Mick Clifford: Sinn Féin must offer a united Ireland blueprint, not just calls for a border poll

Mick Clifford says constitutional debate should prioritise practical planning, reconciliation and public concerns over political rhetoric

Sinn Féin leader Mary Lou McDonald and Northern Ireland first minister Michelle O’Neill speaking to the media at Leinster House ahead of constitutional change bill debate this week. Picture: Leah Farrell/ RollingNews.ie

Everybody is talking about a united Ireland. Or so we’re told. Among the young, they talk of little else. Or so we’re told. 

The only thing stopping a march to the reclamation of the fourth green field is Micheál Martin, standing Canute-like against the tide of positive nationalism washing across the country. Or so we’re told.

If ever a project was to come into being purely by dint of talking about it as if it is inevitable and imminent, it is a united Ireland. 

The polls — apart from one outlier concerning mainly the EU — all suggest it could be 10 years before conditions for a border poll are met.

Anything could happen in the interim to either shorten or lengthen the distance to a poll. But some people would have you believe that specific preparations should be put in place now as if to hurry up a poll.

This week Sinn Féin brought a motion to the Dáil, calling for a citizen’s assembly to be established and a green paper formulated with a deadline of 18 months to begin preparations. 

All of that is against a background where the same entity appears to have more or less given up on any efforts towards reconciliation with the other tradition in the north east of the island.

During the debate Mary Lou McDonald invoked her adult children, whom she said she believed were reflective of their generation. 

They would, she said, view the rejection of the Sinn Féin bill in a particular way.

“They will see this — driven by Micheál Martin, of that there is no doubt — as a direct pushback against them.

“That generation is hungry. It has an appetite for change, that can see the next horizon and opportunity and that hears the same old tired, jaded rhetoric as blah, blah, blah and all the reasons we cannot have the Republic.”

Have you noticed 'hunger' for a border poll?

Have you noticed a “hunger” among the young for a border poll? Or an expression of deep frustration that a united Ireland has not come into being as if it could be sung by the Wolfe Tones, or rapped As Gaeilge by Kneecap? Me neither.

On Virgin Media’s Tonight show that evening, professor of economics in DCU Edgar Morgenroth estimated that an annual subvention of the order of €12bn “is the best case scenario” for the cost of a united Ireland.

“It would have a very significant impact (on the Republic’s budget) but this is a relatively conservative number and any other numbers I’ve seen aren’t credible,” he said.

All that may well be worth it, but who exactly is talking about such an impact, or would that be impolite? 

How do the “hungry” young feel about that kind of hit when they are already bearing the greatest burden over the housing crisis in the country?

Meanwhile, in the Dáil, the Sinn Féin leader continued with her speech.

“To anyone who believes this issue will go away, it is not going away, you know,” she said.

Thirty years ago on a Belfast street Gerry Adams referenced the IRA to an assembled crowd. “They haven’t gone away, you know,” he famously said.

Mary Lou McDonald provides an echo with the past

Now, Ms McDonald is providing an echo with the past. Maybe it was a bizarre coincidence. An inquiry to the Sinn Féin press office for an explanation did not receive any reply.

Could it have been for the benefit of the aging Provo godfathers in Belfast who ran the IRA? 

Let them know that the so-called struggle is continuing through peaceful means and their killing and dying will not be forgotten? 

Or was it for the unionist community, to let them know that just because the IRA is long gone its former political wing sees its function as completing, peacefully, the aims of the terrorist organisation?

One way or the other, the tenor of McDonald’s speech will have contributed nothing towards reconciliation. 

She also managed to show contempt for other political entities who want to see constitutional change addressed in a different manner.

At one point in the debate, junior minister Mary Butler had this to say: “I am a proud Republican and member of Fianna Fáil.”

To which McDonald responded: “Jesus Christ.”

Sinn Féin have no blueprint for future of island 

The most bizarre aspect to McDonald and her party’s approach is that they have absolutely no blueprint for what they want for this island. 

This, they say, is up to the government. Beyond the mantra of “border poll” Sinn Féin has nothing to offer on what could emerge. 

Even Fine Gael is promising to produce a blueprint, although this is probably as a result of Simon Harris seeing the issue popping up a few times on TikTok.

Let’s remember that Sinn Féin, as we now know it, was formed in 1970, initially under the name Provisional Sinn Féin, to support the Provisional IRA’s campaign of killing for a united Ireland.

The Provos repeatedly stated that they would kill anybody whose death would advance the cause of imposition of a 32 county socialist republic on the island.

The killing stopped in the 1990s, long after it was obvious that it could never succeed. Further along the line, the socialism was abandoned. 

All that now remains from the original mission statement for Sinn Fein is the imposition of a united Ireland, albeit by democratic means.

But to what? The party, as reported again this week in terms of its property portfolio, is by far the wealthiest in the state. 

It has plenty of resources to produce a blueprint of what exact form it sees its primary political goal being achieved. Yet, nothing.

Surely this paralysis of imagination and focus is not because they have looked into the future and can see that it will not be the nirvana they are endlessly projecting. 

Surely not because they are afraid of reconciling with the cost, the changes that will be required, the upheaval.

Surely they don’t want to hide behind a border poll and to hell with whatever may follow.

Meanwhile, there were a few glimpses of the real world in the Dáil debate on Tuesday. 

Independent Ireland’s Michael Collins said his constituents were “not talking to me about green papers, citizens assemblies, or constitutional reports”.

Instead they were talking about “trying to get a roof over their heads”, “waiting months and years for healthcare”, and “the pressures that working people and small businesses are under every day”.

Fianna Fáil TD Malcolm Byrne’s contribution was even more instructive. 

He welcomed the debate and pointed out that 25 years ago there was far more cross border exchanges going on among “community, youth, sporting, and cultural groups” than there are today.

“I also find it bizarre meeting young people in my constituency who have travelled all over Europe and the world, but have never been to the North,” he said. 

“We need to explore to a far greater extent how we can exchange and get groups of people on this island and these islands working closer together.”

This is real world stuff, the basics of trying to bring together peoples who have long been divided. A little more concentration on that wouldn’t’ go astray. 

Instead we have Sinn Féin attempting to rush everybody towards an unwritten future, for little more reason than to justify its past.