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Republic of Ireland cannot take the reunification financially. Northern Ireland is underdeveloped and relying on governmental post to keep afloat. Rep doesn't

Republic of Ireland cannot take the reunification financially. Northern Ireland is underdeveloped and relying on governmental post to keep afloat. Rep doesn't currently have enough resources to support integration of north. Unfortunately at the moment its romanticized dream.

growlist 7y ago
This is the funny thing about NI - it's portrayed as a catastrophic loss for UK prestige if Ireland were to unite, whereas there are plenty of politicians, civil servants etc. that would be happier if it were no longer the UK's problem, and the remainder of the UK would be better off as a consequence. The same can almost be said of Scotland - England/Wales taxpayers would be better off without it, for example.
OscarCunningham 7y ago
People do not always vote in their economic best interests.
yorwba 7y ago
According to https://ec.europa.eu/agriculture/sites/agriculture/files/rural-development-2014-2020/country-files/uk/factsheet-northern-ireland_en.pdf https://ec.europa.eu/agriculture/sites/agriculture/files/rur... , the EU allocated 646 million euros to be spent on the Rural Development Programme in Northern Ireland 2014-2020. Not sure how that compares to UK government spending. Edit: http://ec.europa.eu/unitedkingdom/sites/unitedkingdom/files/eu_funding_in_ni_2007-2013_and_2014-2020_1.pdf http://ec.europa.eu/unitedkingdom/sites/unitedkingdom/files/... gives a total of 3.5 billion euros EU funding in the same time frame, but only 228 million in the RDP, which made me realize that the 646 million above include 417 million of national co-funding, which I guess means the UK government. Edit 2: According to https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/conservative-and-dup-agreement-and-uk-government-financial-support-for-northern-ireland/uk-government-financial-support-for-northern-ireland https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/conservative-and-... the UK government has made £2.5 billion available to Northern Ireland over 3 years, which works out to almost twice the amount provided by the EU on a yearly basis. That also squares with the similar proportions for the RDP funding alone.
- OscarCunningham 7y ago
  Presumably some of that is the £1 billion that May promised the DUP to get their votes.
tom_mellior 7y ago
Loads of EU areas are underdeveloped, and the EU spends a lot of money helping develop them. We would help Ireland the same way. Edit: Not sure why someone reflexively downvoted a factual post, but here is some background: https://ec.europa.eu/regional_policy/en/funding/erdf/ https://ec.europa.eu/regional_policy/en/funding/erdf/ And here's a map showing that Northern Ireland is already classed as a "transition region", like Eastern Germany for example: https://ec.europa.eu/regional_policy/sources/what/future/img/eligibility20142020.pdf https://ec.europa.eu/regional_policy/sources/what/future/img...

growlist 7y ago

This is the funny thing about NI - it's portrayed as a catastrophic loss for UK prestige if Ireland were to unite, whereas there are plenty of politicians, civil servants etc. that would be happier if it were no longer the UK's problem, and the remainder of the UK would be better off as a consequence. The same can almost be said of Scotland - England/Wales taxpayers would be better off without it, for example.

OscarCunningham 7y ago

People do not always vote in their economic best interests.

yorwba 7y ago

According to https://ec.europa.eu/agriculture/sites/agriculture/files/rural-development-2014-2020/country-files/uk/factsheet-northern-ireland_en.pdf https://ec.europa.eu/agriculture/sites/agriculture/files/rur... , the EU allocated 646 million euros to be spent on the Rural Development Programme in Northern Ireland 2014-2020. Not sure how that compares to UK government spending. Edit: http://ec.europa.eu/unitedkingdom/sites/unitedkingdom/files/eu_funding_in_ni_2007-2013_and_2014-2020_1.pdf http://ec.europa.eu/unitedkingdom/sites/unitedkingdom/files/... gives a total of 3.5 billion euros EU funding in the same time frame, but only 228 million in the RDP, which made me realize that the 646 million above include 417 million of national co-funding, which I guess means the UK government. Edit 2: According to https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/conservative-and-dup-agreement-and-uk-government-financial-support-for-northern-ireland/uk-government-financial-support-for-northern-ireland https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/conservative-and-... the UK government has made £2.5 billion available to Northern Ireland over 3 years, which works out to almost twice the amount provided by the EU on a yearly basis. That also squares with the similar proportions for the RDP funding alone.

OscarCunningham 7y ago
Presumably some of that is the £1 billion that May promised the DUP to get their votes.

tom_mellior 7y ago

Loads of EU areas are underdeveloped, and the EU spends a lot of money helping develop them. We would help Ireland the same way. Edit: Not sure why someone reflexively downvoted a factual post, but here is some background: https://ec.europa.eu/regional_policy/en/funding/erdf/ https://ec.europa.eu/regional_policy/en/funding/erdf/ And here's a map showing that Northern Ireland is already classed as a "transition region", like Eastern Germany for example: https://ec.europa.eu/regional_policy/sources/what/future/img/eligibility20142020.pdf https://ec.europa.eu/regional_policy/sources/what/future/img...