Pain and gain in the new economic order

YOUR columnist Fergus Finlay (August 28) outlined the implications of closer cross-border arrangements flowing from the Belfast Agreement and its aftermath.

A former senior civil servant in Northern Ireland, Sir Kenneth Bloomfield, at the Merriman Summer School, called for politicians and other opinion-makers “to think long and hard about the true nature, cost, ethos and dynamics of a new orientation of affairs” in Northern Ireland.

Predictable but simplistic reactions to his speech focused on the reference to some form of Irish unity in future.