Glenties, Ireland
The question of the unification of Ireland and British-ruled Northern Ireland will inevitably arise if Britain leaves the European Union without a divorce deal on Oct. 31, Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar said.
He also warned that a so-called hard Brexit could undermine Scotland’s place in the United Kingdom. His comments on Friday prompted a sharp rebuke from Northern Ireland’s largest pro-British party, the Democratic Unionist Party, whose member of parliament Ian Paisley said the Irish government’s language was “unhelpful and unnecessarily aggressive.”
Asked at a politics forum if the Irish government intended to begin to publicly plan for a united Ireland, Varadkar said it did not at present as it would be seen as provocative by pro-British unionists in Northern Ireland.“But in the event of a hard Brexit, those questions do arise,” he said. “If Britain takes Northern Ireland out of the European Union against the wishes of the majority of people in Northern Ireland – takes away their European citizenship and undermines the Good Friday Agreement — in doing so, those questions will arise, whether we like it or not,” Varadkar said at the MacGill Summer School conference in the northwest of Ireland.
“We are going to have to be ready for that.” In the 2016 referendum, 56 percent in Northern Ireland voted to remain in the EU. Over 3,600 people died in three decades of violence between Irish nationalists seeking a united Ireland and the British security forces and pro-British “unionists.”— Reuters
