Dr Paul Breen, UCL, thinks there was something different about the recent irishborderpoll.com debate on ‘The Irish Unity Dividend’ in Westminster. Below he explains why.
It felt like meeting old college friends for a reunion in The Crown Bar – the same faces, the same setting, the same chat expected. As always we were going to sit in the same snug, listening to the surety of our own voices, talking of the same old dream that had never quite come true despite a lifetime’s efforts. But no. This time, the talk was different. Something striking was happening in the debate around Irish unity.
This debate took place in Portcullis House,Westminster. Amongst the multiple portraits on display you’ve got Ian Paisley, John Hume, and Tony Blair. These are the faces of a generation for whom the act of sitting down at the same table once passed for breakthrough theatre. Tonight though, they were like old Gaelic footballers at a bar watching today’s team give shape to a new set of tactics.
This break from ‘same as always’ hosted by irishborderpoll.com took place at the launch of The Irish Unity Dividend by Ben Collins. The panel included Colum Eastwood, Dáire Hughes, and Kevin Meagher, with Andrea Catherwood in the chair.
Andrea kept the evening flowing with the precision of a good bartender – ensuring the measures were right, the pace steady, and the debate honest. She pressed nationalism, republicanism, and the wider unity movement to look in the mirror and ask hard questions about the future we want to build.From the start, you sensed this wasn’t going to be a night of old slogans or census arithmetic. The focus was pragmatic. It was grounded in economics, education, and healthcare. Less about who wins and more about what works. It was, to borrow a cultural shift, like turning on the radio expecting Makem and Clancy and instead hearing Kneecap: something new, confident, and unafraid to remix the past. Without the swearing though, I have to add.
From Sentiment to Strategy
For too long, discussion of Irish unity has been tethered to the slow arithmetic of identity – the idea that a Catholic majority would one day deliver the inevitable.
Paradoxically, that equation has expired just as we’ve achieved this status because as we’ve known for a long time, the singular fact of being a majority doesn’t make any argument morally right. The argument for unity has been right for this whole current century. The problem has always been one of presenting a strong case to those who are indifferent or hostile to the issue.
Tonight, Ben’s work, and the tone of the discussion around it, signalled a step-change from sentiment to strategy. His analysis was meticulous, not mythic: comparing healthcare outcomes between North and South, exploring the benefits of an all-island education policy, and assessing how shared infrastructure could strengthen both economies.
It was a conversation about long-term planning; about designing the architecture of a new Ireland that can function, not just feel good. If the Good Friday Agreement provided the scaffolding for peace, this new phase is about finishing the building. As several scholars have observed, the Agreement was always a kind of temporary truce.
Some academics have compared it to “a bandage over a deep wound rather than multi-level suturing” (Little, 2003; Vaughan-Williams, 2006). It was a sticky plaster that stopped the bleeding but didn’t solve the deeper issues that have haunted the Northern Irish statelet since its creation.Now, a generation later, the structure of that statelet is creaking. It’s time to think about what comes next: how to move from coexistence to cooperation. Even co-creation because, as debated here, it’s about every stakeholder helping to write the script together.
Breaking the Rigged Game
The politics of Northern Ireland were built on binaries. Catholic versus Protestant. Nationalist versus unionist. It was the perfect colonial device: a system that turned religious and political difference into “a zero-sum game” (Breen, 2017). But that game is losing its grip. Brexit, demographic change, and the realities of post-pandemic economics have forced a rethink. A younger generation, both north and south, sees through the old playbook.
Listening to Ben, Colum, Dáire, and Kevin, you got the sense that Irish politics is beginning to step outside the rigged rules it inherited. The debate has moved from identity to ideas. From tribal allegiance to shared interest.
And here’s the real shift: the old unionist claim that republicans “don’t do economics” no longer holds. Ben’s work dismantles that. His case for an all-island approach is based on data, not ideology. It highlights the efficiency of a single health service, the scale of a united education system, and the opportunities of an integrated economy in a globalised world.
Unity, in this view, isn’t a takeover. It’s a merger that makes practical sense. And no one is suggesting Northern Ireland will be taken apart and scattered across the South like stones from the Giant’s Causeway. The 40,000 basalt columns will remain exactly where they’ve always been. The geography or culture isn’t going anywhere. The challenge is to make the political structure as solid and interlocking as the rock beneath our stunning northern coast.
The Architecture of Renewal
Architecture is the right metaphor for this moment. The Good Friday Agreement has too often been treated like a listed building. Something admired, but untouchable. As we all know, buildings age. They need new wiring, stronger beams, and modern design. The Irish unity debate has reached a point of drawing up plans for what that might look like.
This discussion , held within the walls of Westminster, felt like the start of that renovation. It wasn’t about erasing Northern Ireland or Protestant identity, but about reconfiguring space. It’s about creating a shared home that fits 21st century realities.
Irish unity, in this emerging vision, is a civic project, not a nationalist crusade. It’s about shared institutions, shared infrastructure, and shared belonging. It’s about inclusion, not inversion. Ben’s argument is that unity must be planned, not proclaimed. It’s a process that begins with policy and preparation, not with flags and fanfare.
As the spiritual philosopher Eckhart Tolle put it, “the present moment is the field on which the game of life happens.” If we want to transcend sectarianism and design a shared future, that can’t be deferred to the day after a referendum. The groundwork – in communication, cooperation, and mutual respect – has to be built now, in the present.
A border poll remains the only legal route to unity under the Good Friday Agreement. But when it comes, it must not be reduced to a sectarian headcount. If we are serious about creating an island where past identities no longer dictate our future, why wait for polling day to begin?
The real Irish Unity Dividend lies not only in the potential economic gains that Ben has outlined in his book. It also comes from the cultural and political maturity on display at the launch – a willingness to move from grievance to governance, from rhetoric to results.The peace process gave us the space to stop fighting in what feels like a lifetime ago now. This new conversation gives us the space to start building. So perhaps the question isn’t whether unity will happen, but how quickly we can begin acting as though it already has. Because the present, as Tolle reminds us, is the only field we ever truly play on.
And I left Portcullis House, under the gaze of Big Ben,thinking of how advocates of Irish unity have really upped their game, from a team with hopes of making the final, to being one with serious All-Ireland ambitions in the not too distant future.
Westminster might have been much the same as when the night began, but the night’s debate felt like a brave new dawn.
References:
Breen, P. (2017). Healing past wounds with more than an elastic bandage–a small-scale evaluation of attitudes and aspirations of contemporary Northern Irish Catholics. National Identities, 21(2), pp.151-169.
Little, A. (2003). The problems of antagonism: Applying liberal political theory to conflict in Northern Ireland. British Journal of Politics and International Relations, 5(3), 373–392.
Vaughan-Williams, N. (2006). ‘Towards a problematisation of the problematisations that reduce Northern Ireland to a ‘problem’. Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy, 9 (4), pp. 513–526.
Dr Paul Breen, UCL, thinks there was something different about the recent irishborderpoll.com debate on ‘The Irish Unity Dividend’ in Westminster. Below he explains why.
It felt like meeting old college friends for a reunion in The Crown Bar – the same faces, the same setting, the same chat expected. As always we were going to sit in the same snug, listening to the surety of our own voices, talking of the same old dream that had never quite come true despite a lifetime’s efforts. But no. This time, the talk was different. Something striking was happening in the debate around Irish unity.
This debate took place in Portcullis House,Westminster. Amongst the multiple portraits on display you’ve got Ian Paisley, John Hume, and Tony Blair. These are the faces of a generation for whom the act of sitting down at the same table once passed for breakthrough theatre. Tonight though, they were like old Gaelic footballers at a bar watching today’s team give shape to a new set of tactics.
This break from ‘same as always’ hosted by irishborderpoll.com took place at the launch of The Irish Unity Dividend by Ben Collins. The panel included Colum Eastwood, Dáire Hughes, and Kevin Meagher, with Andrea Catherwood in the chair.
Andrea kept the evening flowing with the precision of a good bartender – ensuring the measures were right, the pace steady, and the debate honest. She pressed nationalism, republicanism, and the wider unity movement to look in the mirror and ask hard questions about the future we want to build.From the start, you sensed this wasn’t going to be a night of old slogans or census arithmetic. The focus was pragmatic. It was grounded in economics, education, and healthcare. Less about who wins and more about what works. It was, to borrow a cultural shift, like turning on the radio expecting Makem and Clancy and instead hearing Kneecap: something new, confident, and unafraid to remix the past. Without the swearing though, I have to add.
From Sentiment to Strategy
For too long, discussion of Irish unity has been tethered to the slow arithmetic of identity – the idea that a Catholic majority would one day deliver the inevitable.
Paradoxically, that equation has expired just as we’ve achieved this status because as we’ve known for a long time, the singular fact of being a majority doesn’t make any argument morally right. The argument for unity has been right for this whole current century. The problem has always been one of presenting a strong case to those who are indifferent or hostile to the issue.
Tonight, Ben’s work, and the tone of the discussion around it, signalled a step-change from sentiment to strategy. His analysis was meticulous, not mythic: comparing healthcare outcomes between North and South, exploring the benefits of an all-island education policy, and assessing how shared infrastructure could strengthen both economies.
It was a conversation about long-term planning; about designing the architecture of a new Ireland that can function, not just feel good. If the Good Friday Agreement provided the scaffolding for peace, this new phase is about finishing the building. As several scholars have observed, the Agreement was always a kind of temporary truce.
Some academics have compared it to “a bandage over a deep wound rather than multi-level suturing” (Little, 2003; Vaughan-Williams, 2006). It was a sticky plaster that stopped the bleeding but didn’t solve the deeper issues that have haunted the Northern Irish statelet since its creation.Now, a generation later, the structure of that statelet is creaking. It’s time to think about what comes next: how to move from coexistence to cooperation. Even co-creation because, as debated here, it’s about every stakeholder helping to write the script together.
Breaking the Rigged Game
The politics of Northern Ireland were built on binaries. Catholic versus Protestant. Nationalist versus unionist. It was the perfect colonial device: a system that turned religious and political difference into “a zero-sum game” (Breen, 2017). But that game is losing its grip. Brexit, demographic change, and the realities of post-pandemic economics have forced a rethink. A younger generation, both north and south, sees through the old playbook.
Listening to Ben, Colum, Dáire, and Kevin, you got the sense that Irish politics is beginning to step outside the rigged rules it inherited. The debate has moved from identity to ideas. From tribal allegiance to shared interest.
And here’s the real shift: the old unionist claim that republicans “don’t do economics” no longer holds. Ben’s work dismantles that. His case for an all-island approach is based on data, not ideology. It highlights the efficiency of a single health service, the scale of a united education system, and the opportunities of an integrated economy in a globalised world.
Unity, in this view, isn’t a takeover. It’s a merger that makes practical sense. And no one is suggesting Northern Ireland will be taken apart and scattered across the South like stones from the Giant’s Causeway. The 40,000 basalt columns will remain exactly where they’ve always been. The geography or culture isn’t going anywhere. The challenge is to make the political structure as solid and interlocking as the rock beneath our stunning northern coast.
The Architecture of Renewal
Architecture is the right metaphor for this moment. The Good Friday Agreement has too often been treated like a listed building. Something admired, but untouchable. As we all know, buildings age. They need new wiring, stronger beams, and modern design. The Irish unity debate has reached a point of drawing up plans for what that might look like.
This discussion , held within the walls of Westminster, felt like the start of that renovation. It wasn’t about erasing Northern Ireland or Protestant identity, but about reconfiguring space. It’s about creating a shared home that fits 21st century realities.
Irish unity, in this emerging vision, is a civic project, not a nationalist crusade. It’s about shared institutions, shared infrastructure, and shared belonging. It’s about inclusion, not inversion. Ben’s argument is that unity must be planned, not proclaimed. It’s a process that begins with policy and preparation, not with flags and fanfare.
As the spiritual philosopher Eckhart Tolle put it, “the present moment is the field on which the game of life happens.” If we want to transcend sectarianism and design a shared future, that can’t be deferred to the day after a referendum. The groundwork – in communication, cooperation, and mutual respect – has to be built now, in the present.
A border poll remains the only legal route to unity under the Good Friday Agreement. But when it comes, it must not be reduced to a sectarian headcount. If we are serious about creating an island where past identities no longer dictate our future, why wait for polling day to begin?
The real Irish Unity Dividend lies not only in the potential economic gains that Ben has outlined in his book. It also comes from the cultural and political maturity on display at the launch – a willingness to move from grievance to governance, from rhetoric to results.The peace process gave us the space to stop fighting in what feels like a lifetime ago now. This new conversation gives us the space to start building. So perhaps the question isn’t whether unity will happen, but how quickly we can begin acting as though it already has. Because the present, as Tolle reminds us, is the only field we ever truly play on.
And I left Portcullis House, under the gaze of Big Ben,thinking of how advocates of Irish unity have really upped their game, from a team with hopes of making the final, to being one with serious All-Ireland ambitions in the not too distant future.
Westminster might have been much the same as when the night began, but the night’s debate felt like a brave new dawn.
References:
Breen, P. (2017). Healing past wounds with more than an elastic bandage–a small-scale evaluation of attitudes and aspirations of contemporary Northern Irish Catholics. National Identities, 21(2), pp.151-169.
Little, A. (2003). The problems of antagonism: Applying liberal political theory to conflict in Northern Ireland. British Journal of Politics and International Relations, 5(3), 373–392.
Vaughan-Williams, N. (2006). ‘Towards a problematisation of the problematisations that reduce Northern Ireland to a ‘problem’. Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy, 9 (4), pp. 513–526.