Use business to make the argument - Proposed all-island Brexit talks

Remember ‘Ulster Says No’? That was the slogan of a mass campaign by unionists in Northern Ireland against the 1985 Anglo Irish Agreement which, for the first time, gave the Irish government an institutional role in the governance of the North. It was led by DUP leader Ian Paisley who also opposed the Good Friday Agreement 14 years later.

Paisley first said No in 1974 when he helped smash the fledgling Sunningdale agreement that promised power-sharing between unionists and moderate nationalists. He finally said Yes in 2007 by going into government with Sinn Féin, but now the current DUP leader and NI First Minister, Arlene Foster, is exhibiting shades of early Paisleyism by declaring an emphatic No to the notion of an all-island conference on Brexit.

At the start of the new Dáil term on Wednesday, the Taoiseach said he was finalising plans to convene an all-Ireland “conversation” following the UK’s vote to leave the European Union. What form this conversation will take is anyone’s guess but it will not include the DUP.