The Irish Times, they are a-changin’ …

Have you read today’s Irish Times? If not – and thousands of right-thinking people haven’t – could I suggest you take a gander. Because there’s a piece in it written by a Prof. John Doyle from DCU which demolishes a central pillar in the argument of those who tell us the south couldn’t afford a reunited Ireland, it’d cost some £10 billion a year, which is the annual subvention to our north-eastern  stateen.

Prof Doyle’s article is entitled ‘UK subvention on North irrelevant to debate on Irish unity’. So his cards are on the table from the get-go. Let’s examine a few of those cards.

1. Pensions. These account for £3.5 billion annually, paid by the Westminster government to NEI. “The UK pays pensions to people who have worked in the UK but now live elsewhere, including Ireland.” In the event of a reunified Ireland, Britain could refuse to continue pension payments but that’s unlikely – it would simply be a continuation of present practice. The new Ireland would, of course, fund pensions built up from the date of its creation.  Bean-counter: kindly remove that £3.5 billion from the subvention.
2. Contribution to Britain’s national debt. This consists of £1.6 billion annually. Given that the new Ireland would no longer in part be in the UK, it would make no sense for this contribution to continue. Bean-counter: kindly remove that £1.6 billion from the subvention.
3. Defence. Here, £1.14 billion goes as NEI’s contribution to the UK’s defence expenditure. The technical term for this is giving with one hand and taking back with the other. So since in a reunited independent Ireland we would no longer have our hard-earned lettuce passed to help build nuclear weapons and the cost of British intervention in Iraq and Afghanistan, this element of the subvention would cease. Bean-counter, kindly remove that £1.14 billion from the subvention.

There are other parts of the subvention listed by Prof Doyle, but even adding up those three parts of the supposed £10 billion hand-out, you’ll see that it shrinks dramatically. Already we’re clear of something over £7 billion.

The Prof concludes: “The economic debate on unity needs to move o n to the more important questions of the policy decisions necessary to support sustainable economic growth to maximise the benefits of a larger and integrated all-island economy and to support improved public services in health, welfare education and infrastructure”.

If Prof Doyle’s calculations are right,they have reduced to rubble the economic arguments wheeled out by those who have an aversion to Irish people ruling themselves democratically and independently.

I’ve written a letter to The Irish Times congratulating them for publishing this major contribution to the debate on Irish unity. If they act according to their usual form, my letter is already in the IT waste-basket.