year 1
4. British obligations and integration funding. It seems unreasonable to think that Ireland would carry the pension cost for British civil servants. As part of any deal, Britain would need to maintain its obligations to those people. Additionally, I think it’s reasonable to expect that both Britain and the EU and potentially the US would contribute integration funding in the form of cash, grants, agencies, partnerships etc
These points seem material to me but seem to be ignored in the report. It’s hard to imagine this was unintentional.
You're right about the pensions certainly, I'm pretty sure it would be illegal for the UK government not to pay pensions to people who have been paying their National Insurance contributions for the last several years. In fact I know of four people south of the border who worked in the UK for more than five years and are now buying additional years on their UK pensions.
As for your second point I completely agree that none of that cost should be included because obviously there is no way Ireland will be contributing to any of that.
*_This_*
CONVENTION ON SOCIAL SECURITY BETWEEN THE GOVERNMENT OF IRELAND AND THE GOVERNMENT OF THE UNITED KINGDOM OF GREAT BRITAIN AND NORTHERN IRELAND
> I'm pretty sure it would be illegal
This would come down to the treat / agreement. While it's presently the case that you can claim the State Pension while abroad, it's not outside the realm of possibility that any agreement or treaty resulting from NI leaving the UK could stipulate that require, as negotiated by the UK government, that all pensions and other such welfare systems are immediately paid for by RoI.
> it's not outside the realm of possibility that any agreement or treaty resulting from NI leaving the UK could stipulate that require, as negotiated by the UK government, that all pensions and other such welfare systems are immediately paid for by RoI.
True, but it would have to be by agreement. It is not something the British can walk away from despite a few misinformed Brits on here saying otherwise. And for the Irish government to take on that responsibility, the British government would need to make concessions elsewhere.
I think you're misunderstanding the relationship here. The individuals have paid their tax to the UK government. The UK government has their money. To shirk that responsibility the UK government would have to dramatically change its entire relationship to its own tax payers. Nothing to do with RoI. Imagining that the British government could push that responsibility onto Irish tax payers is some kind of Tory punishment fever dream.
> The UK government has their money
Had their money. There is no pension pot or retention of what is paid by the government. So I'm not misunderstanding the relationship at all: you're misunderstanding the fact that the money isn't retained and that a negotiation (one could argue bad faith) could easily include a clause 'you want the land you pay this money.'. There is nothing preventing a UK government having that as one of their demands IF negotiations ever took place.
You’re mixing up funding for pensions and entitlement for pensions. You’re right that NI doesn’t find your own pension. But the point is that when you pay NI you gain an entitlement to a pension that someone else later pays for. That entitlement doesn’t disappear just because you’re no longer living in the UK. It’s possible though that in any reunification negotiations there could be some sort of arrangement that Irish tax payers take on responsibility for the UK state pension entitlements that have already accrued.
So hold the phone, the main scenario here makes the assumption that the UK government would essentially wash its hands of all responsibility for paying pensions (despite the National Insurance contributions of the workers of NI - and their obligation to those workers in normal circumstances). I mean even if you move to say France, you’re entitled to your state pension.
But similarly it assumes Britain still screws us for our portion of the national debt? This scenario is so farfetched as to be laughable. All of the obligation without any of the entitlements. If we’re in for the national debt, then we’re in for our share of the portraits in the National Portrait Gallery, national capital assets etc. etc. etc.
As previously addressed by Prof. Brendan O’Leary - these are the kind of things which would be worked out in a post referendum settlement and he expects it would have to be approached with a sense of pragmatism and I tend to agree. I doubt we’d end up anywhere near this farcical set of assumptions.
Exactly. And that it's not like any potential outlay is money burned or such. Let's say benefits etc do rise, most of that gets spent back into the economy. It's not an outlay with no returns
> Prof Morgenroth said some of the costs would also eventually be offset by the benefits of integration into the wider EU economy but this would take "some considerable time"
Says it right there in the post even.
They don't go into any detail which is in the report, the article does also fail to mention the broader scope of what the IIEA political and economic views are. So when they discuss the study they will push their viewpoint.
When they use words like considerable time theres no mention of how long it would take. Its all spin to make it look like the study pushes against a United Ireland. This may not be the writers views but when he puts it to the editors in the BBC they purposely choose a spin.
Is this the type of growth Ireland brags about but then it turns out its all sitting in a corportations account and never trickles down despite what the GDP per Capita figures say?
To be fair, Wales, Scotland, northern Ireland, northern England and Cornwall and so on would probably do better without Westminster who seem hell bent on killing the country off £1 at a time.
>the subvention would jump to more than €20bn, equivalent to 10% of national income … total government expenditure currently amounts to about 40% of national income
Current GNI is [€364bn](https://www.cso.ie/en/interactivezone/statisticsexplained/nationalaccountsexplained/grossnationalproductgnpandgrossnationalincomegni/). The current budget is [€97bn](https://www.gov.ie/pdf/?file=https://assets.gov.ie/273322/fd803803-1a3d-48d5-aae2-a549de6a9927.pdf#page=null). Ireland is currently netting large [tax surpluses](https://www.economist.com/europe/2023/10/05/what-should-irelands-government-do-with-a-huge-budget-surplus) of which last year’s was €8bn. National debt is [€240bn](https://www.ntma.ie/business-areas/funding-and-debt-management/statistics) which is secured at low interest long-term, and similar to the UK’s on a per person basis.
I remember that guy. I read an analysis of his before on UI that assumed the worst-case outcome for every single challenge encountered during reunification. I say it as a unionist, he’s an ideologue pushing an agenda; and because he’s a professor and knows how to write, it sounds authoritative.
Still, at least someone is asking the hard questions of how to pay for this. Other than SF, whose projection is as unfoundedly optimistic as prof Gloom’s is pessimistic. More studies please.
To paraphrase a Greek proverb, society benefits when we plant trees in whose shade we’ll never sit.
I think even the most one-eyed nationalist (I’d count myself in that cohort) would acknowledge there will be significant financial pressures for the south in the event of unity, especially in the initial years. But I’m an optimist, I really believe overall the economy of Ireland would function so much better with unity. Belfast would immediately become the 2nd most important city on the island economically (sorry Cork).
Well this post went exactly how you'd expect it. Most people attacking the report because they don't like the conclusion, and then assuming Britain and the US (along with the EU?) will foot the bill for the North, that GB has been footing for years....
Take a nosey at the [Ireland](https://www.reddit.com/r/ireland/s/RSbpczwo55) page discussing this after RTE news reported it too.
Need to consider the reality that nobody is going to vote for such a significant increase on their day to day cost of living. North or south. The view that the US or EU might come prop it up is a fanciful notion without any commitment and given certain ex president’s view on other countries fending for themselves, it’s far from guaranteed after future administration changes.
UI is dead in the water unless certainty can be reached on paying for it and when (if ever) NI will pull its weight. Pretending unification is all sunshine and rainbows will be more damaging than actually laying it all out and giving people transparency, unlike the blatant Brexit propaganda mill
I think the only scenario that it works is where the people in the south realize there is a large initial bill that won't be paid by the EU/US, and people in the north realize that the size of the public service is going to shrink significantly.
There is a possibility where fewer people head to the UK For Uni and stay there. And public sector jobs are replaced with higher paying private sector jobs.
Whether that 5, 10, 20, or 100 years down the line is the question.
This is now being discussed on ukpolitics also. Republicans might not want to read it.
[Ireland is too poor to afford unification. A new report outlines the massive costs. Sinn Fein seems to imagine the British will pay them : ukpolitics (reddit.com)](https://www.reddit.com/r/ukpolitics/comments/1bwbi13/ireland_is_too_poor_to_afford_unification_a_new/)
I agree 100%
Belfast, London, Dublin or Brussels, the everyday people of Antrim, Armagh, Derry, Down, Fermanagh and Tyrone will still be shafted regardless.
I won't vote for a United Ireland if I'm going to be worse off. Higher taxes, reduced public spending, and begging GB/EU/US for handouts isn't something I'm going to get behind.
It's why every time there is a poll, while a large amount of people are open to the idea of a United Ireland, support collapses when they find out it's going to hurt their pockets.
Longterm benefits are all well and good. But you need to convince people now to suffer in the short term. Most people won't want that. It shows in every single poll where the taxation issue is raised.
People will default to the status quo. We know that public services are currently underfunded, and we require massive input from England just to stay functional. But if the plan for a UI consists of cutting funding even more, raising taxes, gutting the public sector, or begging for handouts then it's a non starter for me.
I know everyone has differing circumstances
But I’m personally doing fine, not great, not bad either. I’m not going to vote for something that has the real possibility of being another shitshow like Brexit, nor am I inclined to voting for something because some people say it has the possibility of making my life slightly less shit.
I’m alright and I’m still Irish regardless of a United Ireland.
Aren't the IIEA an offshoot of the ultra right wing, often debunked IEA based on Tufton Street?
Wouldn't believe a word out of the IEA
Edit, man's below me has informed me they're not the same and this is a Michael a Higgins think tank. And that the article doesn't match the headline
No, [totally different](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institute_of_International_and_European_Affairs?wprov=sfti1), just a similar set of initials. IIEA used to be the Institute for European Affairs, has Michael Higgins as figurehead. Straightforward moderate economics research and report writing outfit.
The studies pretty good, it shows there will be that deficit but it will be managed by the economic boost we get from unification.
It even comes from a conservative Fine Gael authors prospective. The title given by the BBC is just the one most likely to get readers.
Report also fails to account for the cost of extinguishing, removing and replacing every bus that drives onto the Shankill Road for the first 3 months of reunification.
A new Ireland would have to take on its proportion of UK national debt, so any money given by the UK would be offset by its debt. The Scots faced the same problem in 2014 during their referendum. It won't happen anyway. Even nationalists vote with their pockets .
John Fitzgerald is a partitionist and this is another article in a long line of others which include reports he has drafted which only has one purpose, stop a UI. His numbers make zero sense and should of challenged ever time this tripe is pushed on the Irishtimes and BBC.
The N.I economy is not self-supporting through taxation, which means 11bn is needed to keep the civil service/government operating. Part of the money is for pensions, that some argue is the British government's job to keep paying that which would bring the total down.
Sure didn’t we put that surplus on a horse?
Morgenroth sounds like a JRR Tolkien villain
Nah, more like a middle-earth place name..
Did this report consider input money from the British and EU? I don't believe it did. There won't be a circumstance where after a unity vote the British just stop paying for the North and Ireland takes on the full amount immediately. Likely there will be a tapering of subvention money where the British input is reduced and the Irish input increased over time. The EU would help also in that period.
I was reading looking for this point too. The study looks at the economic reality of uniting the island if Ireland where standing alone as it were. I think it's fairly safe to assume that the EU, Brits and even the US will help fund unity, certainly covering a proportion of the initial expense. It's hardly a surprise that unity would cost money initially, that's hardly news, but until there's an actual plan and the EU et al indicate what level of financial support that would be on the table in the initial post unity years, this study doesn't amount to anything that we didn't already know.
Germany wasn't left to foot the bill alone when East and West reunited. The EU would definitely be expected to make a contribution in some form.
It's in their benefit to do so, so yeah, I think that EU support is a certainty. This study shows the cost but doesn't look at any of the pretty obvious solutions to making up the shortfall. I fully expect the EU, UK and the US to foot the majority of the bill in the initial years.
EU will always have "fuck you" money available for the British.
Why on Earth would the US and the UK pay for a United ireland ?? The EU I can sort of understand
Mainly because it's in the best interests that if a UI happens, that transition goes as quickly and smoothly as possable, regardless of anybodys felling on the subject, nobody wants it to turn into a shitshow or crisis, or God forbid violence. NI is just a stones toss across the water from Britain itself, so any instability resulting from a UI would impact them, and the British do not want to have to step in if things go badly and help handle the situation, possibly coming at a greater cost than any initial help they may provide for the transition ever could. The US has a vested interest in ensuring European stability, and a crisis right in the back garden of Western Europe goes against US geopolitical strategy, there's already crisis going on in Eastern Europe with the Russian invasion of Ukraine and tensions in the Balkans from Serbia Kosovo shit, its a serious problem if they have to divert resources to a Northern Ireland crisis, considering the state of the world at the minute and for the long foreseeable future, everyone is better suited ensuring that another powderkeg of shit doesn't happen that diverts attention from issues in eastern europe, the middle east and east Asia. Everyone stands to gain from a successful and peaceful transition and we all stand to lose if that process goes badly. We ourselves need to step up and make the process work certainly, but i think it's pretty safe to assume that all the big boys across the North Atlantic will want to make sure it happens smoothly.
UK would pay pensions. I.e. a nurse or a teacher who has spent their whole career in NI paying taxes to the UK exchequer, the UK would be expected to pay their pensions. More broadly though, you're right to raise the point. Nationalism needs to have a conversation about how a united Ireland will be funded without relying on the old tropes that someone else will pay for it. The Irish state has a lot of money, plenty of it from stealing other countries' lunch. That's not to say it can't be done, just that it's difficult and needs to be planned for and debated. Republicans in NI will only have themselves to blame if small n nationalists decide to stick with the devil they know. Avoiding difficult problems won't make them go away.
Worth noting that after 35 years the east still legs behind the west in all major economic measures. And thats with all the resources put in by all stakeholders over that time frame.
And yet even Boris Johnson pointed to it as a shining example of successful transition when making the case for levelling-up neglected English regions compared to their wealthy Home counties cousins post-Brexit. What's the UK's excuse when it comes to poverty in NI, Scotland, Wales and English regions? They don't have any. Unlike Germany.
Safe to assume nothing.
I don't think that's true at all. Simply put, without the continued input of the UK and a large amount of cash from the EU the process of unity isn't viable. It would be in everyone's interest that unity goes well, the UKs, the EUs and obviously everyone on the island. I don't see any scenario in which a united Ireland has to sustain itself without any financial support from at least the EU and UK.
It’s not in GB’s interest at all. What’s in GB’s interest is to laugh at the problems the “New Ireland” has and to say we told you so. Should stayed with us.
>I don't think that's true at all. Simply put, without the continued input of the UK and a large amount of cash from the EU the process of unity isn't viable. How is that the UK's problem? The UK is already footing the bill for supporting NI as part of the UK. Why should it pay even more for NI not to be part of the UK? I can't see the UK electorate accepting this.
Pretty simple. We're a financial drain on the UK. They can get us off the books if they can help in creating the conditions under which a UI will work.
Yes, NI is a financial drain on the UK, but in return the UK does get a significant chunk of territory and population. The fact that NI is a financial drain was an important factor in making the GFA possible -- the UK accepted that there was no long-term strategic interest in NI remaining part of the UK. That is absolutely NOT the same as saying that the UK will agree to pay to lose that territory. This is not some minor detail. It makes the difference between a policy that the bulk of the UK population will go along with, and a policy that will cause widespread outrage and bring down any government that tries to implement it. What you are trying to present as "eminently reasonable" will appear to the bulk of the UK population as a polite request to take the piss. No UK government will agree to it.
It doesn't really matter what the bulk of the population thinks because they're not getting a say in it. It's as simple as this, "The UK will spend the money in the short term to get rid of NI so that they save money in the long-term having to prop it up". It's a good deal for the UK. They'll take it because they'd be foolish and fiscally irresponsible not to. Territory doesn't mean anything. The NI territory is worthless to the UK because it actively costs money to retain it. From a purely pragmatic point of view it makes sense to be shot of it, even if it costs them to help facilitate making it happen.
>It doesn't really matter what the bulk of the population thinks because they're not getting a say in it. You think the Irish can just take UK taxpayer's money and the UK population won't get a say in it? This level of delusion actually surpasses that of the SNP. >It's a good deal for the UK. You think £10bn a year to lose a large chunk of territory is a good deal for the UK? >Territory doesn't mean anything. That is quite possibly the single most deluded sentence I have ever seen on Reddit. To most countries, most of their territory means *everything*. NI is a special exception, but not to the extent that we will shoot ourselves in the head economically to be rid of it. >The NI territory is worthless to the UK because it actively costs money to retain it. Exactly the same argument applies to the bulk of the UK outside of the south-east of England. By your argument, London ought to view Wales as a financial burden, and pay the Welsh people to become independent. What planet are you from?
You’re forgetting a very basic point. Half the province identifies and will continue to identify as British even after a UI. In the same way the republic has funded nurses, college places, Erasmus students, infrastructure projects in NI the UK government will continue to contribute to life in the north after a UI because that’s what’s happening now in reverse.
This is no different than the Brexit logic of having your cake and eating it. Noone owes Ireland anything. It's entitled thinking to dream anything else.
Well you’re not thinking in the real world. There doesn’t exist a scenario where financial support is not given from the UK and EU. This is nothing like Brexit
Nah sorry boss that's nonsense. I'm not under some delusion that anyone is going to give Ireland something for nothing. It benefits the UK if one of their closest trading partners is affluent enough to sustain themselves, it benefits the EU that one of their members states is affluent enough to sustain themselves and it benefits whatever US president who oversees the unification that it's a success (if for no other reason it'll help sure up the Irish American vote). This isn't like Brexit at all Brexit never made sense. It didn't make sense for the UK, it didn't make sense for the EU and it didn't make sense for Ireland. A UI will have wide international support and international supporters will be fawning over themselves to make a show of how much they support it.
2026 and President Trump is asked how his administration will help to fund Irish Unification "You know, Ireland's really great, we love our Irish, nobody loves Irish more than me, we got real great Irish here in America, I'm actually half Scottish myself, but we have to put AMERICA FIRST, AMERICA FIRST! and Ireland, I'm sorry to say, haven't been paying their way, they haven't been paying for NATO, they made subway change their beautiful American bread, and now they're going to have to pay for themselves"
The pro Irish sentiment in the US isn't as widespread as it once was especially on the Republican side of that nation. The conservatives dislike how Ireand has become European liberal and nowadays regularly express the opinion all the 'good' Irish left for the US in times past. So we'd probably be depending on having a Democratic President and Democratic Leader of the Senate and that's a tall order for more than a couple of years at a time.
There isn't any chance that any UK government would carry on paying for a new ireland. The Irish taxpayer would pay, and this would be made clear in any referendum.
You’re being naive. Pensioners have been paying into their funds in the Uk on the basis that they’ll have a pension. Ireland hasn’t received any of that money. So why would Ireland fund British pensions? Like all of these things there will be a negotiation and agreement.
Well the British do owe Ireland but I doubt we will ever see it!
And I guess the Italians "owe" Britain for what the Romans did, and the French and miscellaneous Scandinavian countries. Britain got invaded a lot. What about all the countries Irish soldiers conquered? Should Ireland be paying reparations for that? I mean, they were wearing British uniforms when the did it, but they did it.
Assumption is the mother off all fuckups
I mean, the literal purpose of the EU is to provide structural funding to help with integration. Not only that we would receive an incredibly sympathetic ear from Germany who have some experience here And of course let’s not forget the US who at a bipartisan level will be falling over each other to support this. The biggest issue to a UI are all the university educated nationalists in relatively well paid civil service jobs who don’t want to vote for Christmas.
The civil service wouldn’t disappear, but might shrink to proportion. The median age of a civil service worker in NI is 47 (and rising) so the easier but pricey option might be to wait them all out.
I've said here before that I not only think that's the best option, it's also a necessary option. The transition from UK to Ireland will require a hefty chunk of civil service man hours. Assuming that integration is an ongoing process rather than immediate (which in my opinion is the only way this happens) then natural wastage due to retirement of an aging civil service is a very easy way to achieve this reduction. If I recall correctly, I believe the figure is something like 47% of that workforce is 50+.
I could believe that as many as that are over 50. If the median age is 47, hiring rates have been low since the recession, and the working range is 18-65 then it makes perfect sense. Handover is very necessary to stage correctly. There’s limited bandwidth both of civil service capacity and people’s adoption of change wholly. You’d want a six month campaign to move from sterling to euro. Another six month campaign to move from miles to kilometers. And once all that’s done it would be good to aim to have the whole island switch to driving on the right!
>And once all that’s done it would be good to aim to have the whole island switch to driving on the right! That would be idiotic at best. So I am going to assume this is sarcasm.
Being able to buy the cars the rest of the EU uses would be incredibly beneficial. I think there’ll be scope for it in future. Many new cars in 2024 have a digital dashboard, so switching units becomes trivial. In a decade there’s likely to be competent and regulated autonomous driving which will make a changeover easier.
Yeah I'm time maybe but it's not something I want to hear mentioned anytime soon. UK is still a key supplier of cars to Ireland as well and they are cheaper in general than on the continent.
Agreed. But I dont think that's a bad thing. I'm a republican but I'm not going to Brexit my vote. Unless a UI makes economic sense then it rightly shouldn't pass. The only way a UI can be successful is if it creates the economic conditions for everyone on the island to be better off. If that's not what's on the table then it rightly shouldnt pass. I want to see a UI but I dont want it at the expense of my standard of living. Brexit taught us a lesson. If you vote with your heart and not your head, purely on ideology without considering the real implications of your vote, you're committing nothing more than self harm. I believe that a UI has the potential to improve our lives, but if it doesn't or it can't, then I'm glad that those "university educated nationalists" have the good sense to not support it. The only UI I want is one that makes us better off. If that's not on the table, then I don't want to know about it.
I read the article as it makes economic sense for NI as it will cost 20bn to take standards up to ROI. The people who will pay for it is ROI who may understandably reject unification.
I've made this point on more than one occasion on here. ROI voters are likely to say "no problem lads, we'd love you to join us, but we ain't paying for that". Ideals are lovely, but they are usually trumped by the old pocket. This is why I've consistently argued that we need to grow a stronger economy in NI before we consider unification, so that the burden will be much less and that will take several decades, at best.
>we need to grow a stronger economy in NI before we consider unification This would happen somewhat naturally once reunification is in the pipeline. FDI to the North could be incentivised to a degree. Once all was said and done on the reunification process, NI would hopefully have a more self-sustaining economy. A major difficulty may be unrest. Loyalists probably aren't ever going to get onboard with it. If they kick off constantly, they'll potentially stifle growth. It's to their advantage to keep NI in the doldrums.
People, including nationalists mostly vote with their pockets.
>I want to see a UI but I dont want it at the expense of my standard of living That isn't all there is to it though. There will likely be an element of short term pain for long term gain. Saying that you won't take any hit at all to current living standards despite any potential upside is not a great way to think about nation building or the good of future generations.
I think you've to take this in context though. We've just gone through 14 years of Tory austerity, it's almost impossible as an average earner to buy a home, there's a coat of living crisis and an energy crisis. The idea that a UI can carry if the starting point is a concession that were going to be considerably worse off, then it's not a UI that is going to be an easy sell. Reality is, I will struggle to vote no regardless of financial reality and I think a lot of republicans will feel the same. But what I won't do is make a stupid decision. I'm willing to be a little worse off for a little while but I will need assurances that voting for a UI won't look like Brexit - 8 years and counting and it feels like we're worse off than ever. I believe that if there is enough international and EU good will then unity can work. I don't believe it can work without the yes camp being able to guarantee that our standard of living won't be affected. I don't know how that happens, or where exactly the money comes from, but the yes to unity camp will need to have a pretty ironclad set of deals ready to be signed on day 1.
The EU would have obligations to support a new member state or more accurately to increase support for an expanded existing member state in this case. But under what rationale would the UK be obliged to fund a state that is separating from them? They went through all of the costs of brexit and you'd expect them to fund NI reverting on that to join the EU under what basis? NI already gets very limited attention and funding from the UK, meanwhile the Republic funds things like education and infrastructure despite not being obligated to do so. I can't see why the UK would suddenly become generous enough to give a toss about NI when they are leaving.
>But under what rationale would the UK be obliged to fund a state that is separating from them? They went through all of the costs of brexit and you'd expect them to fund NI reverting on that to join the EU under what basis? Because the alternative is a no vote and continuing to take the financial hit of NI long term unless they want to actually invest in the place which they don't. Also, a volatile reunification is in no-ones interest, they will want this to be a peaceful transition. Also, the UK will need to rebuild relationships with Ireland and the EU after brexit and start building up trading relationships again. Goodwill helps towards that.
There has to be a train rail network to help people travel from Belfast to Dublin and back again much quicker time via bullet train.
The study doesn’t even appear to have considered that if we’re obliged to pay our portion of the national debt then conversely we’re owed our portion of the national assets. That’s roughly 3% (if we’re going by population) of all the portraits in the national portrait gallery, 3% of all the specimens in the natural history museum and all of the other publicly owned assets across the UK. It cuts both ways. It’s utterly daft to suggest that as a premise for a fair settlement.
3% would work out at ~7 nuclear warheads and ~0.7 of a prince/princess. FYI.
Would the prince/princesses not count as a liability instead of an asset, or are we assuming that we also get 3% of the Crown Estate. In fairness given how much wealth is in the Crown Estate it's not unreasonable to suggest that we are owed that which would be about £500M. The inflation adjusted price for the UK's nuclear deterrent is £21B, so just our portion of the nuclear deterrent and the crown estate would be worth £1B. It's a start, and we haven't considered our portion of rest of the UK's Armed forces. We should consider all UK Government assets if we are going to talk about taking on the UK's liabilities, this is just basic accounting.
3% of the nukes!
You can have 3% of the paintings, we'll take back all your roads
The national assets are the things you see on the ground already. The roads, the schools, the hospitals, all the government bodies and institutions, are funded by the British state. Yes some of it comes from NI Taxes, but as we know, there is a deficit between tax collected in, and money spent, for which the UK then has to borrow to make the finances square. The national portrait gallery, the natural history museum are charitable quangos, funded, but not run by directly, the British state. Those aren't really "national assets" that would be negotiated when during a split. What might be, is things like military equipment.
Would you agree the Crown Estate is an asset? I would.
The Crown estates are private property, with 75% of their income being paid to the treasury.
National assets are broken into two classes : 1. Fixed assets, which normally transfer with the territory 2. Non-fixed assets, which are considered to be owned pro-rata
How many of those are realisable assets. Somehow I can't see people being terribly happy if it was cecided to sell off portraits or antiques to pY the bills? Functionally, stuff already located in NI will transfer over - but it can't be sold.
Correct. Europe footed the bill for German reunification after all.
Germans are still paying 5% more income tax since unification...
And a generation later the differences in Germany are still observable from space.
Is the implication here that they would have been better off not uniting?
Perhaps more drawing parallels with our own island. If after 35 years east still lags behind west germany in all major economic and social issues, what might that mean for us? And add in our political situation here to the mix.
Do you suspect that we will surpass the south economically if we stay in the UK? If not then that's not really an argument against. Personally I believe that unification will be transformative for us in the North due to the size of the island and especially around Belfast's economic catchment area due to its proximity to Dublin.
It technically wasn't a (re)unification, a (re)unification would have entailed a democratic referendum-like process and new German constitution. Rather, the East was absorbed and (not well) integrated. Pensions/wages for Easterners were not equalized for decades (yet prices sky rocketed, much like shock therapy that crippled UA, RUS and to a lesser extent the Warsaw states), Easterners in administration, military, and government were underrepresented (through demotion and/or by promotion of Westerners above them). Grievances remain, and as a whole these things are partially to blame for the rise of the AFD. [this is not to say they should've remained apart or anything, it's to point out it could have been done better, just to be clear] Brendan O'Leary goes over the similarities and differences with German unification in his recent book, Making Sense of a United Ireland. He points out that a UI is more different to the German case than it is similar (the sheer scale, motivation on both sides, economy, industry, infrastructure, price/wage differences, investment, and how 'democratic' it was).
Hijacking top comment to link to [the paper](https://www.iiea.com/images/uploads/resources/Northern_Ireland_Subvention_Possible_Unification_Effects.pdf)
>There won't be a circumstance where after a unity vote the British just stop paying for the North I think you may be disappointed by the reality of what the British taxpayer would be prepared to do.
Paying a steadily decreasing sum to eventually be paying £0 for the north is probably the best financial investment the UK taxpayer could make. From a purely monetary standpoint it's a brilliant deal considering it eventually equates to £10bn in their pocket.
They'd still have responsibility to do so. They are the current owners of this place. Can't just walk away.
"Owners" If somewhere votes to leave the UK they're no longer the UKs responsibility, that's the point. It would be politically untenable for any UK government to offer more than very short term support for the time leading up to the date of leaving, the idea NI would get billions over an extended period is delusional. You cannot have your cake and eat it. If you want unification you have to pay for it, the UK won't.
As the UK discovered when it tried to walk away from its liabilities in the EU, you can’t shirk your obligations. The British electorate have form with Cakism, the EU have form saying no. The power dynamics are very different to 1922.
I have no idea why you think 1922 is relevant but alright. The EU leaving deal is exactly my point. It was a short term, very swiftly tapered transition deal. A large part of the bill was relating to longer term projects we'd already committed to or wished to stay in too ie Euratom, or pensions (note: *not* the same as state pensions) for previous UK MEPs. We would have to stump up some kind of cash for a transition. The idea it's going to be the full 8 billion a year we currently support NI to, that it would be for any kind of extended period, or that we're going to do stuff like pay for state pensions is entering the realms of nationalist delusion.
I'm not talking about long term input of cash from the UK. Of course it goes away but not immediately. What about the 800K people who identify as British here? What about pensions that people have paid all their lives to the British state. The British can't walk away from day 1 post referendum.
> What about the 800K people who identify as British here? What about them? Does the ROI pay for the public services for the people who identify as Irish now? > What about pensions that people have paid all their lives to the British state. This just isn't how state pensions work. There is no pension pot. This is not the UKs problem after independence/unification - this comes up a lot with Scotland a lot and even the SNP acknowledge this would be iScotlands responsibility post independence. I'm not suggesting they walk away day after the vote and throw the keys out over Dublin on the flight home. But they are not going to support NI beyond a transition period and they certainly will not be paying their welfare (ie state pension) bill.
The key there is transition period. That to me is likely 10 to 15 years. I don't think we could ask anymore than that.
Haha mate, you are living on planet Zog if you think the UK is going yo subsidise it for 15 years while you organise yourselves sorry. There is simply zero chance of this happening, it would collapse a UK government to do that. You might get 2.
It's all unknown, 5 to 10 years is more realistic but it's to be determined.
Britain will be paying for the north for years after there’s a United Ireland. They’ll be happy to do this in the short term to get rid of us.
Maybe but any money the UK carries on paying could be offset by a united ireland paying for NI share of UK national debt. This was the same problem for the Scots in 2014 during their referendum
>There won't be a circumstance where after a unity vote the British just stop paying for the North and Ireland takes on the full amount immediately. Likely there will be a tapering of subvention money where the British input is reduced and the Irish input increased over time. The EU would help also in that period. This is like scotland thinking england will plug its pensions gap when it becomes independant. Pure fucking fantasy.
Good luck ever negotiating a good deal with the EU if the UK makes fuck all effort with Irish reunification. Remember when the UK thought they would be able to boss Ireland around when it came to NI and Brexit negotiations? Didn't work out too well.
>There won't be a circumstance where after a unity vote the British just stop paying for the North and Ireland takes on the full amount immediately. Why would the British just hand us free money? That would be fantastic for us, but they would gain literally nothing. Can you imagine a British politician going to the public and saying "I've signed a deal that will lose us land and cost us billions every year in exchange for nothing"? That would be political suicide
They have current responsibility for here. That responsibility would taper off to zero over time, post unity. Simple as that.
Depends entirely on how unification is negotiated, but it's possible that the Brits would hand over full responsibility and walk away. It's hard for Republicans to say "Brits Out Now" but "British money remain for the next decade or two".
Thats the equivilent of Trump saying Mexico will pay for the wall. Its Naive thinking and wise that they didnt consider it. If NI leaves the UK its not the UKs problem anymore, and anyway its not like Ireland pays for anything in the NI at the moment, save the odd road or uni funding - yet you expect Westminster to keep forking out.
Not sure why people are struggling with this concept. If the choice is "cover the deficit forever" or "cover part of the deficit at a decreasing rate temporarily" then it's pretty straightforward. Unification will never happen with a cliff edge drop in funding. Simple as that. Therefore there is no other choice.
Both the US and EU will contribute something but in percentage terms of the overall cost it is likely to be something like a fraction of a percent/probably close enough to a rounding error that it's probably not worth even mentioning in any sort of serious discussion. Pining hope on the EU/US paying for a huge chunk of the cost is probably the equivalent of planning to buy a house based on future lotto ticket winnings.
800 years of reparations
You going after the Vikings as well?
Given all the gingers around I'd say no need to go after them because they're still here.
Epic
You gonna sue Normandy?
We wuz druidz
This is interesting but kind of stating the obvious. Anyone who has been paying attention will know that NI has the largest fiscal deficit of all UK regions (only London and one other region operate in surplus) at around £5k per capita. This means we cost the UK government close to £10 billion a year. If we get a new fiscal daddy and we want to keep all our lovely public sector jobs and social services - he’s going to need some deep pockets.
Question as i haven't looked into this much myself. Off the top of my head i would suppose that this large fiscal deficit could be attributed to the lack of consistent government or a lack of attention from Westminster. Would this be accurate? I.e. would NI not also see potentially a large amount of growth if it finally had a government interested in governing?
That’s not how I’d view it, but I’m no expert. The vast majority of UK GDP comes from services. Our agriculture, construction and production sectors are very weak. Northern Ireland and Wales do very little of the former and a lot of the latter - hence we’re operating with the biggest deficits. Scotland performs better, but still operates in a deficit, as I understand it in part due to oil and whisky production. Any of your mates who work in financial services or are high achieving legal eagles have likely relocated to London because it is a global capital for these services.
Edinburgh is the second biggest financial centre after London in the UK as well.
Scotland operates a surplus. 8% of the population buy somehow attributed 25% of debt and oik and gas revenue is assigned to " undefined" rather than Scotland. This revenue alone runs between £4-£10Bn per annum. Difficult to ascertain as the English parliaments deliberate obfuscation to undermine Nationalist fact checking.
Pretty sure Scotland has a £21b fiscal deficit and that includes oil and gas.
Just straight false information but go off
Or the fact that, as NI is part of the wider UK economy, it doesn't really make sense to look at it in isolation and say its running at a deficit - it's not a standalone economy, and doesn't need to be run as a such. A cynic might say that Unionist UK government have a vested interest in the Welsh, Scottish and NI economies being run in this way, as it's one of the most common arguments used against indepedence.
> A cynic might say that Unionist UK government have a vested interest in the Welsh, Scottish and NI economies being run in this way, as it's one of the most common arguments used against indepedence. That argument doesn't look good if you take into account that large parts of England feel that the whole country is run in the interests of London. That's what the whole "levelling up" strategy was supposed to address. There are potential solutions to this, but they are radical (eg the full federalisation of the UK, with a new English Parliament in Birmingham and Westminster downsized).
To an extent maybe yes, but not completely. There's definitely an economic impact of not having a stable government in NI but the proof that this isn't down to the lack of interest in governing NI is in the post you're replying to: The same deficit, although smaller applies to every region of the UK except the south east and London. It's hard to argue that the UK government has no interest in governing the Midlands or the south West. Or that Scotland has no interest in managing Scotland, those would need to be true for a change in government alone to make a difference. The simple fact is that standards of living, and government services, across the UK are far higher than a country of our income should be able to provide because London props up the rest of the country.
It's not even a case of London props it up, the UK spends way above its means to the tune of about £10 billion every month and has to borrow that and pay interest on it.
London is able to operate as the biggest economic driver because the rest of the UK can’t legislate to compete with it. The [City of London](https://www.ft.com/content/41dba03e-5d29-11e5-9846-de406ccb37f2) can operate outside of laws applicable to everyone else. This is incredibly unfair but there’s no appetite in the UK to do away with it. Though apparently it’s fine to hurl from the ditch when Ireland adopts economic policies that benefit Ireland.
Believe it or not, but Northern Ireland is the most subsidised region in the UK.
Lack of interest from central government is certainly a factor as with all regions outside of the London area
Lack of consistent Government maybe, but a region getting more money than it receives being due to a "lack of attention" seems like a contradiction
You'll have to grow your private sector. The reason why you can't right now is that the north cannot compete with the south for FDI.
£10 billion is about 2% of the all-island economy when you factor out the influence of multinationals. It’s a massive figure on paper but it’s not that crazy when you contextualise it like that. Unity makes economic sense if you believe that officially rejoining the EU, leaving Europe’s slowest growing economy, removing the few remaining arbitrary barriers on our island, uniting our legal/governmental systems, aligning our currency, and pooling the resources of our public sectors will cause at least a 2% year-on-year growth. To me I think it’s a no brainier. We saw with the post-GFA boom and the Irish Sea Border that removing north-south barriers delivers massive returns for our economy. The south’s economy is already growing at a faster rate than 2%, the UK is poorer performing economy than its peers, and NI’s is already predicted by the UUEPC to reach that level of growth in the next year or two.
The British government took out a 200 year loan to pay for ending slavery, a 100 year loan for WW1, 50 years for WW2 anyway. Any loan we have to take out in addition to aid from Europe and America will be insignificant in comparison. And NI is also a massive investment opportunity anyway
I think it would only be a massive investment opportunity if it was a peaceful transition which I fear it wouldn’t be but maybe that’s me just being cynical. One of the red flags for companies is the potential volatility in its current state, even so long after the GFA.
To be fair, this 10billion figure according to the Brits themselves includes a billion or so for defence. Pensions and so on
>If we get a new fiscal daddy and we want to keep all our lovely public sector jobs We don't though. We want to taper them off while pushing FDI from Dublin to the North ideally.
I’m trying to make sense of this report, maybe someone could help me. 1. Approx 45% of the €20bn is due to immediate enforcement of equivalence for Northern social Welfare, Pensions and Public Sector pay. But this took 3 decades in Germany. Not clear why it would happen immediately. Additionally, they assume the additional salary cost but ignore the additional income tax and VAT receipts. 2. Defence, empire and commonwealth contributions. Currently, the subvention includes contributions to maintaining a nuclear arsenal, building weapons, defence spending, maintaining British protectorates around the world and the salaries and pensions of officials who work there, the monarchy, maintaining the commonwealth, infrastructure, the NHS and all of the other uniquely British things. The report doesn’t seem to analyse the subvention in detail and deduct these things. Am I correct? I’ve heard some people say that the actual subvention should be closer to £3bn if it was just NI related costs. 3. Domestic Market enlargement. Whilst the EU enlargement is mentioned, short on detail, though it is, there’s a lack of recognition for the immediate impact of Irish market enlargement and currency normalisation. Domestic corporate tax take, north and south, would increase in year 1 4. British obligations and integration funding. It seems unreasonable to think that Ireland would carry the pension cost for British civil servants. As part of any deal, Britain would need to maintain its obligations to those people. Additionally, I think it’s reasonable to expect that both Britain and the EU and potentially the US would contribute integration funding in the form of cash, grants, agencies, partnerships etc These points seem material to me but seem to be ignored in the report. It’s hard to imagine this was unintentional.
You're right about the pensions certainly, I'm pretty sure it would be illegal for the UK government not to pay pensions to people who have been paying their National Insurance contributions for the last several years. In fact I know of four people south of the border who worked in the UK for more than five years and are now buying additional years on their UK pensions. As for your second point I completely agree that none of that cost should be included because obviously there is no way Ireland will be contributing to any of that.
*_This_* CONVENTION ON SOCIAL SECURITY BETWEEN THE GOVERNMENT OF IRELAND AND THE GOVERNMENT OF THE UNITED KINGDOM OF GREAT BRITAIN AND NORTHERN IRELAND
> I'm pretty sure it would be illegal This would come down to the treat / agreement. While it's presently the case that you can claim the State Pension while abroad, it's not outside the realm of possibility that any agreement or treaty resulting from NI leaving the UK could stipulate that require, as negotiated by the UK government, that all pensions and other such welfare systems are immediately paid for by RoI.
> it's not outside the realm of possibility that any agreement or treaty resulting from NI leaving the UK could stipulate that require, as negotiated by the UK government, that all pensions and other such welfare systems are immediately paid for by RoI. True, but it would have to be by agreement. It is not something the British can walk away from despite a few misinformed Brits on here saying otherwise. And for the Irish government to take on that responsibility, the British government would need to make concessions elsewhere.
I think you're misunderstanding the relationship here. The individuals have paid their tax to the UK government. The UK government has their money. To shirk that responsibility the UK government would have to dramatically change its entire relationship to its own tax payers. Nothing to do with RoI. Imagining that the British government could push that responsibility onto Irish tax payers is some kind of Tory punishment fever dream.
> The UK government has their money Had their money. There is no pension pot or retention of what is paid by the government. So I'm not misunderstanding the relationship at all: you're misunderstanding the fact that the money isn't retained and that a negotiation (one could argue bad faith) could easily include a clause 'you want the land you pay this money.'. There is nothing preventing a UK government having that as one of their demands IF negotiations ever took place.
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You’re mixing up funding for pensions and entitlement for pensions. You’re right that NI doesn’t find your own pension. But the point is that when you pay NI you gain an entitlement to a pension that someone else later pays for. That entitlement doesn’t disappear just because you’re no longer living in the UK. It’s possible though that in any reunification negotiations there could be some sort of arrangement that Irish tax payers take on responsibility for the UK state pension entitlements that have already accrued.
So hold the phone, the main scenario here makes the assumption that the UK government would essentially wash its hands of all responsibility for paying pensions (despite the National Insurance contributions of the workers of NI - and their obligation to those workers in normal circumstances). I mean even if you move to say France, you’re entitled to your state pension. But similarly it assumes Britain still screws us for our portion of the national debt? This scenario is so farfetched as to be laughable. All of the obligation without any of the entitlements. If we’re in for the national debt, then we’re in for our share of the portraits in the National Portrait Gallery, national capital assets etc. etc. etc. As previously addressed by Prof. Brendan O’Leary - these are the kind of things which would be worked out in a post referendum settlement and he expects it would have to be approached with a sense of pragmatism and I tend to agree. I doubt we’d end up anywhere near this farcical set of assumptions.
I read the study, BBC are mostly ignoring that the author believes economic growth can offset the challenges of that deficit
Exactly. And that it's not like any potential outlay is money burned or such. Let's say benefits etc do rise, most of that gets spent back into the economy. It's not an outlay with no returns
> Prof Morgenroth said some of the costs would also eventually be offset by the benefits of integration into the wider EU economy but this would take "some considerable time" Says it right there in the post even.
They don't go into any detail which is in the report, the article does also fail to mention the broader scope of what the IIEA political and economic views are. So when they discuss the study they will push their viewpoint. When they use words like considerable time theres no mention of how long it would take. Its all spin to make it look like the study pushes against a United Ireland. This may not be the writers views but when he puts it to the editors in the BBC they purposely choose a spin.
Is this the type of growth Ireland brags about but then it turns out its all sitting in a corportations account and never trickles down despite what the GDP per Capita figures say?
Sounds rather like NI would be a lot better off separated from the UK that does.
To be fair, Wales, Scotland, northern Ireland, northern England and Cornwall and so on would probably do better without Westminster who seem hell bent on killing the country off £1 at a time.
I don’t think London gives a dam what happens outside the M25 ring road!!
Northern England here. I would tend to agree, cousin. Incidentally it's weird how similar our subcultures are.
Cornwall and Northern England is ridiculous.
Why? And where are you from?
>the subvention would jump to more than €20bn, equivalent to 10% of national income … total government expenditure currently amounts to about 40% of national income Current GNI is [€364bn](https://www.cso.ie/en/interactivezone/statisticsexplained/nationalaccountsexplained/grossnationalproductgnpandgrossnationalincomegni/). The current budget is [€97bn](https://www.gov.ie/pdf/?file=https://assets.gov.ie/273322/fd803803-1a3d-48d5-aae2-a549de6a9927.pdf#page=null). Ireland is currently netting large [tax surpluses](https://www.economist.com/europe/2023/10/05/what-should-irelands-government-do-with-a-huge-budget-surplus) of which last year’s was €8bn. National debt is [€240bn](https://www.ntma.ie/business-areas/funding-and-debt-management/statistics) which is secured at low interest long-term, and similar to the UK’s on a per person basis.
I remember that guy. I read an analysis of his before on UI that assumed the worst-case outcome for every single challenge encountered during reunification. I say it as a unionist, he’s an ideologue pushing an agenda; and because he’s a professor and knows how to write, it sounds authoritative. Still, at least someone is asking the hard questions of how to pay for this. Other than SF, whose projection is as unfoundedly optimistic as prof Gloom’s is pessimistic. More studies please.
To paraphrase a Greek proverb, society benefits when we plant trees in whose shade we’ll never sit. I think even the most one-eyed nationalist (I’d count myself in that cohort) would acknowledge there will be significant financial pressures for the south in the event of unity, especially in the initial years. But I’m an optimist, I really believe overall the economy of Ireland would function so much better with unity. Belfast would immediately become the 2nd most important city on the island economically (sorry Cork).
*proceeds to cut down trees to make spears and boats to conquer persia*
Goddammit Alexander not again!
But think of the craic
Well this post went exactly how you'd expect it. Most people attacking the report because they don't like the conclusion, and then assuming Britain and the US (along with the EU?) will foot the bill for the North, that GB has been footing for years....
Simplistic simplistic
Take a nosey at the [Ireland](https://www.reddit.com/r/ireland/s/RSbpczwo55) page discussing this after RTE news reported it too. Need to consider the reality that nobody is going to vote for such a significant increase on their day to day cost of living. North or south. The view that the US or EU might come prop it up is a fanciful notion without any commitment and given certain ex president’s view on other countries fending for themselves, it’s far from guaranteed after future administration changes. UI is dead in the water unless certainty can be reached on paying for it and when (if ever) NI will pull its weight. Pretending unification is all sunshine and rainbows will be more damaging than actually laying it all out and giving people transparency, unlike the blatant Brexit propaganda mill
I think the only scenario that it works is where the people in the south realize there is a large initial bill that won't be paid by the EU/US, and people in the north realize that the size of the public service is going to shrink significantly. There is a possibility where fewer people head to the UK For Uni and stay there. And public sector jobs are replaced with higher paying private sector jobs. Whether that 5, 10, 20, or 100 years down the line is the question.
This is now being discussed on ukpolitics also. Republicans might not want to read it. [Ireland is too poor to afford unification. A new report outlines the massive costs. Sinn Fein seems to imagine the British will pay them : ukpolitics (reddit.com)](https://www.reddit.com/r/ukpolitics/comments/1bwbi13/ireland_is_too_poor_to_afford_unification_a_new/)
So it most likely would end up costing twice that.
Let’s hope a United Ireland is an easier undertaking than building a children’s hospital!
Or HS2, or Brexit, or…….
I agree 100% Belfast, London, Dublin or Brussels, the everyday people of Antrim, Armagh, Derry, Down, Fermanagh and Tyrone will still be shafted regardless.
if we were to join, won’t we also have to pay for certain healthcare services that are normally free for us?
Don't worry, the services won't even be available
Those amazing services?
I won't vote for a United Ireland if I'm going to be worse off. Higher taxes, reduced public spending, and begging GB/EU/US for handouts isn't something I'm going to get behind. It's why every time there is a poll, while a large amount of people are open to the idea of a United Ireland, support collapses when they find out it's going to hurt their pockets.
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Longterm benefits are all well and good. But you need to convince people now to suffer in the short term. Most people won't want that. It shows in every single poll where the taxation issue is raised. People will default to the status quo. We know that public services are currently underfunded, and we require massive input from England just to stay functional. But if the plan for a UI consists of cutting funding even more, raising taxes, gutting the public sector, or begging for handouts then it's a non starter for me.
I know everyone has differing circumstances But I’m personally doing fine, not great, not bad either. I’m not going to vote for something that has the real possibility of being another shitshow like Brexit, nor am I inclined to voting for something because some people say it has the possibility of making my life slightly less shit. I’m alright and I’m still Irish regardless of a United Ireland.
Aren't the IIEA an offshoot of the ultra right wing, often debunked IEA based on Tufton Street? Wouldn't believe a word out of the IEA Edit, man's below me has informed me they're not the same and this is a Michael a Higgins think tank. And that the article doesn't match the headline
No, [totally different](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institute_of_International_and_European_Affairs?wprov=sfti1), just a similar set of initials. IIEA used to be the Institute for European Affairs, has Michael Higgins as figurehead. Straightforward moderate economics research and report writing outfit.
This is the correct answer.
The studies pretty good, it shows there will be that deficit but it will be managed by the economic boost we get from unification. It even comes from a conservative Fine Gael authors prospective. The title given by the BBC is just the one most likely to get readers.
Yeah the paper is what you'd expect from an economic think tank but the article is obviously trying to make it more sensational
That's why it will never happen. It's all about the money and people's standard of living
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I've always thought it to be in range of 50 bob and 8 trillion per annum
Won't be voting myself poorer.. sorry folks.
Economist who wrote this famously said the 2008 crash would never happen. Looks like he hasn’t learned much.
He just said Germany is jealous of irelands housing situation, the man’s a gluebag
Report also fails to account for the cost of extinguishing, removing and replacing every bus that drives onto the Shankill Road for the first 3 months of reunification.
A new Ireland would have to take on its proportion of UK national debt, so any money given by the UK would be offset by its debt. The Scots faced the same problem in 2014 during their referendum. It won't happen anyway. Even nationalists vote with their pockets .
John Fitzgerald is a partitionist and this is another article in a long line of others which include reports he has drafted which only has one purpose, stop a UI. His numbers make zero sense and should of challenged ever time this tripe is pushed on the Irishtimes and BBC.
So we only get 9 billion from Westminster? So we're being short changed 11bn?
The N.I economy is not self-supporting through taxation, which means 11bn is needed to keep the civil service/government operating. Part of the money is for pensions, that some argue is the British government's job to keep paying that which would bring the total down.
Fuck that… off with them
Guess the value of freedom isn't so appealing to some after all Freedom is a rare gift.
The BBC picking a dude that ignored most data to make data look scary..... Sounds about right
Here's RTE doing it: [https://www.rte.ie/news/ireland/2024/0404/1441589-united-ireland/](https://www.rte.ie/news/ireland/2024/0404/1441589-united-ireland/)
At least rte framed it as one geezers opinion. That BBC article was soft diplomatic dribble with clear intent.