Catching up with modern Ireland: August

I’m posting the August round up a few days before the Kerry-Dublin All-Ireland Final, and will update the result in a fresh post. I did not publish a July round up due to my two-week travels in Ireland.

In late July/early August, people on both sides the Irish border shrugged when I asked about Brexit: there was concern, but not panic. Now, developments are gathering pace ahead of the Oct. 31 deadline. Brexit is intensifying like a hurricane, with the outcome equally unpredictable. British PM Boris Johnson has abruptly suspended the opening of Parliament; an alternative proposal to solve the Irish border riddle is gaining attention.

People on each side of the border voiced caution when I asked about whether a messy, “no deal” Brexit would lead to Irish reunification. “Not right off,” was the general consensus. The passage below is from Daniel Finn’s Aug. 21 piece in Foreign Affairs, Ireland’s Rocky Road to Unity: Can Demographic Shifts Undo a Hundred Years of Separation?

The terms of the impending separation from the European Union [Brexit] remain uncertain, but nothing since the June 2016 referendum has discouraged the belief that the end result will be messy and disruptive. In the event of a no-deal Brexit, Northern Ireland will take a much bigger and more immediate hit than the rest of the United Kingdom, because of its reliance on cross-border trade with the south. In a region that voted to remain in the EU by a solid majority (56 to 44 percent), that prospect is widely and bitterly resented. Especially among soft nationalists and soft unionists—those who take a more pragmatic and transactional view of the union with Britain—the shock of a chaotic Brexit could push more voters to embrace Irish unity as a safer option than remaining tethered to the United Kingdom.

  • Fáilte Ireland and accountancy firm Crowe have developed a Brexit Readiness Check for businesses to determine “how prepared you are to respond to the potential impact of Brexit.”
  • Catholics and Protestants lived side by side in Northern Ireland for decades, “but they had very few social or economic ties across the communities,” academic researchers Joseph M. Brown and Gordon C. McCord wrote in The Washington Post story marking the 50th anniversary of the Troubles. “This meant geographic proximity bred violence instead of mutual tolerance.”
  • The New York Times this month published several stories about Ireland and Northern Ireland, ranging from surfing and television to abortion and housing:

Chasing Waves on Ireland’s Wild Atlantic Way

In ‘Derry Girls,’ the Lighter Side of Life in a Conflict Zone

Climate of Fear: When One Part of a Country Bans Abortion

Housing Crisis Grips Ireland a Decade After the Property Bubble Burst

From an evening walk on Inisheer, looking west to Inis Meain.