Mr. Andrew Pollak:

I thank the Cathaoirleach for the invitation and it is a real honour to address this Seanad committee.

I was born in Northern Ireland to a Country Antrim Presbyterian mother and a Jewish socialist father but grew up largely in London and I have been back in Ireland for more than 50 years. I believe that Irish unity in the medium term to maximise the difficult preparation that will be vital is the best outcome not least because my mother's people, the Northern Protestants, have nowhere else to go. The people of Britain do not want them. However, I have two questions for the people of this Republic. Do they want the Ulster unionists as fellow citizens in their society? What changes are they prepared to make to welcome them? I believe that the people here have barely begun to think about this. How would bringing in 900,000 antagonistic unionists affect our concepts of Irish identity, including our dislike of their passionate Britishness, our nationalist historical myths, our stable political institutions, our public spending bills and reluctance to have our taxes increased to cover them, our church controlled educational system, our creaking two-tier health service and so on? If we are sincere about the revised constitution's pledge to unite the nation "in harmony and friendship" then there is going to have to be some very uncomfortable changes.

Many nationalists probably imagine, if they think about it at all, that when demographics and the consequent rise in the nationalist vote in the North eventually brings about a narrow majority for unity in a border poll ,then unionism, as a philosophy on this island, will just disappear. I have to disabuse them of this self-serving notion. Large numbers of unionists if they are voted against their will into a united Ireland, which they have struggled fanatically against for 140 years, will continue to withhold their allegiance from that Irish State and will continue to feel, behave and declare themselves as British. They will wave the union flag, pledge their allegiance to the British monarchy and reject the Irish language and culture as nothing to do with them. They will be a sullen, alienated and, potentially, violent minority just as the nationalists were in Northern Ireland. This is not a recipe for social peace and harmony. We, therefore, have to ask a fundamental question. Could any significant element of unionism be prepared to countenance an all-Ireland accommodation if important parts of their British ethos, and culture, were to survive and flourish in the new Ireland? Guaranteeing unionists their British ties and identity in a post-unity scenario will be challenging. It may be very far from the unitary State that we in the South have traditionally been wedded to. Will it require some kind of federation or confederation? Will it involve some continuing role for the British Government to protect the interests of unionists, perhaps along the lines of the involvement of the Irish Government in the North to protect nationalists under the 1985 Anglo-Irish Agreement? In fact, there appears to be almost zero discussion here about the crucial issue of what will happen to the unionists. Instead, we, in the Republic, sail blithely into an unexamined future with a foolish consensus that in the end the good guys of Irish nationalism will win out over the Northern bigots and stooges of British imperialism, and then we will live happily together ever after in harmonious unity.

I do not have time in this short presentation to outline any ideas about the kind of shared institutions and symbols we will need. Maybe we could explore that in the question and answer session.

Will the people of the Republic be able to stomach the profound changes that are required? After 100 years of independence I very much doubt it. This view was borne out by an opinion poll conducted by The Irish Timeslast December, which showed how little the South's voters were prepared to compromise on their comfortable existence and traditional nationalism to accommodate unionists. Between 70% and 80% would not accept higher taxes, less money for public services, a new flag, a new anthem or rejoining the Commonwealth.

Last spring, I had dinner with a group of very smart politics students from Trinity College Dublin who shared the reluctance of the people polled by The Irish Timeswhen it came to making changes to accommodate unionists in a united Ireland. A young Limerick man said, "I have a pretty strong Irish national identity. The idea of changing what our country is about to accommodate British colonisers", which is unionists coming in from the North, "does not sit right with me". Most of the others agreed with him. A young woman from Dublin said that she personally would not want "to adapt in any way to British culture even if that was the price of bringing in some significant element of unionists" into a united Ireland. She continued, "We were under the British for so long, now that we have got our own successful Irish identity we would not want to let that go".