Northern Ireland was created against the wishes of the majority of Irishmen and women

Britain ignored democracy during the Home Rule crisis and later the crisis posed by the republican forces and Sinn Fein during and after World War One. Ireland was, and still is, predominantly Catholic/Nationalist. Democratically, an independent Ireland should have been granted in 1921, but only 26 counties were made independent so that the unionist majority in the north would be safeguarded. If you wake in the morning and look out your window to see a strange flag and people from a distant land laying claim to your garden,what would you do?Thats what happened here in this country.Bigotry was bred and buttered in home and at work and the awful truth is there are still bigots within the framework of an ever closer united Ireland that would if allowed bring us back to the days when the bully boys ruled.I really wish our forefathers could be here to witness that which will eventually come about. Sinn Fein has the biggest electoral support in the north, it's been growing constantly since they decided to enter politics, the biggest party in the south is going to be entering into northern politics soon, both support a United Ireland, I'd call that a full consensus on the island of Ireland being united, in 2016 there’ll be renewed desire for a united Ireland everywhere to commemorate the centenary of the founding of our state, I will also point to the ever changing demographics, Catholics consistently having much lager families than Protestants means in time Catholics will actually be a majority in Northern Ireland, along with peace being much more established and concreted over the next 10-20 years, it is only a matter of time. Ireland has a very low corporation tax rate, the lowest in western Europe, this attracts a large amount of multinational corporations creating massive amounts of well paid jobs, if we were part of the UK we simply wouldn't have this advantage and would lose out big time, this policy alone can be attributed to our economic boom of the past 15 years or so. As for Northern Ireland, they are lobbying the government in London to lower their corporation tax rate in just NI, they want to be a special economic region to the rest of the UK, instead they should just harmonise the rate with the south. As for the cross border shopping, that was costing the Republics economy around 600 million per anum and threatening the jobs of over 200,000 people in the retail sector, recently the UK chancellor has increased VAT coupled with a weakening of the Euro to Sterling exchange rate has meant a great reduction in cross border shopping, instead of having to rely on London to correct this problem ( and that’s not why the rate was increased) they should just harmonise the VAT rate of the island of Ireland. Combining and amalgamating services ECT. on a small island with a relatively small population of coarse makes more financial sense, in fact having separate services is financial lunacy, why would you have a separate electricity and gas grid? Why would you have separate road and rail authorities? The Republics government is investing in hospitals for people on both sides of the border, such as in Derry for people in Donegal and the surrounding area for geographical reasons because it wouldn't make financial sense to invest on the Republics side. Any economist will tell you it makes way more financial sense to have a more centralised and acute health care system, it's just an economic fact. The Republics economy is still far superior to the norths with a far higher standard of living and much higher GDP per capita. Combing resources, people and ideas will make the island much stronger overall.