Adams shows courage in public service call

I would like to applaud Gerry Adams on his implied change of mind as set out during his call last week for a border poll.

For so long we have heard that there should be no cuts in staffing in the public service from so many on the left. However, studying the nuanced but always careful language used by Mr Adams where he states that a single Irish nation will benefit by tackling “…inefficiencies in the duplication of public services”. Clearly this would call for a cut in the number of public servants north and south of the border.

I have always been agnostic on the concept of a United Ireland but I think Mr Adams is onto something here. I would advise Mr Adams that the critical question left unanswered in his article is the decision process which will be used to choose who gets the chop. Whilst a ‘last in, first out’ method could be used, it could also be argued that the North has suffered so much in the past 40 years that staff there should be given preference over their southern counterparts. In a way this could be seen as a little recompense and maybe even a quasi-apology from the republicans who were so pivotal in creating the environment whereby private sector jobs could not flourish up North.