Northern Ireland is too expensive for Ireland to administer

The argument

The argument against a united Ireland advanced here is fiscal rather than constitutional: it concerns which state can afford to run Northern Ireland, not which has the better claim to it. As a large country with a correspondingly large economy, the UK is able to absorb the cost of maintaining services in Northern Ireland, because that cost is spread across a tax base many times the size of the region it supports. The Republic of Ireland's economy is, on this account, too small to do the same. The comparison is made in per-person terms, which is where proponents locate the force of the objection. If the Republic were to spend £9.2bn every year on Northern Ireland, the burden would fall on a far smaller population, working out at roughly £2,000 per person per year. A cost of that magnitude, levied annually and indefinitely, is presented as potentially crippling rather than merely demanding, and the argument notes that it would be taken on by a country still recovering from the adverse effects of the 2007-09 global financial crisis, with the reduced fiscal headroom that recovery implies. The running cost is also not the whole of it. Unification would not simply transfer an existing arrangement from one exchequer to another; it would require merging two health systems, two education systems, two systems of welfare administration, currency and public employment, each built to different standards over decades. Irish people would therefore have to pay even more than the recurring figure once transitional costs are accounted for, and those costs would fall in the early years, before any benefit of integration could be realised. The conclusion is that the aspiration and the arithmetic point in different directions. Northern Ireland should remain part of the United Kingdom, proponents argue, because the UK can carry a burden that the Republic, on these figures, cannot.

Context

Northern Ireland is extremely expensive to administer. It costs the UK £9.2bn every year to keep governing it thanks to a large public sector, high benefit payments, very high policing costs and an economy that does not return as much in taxes as the rest of the UK.

Premises

Counter-arguments

The people of the Republic of Ireland repeatedly been told of the financial cost of a united Ireland, but still support it, showing that those affected by the cost do not believe it is an important enough reason to prevent Irish unification from happening. Ireland’s economy, though not as strong as it was during the “Celtic Tiger” years, is very strong, thanks to the presence of many large American tech companies in Ireland. Because of this, Ireland has a high GDP and the eighth-highest average wage in the world, meaning the country could afford to pay for unification. In addition, a very large amount of the cost of a united Ireland would be offset by the streamlining of public services. Currently, administering two separate states on the island of Ireland creates a great deal of financial waste. This would make a united Ireland far more affordable than the headline figures may suggest.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] The costs of a United Ireland would be lower after streamlined public sector costs [Rejecting P2] Ireland can afford the costs of a United Ireland