By Paul Breen
If 2025 has been a good year for talking about Irish unity, then 2026 must be the year when we decide what we are actually going to do with that momentum.
There has been, over the past year, a quiet but noticeable shift. A sense that unity is no longer just a talking point, but something plausible, even tangible. Not inevitable. Not guaranteed, but conceivable. And that’s an important stepping stone because political change rarely begins with certainty. It often begins with a collective feeling that something once unthinkable is now imaginable.
And when that moment arrives, delay becomes dangerous. Irish unity cannot remain a seasonal sentiment, raised at commemorations or in election times, only to be put back in the drawer when the hard questions appear. It requires urgency.
Not panic, but the kind of urgency you feel when you walk into a room, see someone across the way, and know immediately that this is the person you want to build a life with. Nothing romanticised. Nothing naïve. Just clarity. The sense that this matters enough to rearrange your future around it.
That does not mean reverting to the old language of destiny or sacrifice. The days of Kathleen Ní Houlihan are long gone. So too is the Ireland imagined by W.B. Yeats, where nationhood could be rendered as poetry and longing. That Ireland helped us attain partial nationhood. It cannot help us build.
Irish unity is no longer a poem. It is the screenplay of a true-life documentary. And we are now writing it in the age of Netflix. This means movement, tension, conflict, release. It means characters who disagree, scenes that are uncomfortable, and emotions that are not neatly resolved. It means energy. It means anger. It means letting rage out of the system rather than pretending it does not exist. As Walt Whitman put it, we need a barbaric yawp. The argument about Irish unity has to be had in full voice, with all its fear, bitterness, hope and contradiction.
At present, unity still has the quality of an apparition. Visible, but distant. Easy to ignore. Unionism can treat it like two teams on a pitch chasing a ghost ball. Nationalism can treat it as something that will simply arrive on demographic autopilot. Both positions are evasions.
What is missing is shape. If Irish unity is to happen, it must be sculpted. Deliberately. Publicly. And with enough substance that people can walk around it, test it, and argue with it, as if it’s as much a part of today’s world as the age of AI.
This is not simply a constitutional question. It is a cultural one. An emotional one. A question of identity, memory, class, fear and belonging. Above all, it is a question of whether Ireland is capable of accepting otherness not as a temporary challenge, but as a permanent condition of modern nationhood.
That challenge exists on multiple levels. Ireland is already grappling with how to integrate new communities, new cultures, new forms of Irishness. Those debates have not always been handled well. But they matter deeply, because they are rehearsals for a much larger task.
Irish unity involves integrating one and a half million people from Northern Ireland, many of whom identify as British. Many of those people feel deep loyalty to a state that has shaped their lives and subsequently fear that unity would mean loss of status, voice, or security. They dread the prospect of second-class citizenship.
Such fears cannot be waved away. Nor can they be indulged indefinitely. They have to be addressed through seriousness and design. Too often, nationalism has spoken about unity as if it were a matter of arithmetic. A majority here. A tipping point there. That misunderstands the moment we are in. Anyone born after 1995 has no lived memory of the conflict. The Troubles are history, not experience. Appeals rooted solely in grievance or commemoration will not persuade them. Nor should they.
This is where the conversation must change tone. Unity cannot be sold as restitution alone. It has to be presented as creation. Something dynamic. Something capable of absorbing anger and transforming it into ownership.
Northern Ireland is not a blank space waiting to be filled. It is a place apart. A place shaped by industry, class, religion, violence, compromise and survival. The challenge is not to smooth it away as if it was all a bad dream, but to integrate it without diminishing it, and to allow the island to be enriched by that difference.
This includes symbolism. Loyalist working class areas should be able to keep their murals. Republican communities will continue to honour people such as Bobby Sands who gave their lives for what they genuinely believed in. But shared civic spaces cannot remain battlegrounds of memory. They require a new iconography. One rooted in hope, shared futures, and mutual recognition rather than victory narratives. That shift is not cosmetic. It is foundational.
To spark these conversations, Unionism must be approached with respect rather than caricature. We shouldn’t take the most extreme elements as the benchmark. Many Alliance voters are liberal unionists who would welcome a Border Poll, but who would not willingly enter any state in which they feel like second class citizens. That position is not obstructionist. It is rational.
There is also a long tradition of reflective Unionist thought that deserves far more recognition. From the Presbyterian cleric John Dunlop to the Fermanagh based newspaper editor Denzil McDaniel, on to figures such as the actor Stephen Rea, trade unionist Rosie Eagleson and prolific journalist Sam McBride, Ulster Protestantism has produced voices capable of self-criticism, generosity and imagination. Others such as Linda Ervine, whilst solidly Unionist, have been strong ambassadors for Irish language and culture. This intellectual engagement must be encouraged and understood as an essential part of shaping Ireland’s future.
As the academic Nick Vaughan Williams has argued, reducing Northern Ireland to a permanent problem only guarantees paralysis. The Good Friday Agreement was never intended as a permanent solution, but a platform. However, there can be no return, explicit or implicit, to violence. The era of coercion is over. Consent is not a slogan. It is the only currency that matters. We really are in this together.
And this isn’t about steamrolling towards unification. Unionists should make their strongest possible case for the Union. That debate is necessary. But in doing so, they may discover something unexpected. Many of the values they seek to protect – pluralism, security, cultural recognition, economic stability, could also exist in a united Ireland, if they argue with equal passion for their inclusion in it.
This is where the Irish government must finally show leadership. After more than a century of independence, the absence of a serious, detailed blueprint for unity is indefensible. Unity cannot be outsourced to Sinn Féin alone. A Sinn Féin led Border Poll campaign would struggle to win. This has to be a national project, grounded in cross party consensus, institutional planning, and economic honesty.
The work of analysts such as Ben Collins has already shown how complex but workable unification would be across such areas as taxation, welfare, healthcare, and infrastructure. However, that complexity is not a reason for delay. It is a reason for preparation.
Ireland also has an opportunity that Britain never fully grasped. Britain failed to understand its own diversity and its Commonwealth connections as sources of strength rather than anxiety. Ireland can do something different. An island that is close to Britain, close to America, and yet confident enough to stand with Gaza, to oppose apartheid, and to act as a beacon for social justice.
That is why the current racial tensions in the Republic are so troubling. Not because Ireland is uniquely flawed, but because unity demands better. A modern Ireland must be good at incorporating newness and otherness, or it will fail its own ambitions.
The time for romantic deferral has passed. Unity is no longer an idea to be admired from a distance. It is a construction project. The question is whether we are prepared to build it, here and now. Let’s make it our New Year resolution to do so.
By Paul Breen
If 2025 has been a good year for talking about Irish unity, then 2026 must be the year when we decide what we are actually going to do with that momentum.
There has been, over the past year, a quiet but noticeable shift. A sense that unity is no longer just a talking point, but something plausible, even tangible. Not inevitable. Not guaranteed, but conceivable. And that’s an important stepping stone because political change rarely begins with certainty. It often begins with a collective feeling that something once unthinkable is now imaginable.
And when that moment arrives, delay becomes dangerous. Irish unity cannot remain a seasonal sentiment, raised at commemorations or in election times, only to be put back in the drawer when the hard questions appear. It requires urgency.
Not panic, but the kind of urgency you feel when you walk into a room, see someone across the way, and know immediately that this is the person you want to build a life with. Nothing romanticised. Nothing naïve. Just clarity. The sense that this matters enough to rearrange your future around it.
That does not mean reverting to the old language of destiny or sacrifice. The days of Kathleen Ní Houlihan are long gone. So too is the Ireland imagined by W.B. Yeats, where nationhood could be rendered as poetry and longing. That Ireland helped us attain partial nationhood. It cannot help us build.
Irish unity is no longer a poem. It is the screenplay of a true-life documentary. And we are now writing it in the age of Netflix. This means movement, tension, conflict, release. It means characters who disagree, scenes that are uncomfortable, and emotions that are not neatly resolved. It means energy. It means anger. It means letting rage out of the system rather than pretending it does not exist. As Walt Whitman put it, we need a barbaric yawp. The argument about Irish unity has to be had in full voice, with all its fear, bitterness, hope and contradiction.
At present, unity still has the quality of an apparition. Visible, but distant. Easy to ignore. Unionism can treat it like two teams on a pitch chasing a ghost ball. Nationalism can treat it as something that will simply arrive on demographic autopilot. Both positions are evasions.
What is missing is shape. If Irish unity is to happen, it must be sculpted. Deliberately. Publicly. And with enough substance that people can walk around it, test it, and argue with it, as if it’s as much a part of today’s world as the age of AI.
This is not simply a constitutional question. It is a cultural one. An emotional one. A question of identity, memory, class, fear and belonging. Above all, it is a question of whether Ireland is capable of accepting otherness not as a temporary challenge, but as a permanent condition of modern nationhood.
That challenge exists on multiple levels. Ireland is already grappling with how to integrate new communities, new cultures, new forms of Irishness. Those debates have not always been handled well. But they matter deeply, because they are rehearsals for a much larger task.
Irish unity involves integrating one and a half million people from Northern Ireland, many of whom identify as British. Many of those people feel deep loyalty to a state that has shaped their lives and subsequently fear that unity would mean loss of status, voice, or security. They dread the prospect of second-class citizenship.
Such fears cannot be waved away. Nor can they be indulged indefinitely. They have to be addressed through seriousness and design. Too often, nationalism has spoken about unity as if it were a matter of arithmetic. A majority here. A tipping point there. That misunderstands the moment we are in. Anyone born after 1995 has no lived memory of the conflict. The Troubles are history, not experience. Appeals rooted solely in grievance or commemoration will not persuade them. Nor should they.
This is where the conversation must change tone. Unity cannot be sold as restitution alone. It has to be presented as creation. Something dynamic. Something capable of absorbing anger and transforming it into ownership.
Northern Ireland is not a blank space waiting to be filled. It is a place apart. A place shaped by industry, class, religion, violence, compromise and survival. The challenge is not to smooth it away as if it was all a bad dream, but to integrate it without diminishing it, and to allow the island to be enriched by that difference.
This includes symbolism. Loyalist working class areas should be able to keep their murals. Republican communities will continue to honour people such as Bobby Sands who gave their lives for what they genuinely believed in. But shared civic spaces cannot remain battlegrounds of memory. They require a new iconography. One rooted in hope, shared futures, and mutual recognition rather than victory narratives. That shift is not cosmetic. It is foundational.
To spark these conversations, Unionism must be approached with respect rather than caricature. We shouldn’t take the most extreme elements as the benchmark. Many Alliance voters are liberal unionists who would welcome a Border Poll, but who would not willingly enter any state in which they feel like second class citizens. That position is not obstructionist. It is rational.
There is also a long tradition of reflective Unionist thought that deserves far more recognition. From the Presbyterian cleric John Dunlop to the Fermanagh based newspaper editor Denzil McDaniel, on to figures such as the actor Stephen Rea, trade unionist Rosie Eagleson and prolific journalist Sam McBride, Ulster Protestantism has produced voices capable of self-criticism, generosity and imagination. Others such as Linda Ervine, whilst solidly Unionist, have been strong ambassadors for Irish language and culture. This intellectual engagement must be encouraged and understood as an essential part of shaping Ireland’s future.
As the academic Nick Vaughan Williams has argued, reducing Northern Ireland to a permanent problem only guarantees paralysis. The Good Friday Agreement was never intended as a permanent solution, but a platform. However, there can be no return, explicit or implicit, to violence. The era of coercion is over. Consent is not a slogan. It is the only currency that matters. We really are in this together.
And this isn’t about steamrolling towards unification. Unionists should make their strongest possible case for the Union. That debate is necessary. But in doing so, they may discover something unexpected. Many of the values they seek to protect – pluralism, security, cultural recognition, economic stability, could also exist in a united Ireland, if they argue with equal passion for their inclusion in it.
This is where the Irish government must finally show leadership. After more than a century of independence, the absence of a serious, detailed blueprint for unity is indefensible. Unity cannot be outsourced to Sinn Féin alone. A Sinn Féin led Border Poll campaign would struggle to win. This has to be a national project, grounded in cross party consensus, institutional planning, and economic honesty.
The work of analysts such as Ben Collins has already shown how complex but workable unification would be across such areas as taxation, welfare, healthcare, and infrastructure. However, that complexity is not a reason for delay. It is a reason for preparation.
Ireland also has an opportunity that Britain never fully grasped. Britain failed to understand its own diversity and its Commonwealth connections as sources of strength rather than anxiety. Ireland can do something different. An island that is close to Britain, close to America, and yet confident enough to stand with Gaza, to oppose apartheid, and to act as a beacon for social justice.
That is why the current racial tensions in the Republic are so troubling. Not because Ireland is uniquely flawed, but because unity demands better. A modern Ireland must be good at incorporating newness and otherness, or it will fail its own ambitions.
The time for romantic deferral has passed. Unity is no longer an idea to be admired from a distance. It is a construction project. The question is whether we are prepared to build it, here and now. Let’s make it our New Year resolution to do so.