A Tangled Web

Guff from McElduff

 

Another republican example of the refusal to see the blindingly obvious is provided today by the Brownshirt spokesman on 'All-Ireland integration, Barry McElduff.  He castigates former Taoiseach, Dr Garrett Fitzgerald for stating that the general economic disparities between the two parts of Ireland prohibit 'Irish' unity for a future period of indefinite length.

 

Ulster is subsidised by the UK Exchequer to the tune of £3.5 billion per annum (the difference between taxation raised and the funds needed to sustain standards of living).  This subvention is provided thanks to a healthy economy of 29 million taxpayers and, consequently, the individual tax burden is negligible.  Should the province be constitutionally transferred to the Irish Republic, a comparable subvention would have to be raised with funds accrued from less than 3 million taxpayers. It does not take a fiscal Svengali to realise that any degree of unification would place an exorbitant strain on Irish taxpayers.  The former West Germany is still extricating itself from the economic malaise of unification fourteen years after the event.  And, whatever gloss is placed on the figures for Irish GDP (swollen significantly by the fact that Irish-based multi-national corporations declare their trading profits in the Republic to take advantage of the low corporation tax brackets), there can be no doubt that the economic health of the Republic (or indeed the United Kingdom) is not proportionately as chipper as that of the former Federal Republic of Germany prior to 1990.

 

Every prosperous democracy has both rich and 'poor' regions.  The UK and the Irish Republic are no exception.  Most countries have in place a system of regional aid to fund regions located in their territorial or economic peripheries.  Northern Ireland would be as peripheral in an all-Ireland context as it currently is in the UK.  This fact, coupled with a real danger of incomprehensible civil strife emanating from nearly 1 million Unionists at the termination of the Union, should be enough to convince anyone of the dangers of ending British sovereignty.  On the other hand Sinn Fein, I fear, will simply persist with Pollyanna economics.