Irish Examiner View: Germany provides lessons on how to make unity work

Ireland should address reunification just as Angela Merkel would, calmly, fairly, humanely, and without fear or favour long before urgency or fear cloud judgement. File photo: AP

Next weekend, Germany will mark 30 years of reunification. That great project, one with roots in the very darkest evil, has been a resounding success even if there are caveats. On Saturday the great majority of Germany's 83m citizens, many other Europeans, and refugees from outside Europe as well, will celebrate the great events of 1990. 

Those events brought an end to the Soviet-dominated GDR after its 41 years of grey, Trabant-driving, half-life. Those events also razed the symbolic and very real division of the Berlin Wall, an emotionally disturbing and brutal presence in that great city for 28 years.