Sinn Féin’s finance spokesperson, Pearse Doherty TD, has claimed Ireland’s economy would be better if there was unity of north and south.
Pearse Doherty TD
The party began 2013 with a conference where the party leader, Gerry Adams TD, made the call for a border poll, as provided for in the Good Friday Agreement.
He said the debate should begin on the poll and the vision for a united Ireland but with the vote taking place in the lifetime of the next Assembly, which would be after 2016.
Pearse Doherty said: “The idea is, and the belief is, that there is a potential in an all-Ireland situation, with larger economies of scale, with a population of six-and-a-half million people, with all of the different transaction costs being eliminated, that you will actually have a better economy.”
Doherty claims the economic arguments against uniting Ireland are full of misinformation saying that the Irish State would not automatically have to replace the €10 billion subvention that the Northern executive gets from central government in London.
“If you peel back the figures, and this is something that we’ve been doing for quite a period of time, the €10 billion is made up of €6 billion that you wouldn’t actually be spending in an all-Ireland economy,” he said.
“You wouldn’t be funding the British army, you wouldn’t be funding museums in Scotland and Wales, you wouldn’t be funding other areas that are simply to do with the British establishment,” he said.
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