Poll on unity will bring challenges: Are we ready to move over border vote?

The international rugby season just past — in an Irish context, the Six Nations — provoked the annual harrumphing over our anthem not being played at away games.

That outrage is as transparent as it is threadbare.

Ever-more Irish people are comfortable enough in their skin to live the inclusion this Republic’s flag celebrates.

Most people can find the generosity, the self-confidence, the absence of threat, to acknowledge that ‘Amhrán na bhFiann’ is not the anthem of a good proportion of the Irish rugby team.

Ironically, recognising this fact may honour the real republicanism inherent in the flag’s symbolism, in a way that those offended when the Republic’s anthem is not sung struggle to accept.

That one, relatively minor issue is the tip of a very large iceberg.

Should all of today’s talk, premature or otherwise, about a post-Brexit vote on a United Ireland, or just a vote brought about by the changing demographics of Northern Ireland, transpire, it will have to be circumnavigated

successfully — assuming the proposal is endorsed, though that outcome is far from certain, as opinion polls persistently indicate.

Any endorsement must mean a circumnavigation that all involved, those who support a United Ireland and those who do not, can find a way to work towards a common purpose that enhances the lives of everyone on this island.

Without that, without that sense of possibility and inclusion, the iceberg may do to us what one did to the Belfast-built Titanic 107 years ago.

Not so very long ago, Arlene Foster, the DUP leader, said that in the event of a United Ireland, she would emigrate.

Even though her party has supported Brexit — despite the North’s ballot-box rejection — and fights tooth-and-nail to save the “precious union”, she may inadvertently have done us some service.

Maybe we should ask ourselves, more often than we do, certainly, what would Arlene and those she represents think?

Why would she feel the need to flee like a refugee in the event of a United Ireland?

This is not a novel suggestion, but maybe one that needs to be re-energised.

It would be a valuable exercise, whether it ends in concession or compromise.

Something very like it will be necessary, if the Four-Green-Fields vote moves from the hypothetical to the actual.

That stands no matter how distasteful some DUP policies, especially their social policies, seem to the newly-liberal South.

In reality, some of the issues that animate the DUP are just as divisive south of the border.

Just about now, some of those asked to speak at one of the summer schools that enliven sunny afternoons are working on their contributions.

Some might, in this context, ask what does unchanging school patronage say about us?

What does the debate about control of the new national maternity hospital say?

What does the compunction around Irish in schools say? What will the tone, triumphalist or otherwise, of the coming centenary events say?

This is not about rolling back nationalism or Catholicism: Time has done that.

It is about knowing where we want to go and how to get there without crashing into an iceberg.

We all, once again, need to talk.