Fiscal Implications of a United Ireland: Statements
Dail Éireann — 2026-07-16
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John Lahart (FF), Dublin South-West

I welcome the opportunity to contribute briefly on this debate. I was listening to some of it. I echo some of the comments made by Deputy Gogarty about the provocative nature of some of the matters that he raised and the wide range of issues we would need to consider. We do not talk about the North in this House enough. I have been here ten years and it seems to me that we are only really beginning to have a discussion about it.
There is nothing for us to be afraid of once we have open minds, open hearts and are respectful to the stance that everyone else takes in this House. If we were to agree on something, it would be that we all want to live on an island that every single person on the island can call "home". If we were to start from there, it would be as good a starting point as any. However, it would also give a real indication of the challenges that lie ahead of us in order to make that feeling of home for everybody who lives on the island a real possibility.
That means there is a huge amount of work to be done. The shared island project is a clear example of the kind of work that can be done, dealing with tangible projects being delivered in a non-threatening way, either reinforcing historical, infrastructural connections that used to exist but were broken and re-establishing them or creating synergies on the island, and trust, dialogue and research in relation to specific projects.
However, we can be braver than that. I look at the things that partition robbed us of. We can outline a lot of them but I am thinking of how we had a natural federal system on this island with four provinces. It lends itself to a very natural system of federal government where there is a capital in each province determining - not ruling, but representing everybody in those provinces - and maybe a central government made up of representatives of those four provinces. Partition robbed us of that natural four-province political framework on the island.
Even if we were to start there and re-establish four provinces, we could see the concessions that would need to be made. We could say that Belfast was the natural capital of the province of Ulster. It would require concessions on the part of the three counties of Ulster that remain in the Republic. It would require concessions on the part of the Six Counties that are in Northern Ireland to incorporate the other three counties into the administrative system. I do not want to name what might be the capital cities of the other provinces because that could get me into an awful lot of trouble.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-07-16/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-27T06:52:17+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-07-16