Implementing Home Rule would have avoided a lot of trouble

Is John Bruton understating the position when he says that "Home Rule only left open the option of a United Ireland" [‘The lost chances of Home Rule, August 8’]? Did the terms of the Home Rule Act, passed into law in 1914, not give self rule to Ireland as a whole with a parliament in Dublin?

The issue of the postponement due to the war and the question of the exclusion of some Ulster counties were talked about. But they were not included in the act that received the royal assent 100 years ago.

The problem was not in the terms of the act but in the fact that the act was not implemented.