, , ,

The economic case for Irish reunification, for people and planet

It is clear that a powerful and inspiring vision for Irish reunification can be made which has the welfare of people and our planet as its defining objective. The mainstream economic case for reunification offers no change to an unjust and unsustainable status quo.

By Séan Fearon

Gael Force Art

The North of Ireland – reclaiming the power for change

To outline a radical economic case for Irish unity, it is appropriate to begin in the North of Ireland, where partition casts the longest shadow and where the ongoing relationship with the UK continues to have direct ecological, social and economic consequences. It is possible to address these consequences bluntly. When it comes to facing ecological and social crises and forming radical policy to prevent further crises in the future, Northern Ireland is a failed state. Much of the reason for this powerlessness lies in the political economy of partition. Devolved states in the UK, and particularly the North of Ireland, are deprived of the ability to make powerful interventions in the economy in the interests of people and planet.

These interventions include punishing exploitative and polluting behaviour, taxing wealth and excessive income to curb overconsumption and inequality, and financing unprecedented investment in modern public transport infrastructure, for example. The state must build and own a huge suite of renewable energy assets, which can generate public income for social investment, and it must provide the basic services required for a dignified life as a right, not a market opportunity.

Disempowered by devolution, and unable to marshal the resources required to make meaningful investment for a rapid green transition or universal services, the Northern Ireland Executive is forced to rely on private interests and the market to achieve policy objectives. In energy, state policy seeks to entice private renewables giants to construct energy projects for the benefits of their shareholders, because the capital does not exist for the state to build and own these assets.  The health service in the North approaches a point of ‘collapse’, forcing people to pay for private treatment – private health spending is rising faster in the North than anywhere else in the UK – just to meet basic needs of dignified life. Housing suffers, too, where policy focuses on giving homeowners and landlords incentives to improve energy efficiency because the state cannot build modern, affordable, and low-carbon homes itself to meet housing need and decarbonise. Europe’s biggest illegal landfill festers outside Derry City in part because the state is unable to afford a clean-up. The compulsory purchase of a dying Lough Neagh may face the same barrier.

Progressives across the world recognise that solving these problems are prerequisites for a just transition to a sustainable and fairer society. They also correctly identify the chaos and self-interest of the market as singularly ill-equipped to achieve these objectives. Partition, however, makes these radical solutions impossible. They cannot and will not happen in the North of Ireland whilst partition persists.

Environmentalists and radical progressives, therefore, face a problem which cannot be resolved by tweaks and by shuffling seats in the Assembly chamber. In the North of Ireland, the state is kept on a leash to the detriment of citizens, whilst the dogs of the market run, and eat. This problem is structural. It is constitutional. The state has no money to invest, no power to raise money, and no chance of procuring more power in the democratic deficit of devolution in the UK.

Many environmentalists on our island hesitate to engage with the possibilities of an alternative constitutional future. This may stem, understandably perhaps, from the fear that this sphere of politics will create a divisive sideshow to the main focus of the environmental movement – restoring the natural world and shielding it from the carnivorous appetites of the superrich. These fears, though well-meaning, are misguided. Reunification offers the North the only feasible avenue through which it can fundamentally reshape society-economy-ecology relationships.

An economic case for unity fit for the 21st century

In fact, embracing a case for reunification in the North which foregrounds the social possibilities of a more state- and community-led economy can act as a powerful counterbalance to the mainstream economic case for reunification. For people who have followed or engaged in discourse at popular events such as those organised by ‘Ireland’s Future’, the case may be familiar.

It is said the North of Ireland has a growth problem, underwritten by stubbornly low rates of productivity. This is in stark contrast to the South. It is hoped that the extraordinary export-based growth, and resulting corporate tax receipts from a handful of mega-firms resident in the South, will foot ‘the bill’ for reunification. In short, Dublin’s FDI-led growth model, which has been a source of great admiration among policymakers in the North since the Good Friday Agreement, should be expanded across the island through corporate tax cuts,  creating a propulsive all-Ireland growth model.

From an ecological perspective, this case has no credibility. It is, in fact, deeply unscientific. It assumes that a united Ireland can exist as an entity completely detached from the natural world. It either assumes the economy has no material inputs or believes that there are no ecological consequences to harvesting more inputs for an ever-expanding economy. We are well beyond a point where we can accept blissful ignorance as an excuse for spreading myths of endless growth on a finite planet.

So let us survey the evidence. The southern Irish economy is intensely destructive. It is among the most ecologically intensive economies in Europe. Despite slight improvements in recent years (from 25 to 20 tonnes per capita), the Irish economy still consumes about three times more natural resources than ecological limits allow. It is the 3rd most intensive economy in the EU measured by emissions per capita. In short, the Irish economy has shattered its fair share of planetary boundaries. If the world economy had the same footprint as the Republic of Ireland, we would need three planet earths to get by.

This is not some obscure, contrarian distraction to the mainstream discussion on reunification. These are the evidence-based characteristics of the Irish economy, and they must be understood and radically transformed if any form of Irish reunification is to endure, much less thrive, in our climate-changed world. The island of Ireland sits on a dying planet, and disproportionately contributes to killing the global ecological systems which underpin life itself. We simply cannot accept a vision for reunification based on the malicious fiction of growth over life.

The unedifying Irish growth model is not just ecologically irrational, it is also morally untenable and socially unjust. We are an island of profound inequalities. The growth model produces huge discrepancies in output and productivity between its FDI hubs and the rest of the island. Economic development is defined as growth of the multinational sector, whatever the ecological cost. Yet urban and rural communities across the island have had fundamental social needs unaddressed for decades. This has not only produced profound inequalities, in income and in access to services, but it has also sparked and fuelled a burning social animosity towards minorities on our island. In short, the Irish economy produces excessive amounts of socially useless commodities needed to appease multinational shareholders. Far too little of our productive capacity is used to permanently meet the needs of all as a fundamental right.

The global south, areas of the world which share Ireland’s post-colonial scars, also suffers from this state of affairs. The FDI ‘powerhouse’ vision of reunification means the Irish economy will continue to use materials far in excess of what the natural systems of the earth can feasibly provide. It means that a united Ireland based on this growth model will continue to release greenhouse gases which bust our fair share of the global carbon budget. In this way, excessive growth in Ireland is parasitic. It feeds off the ecological space needed by the global south to meet their basic needs, so we can produce more things of no social value, creating income which does not go to those most in need. When politicians and some economists celebrate the commitment to more data centres, or the procurement of new markets for beef exports, this growth comes at the expense of the developing world. Reunification, therefore, must be founded on two pillars: sufficiency – meeting our basic needs needs and prioritising public abundance – and an unapologetic commitment to redistribution of national wealth and income.

The moral case for a new economic model, upon which a new Ireland ought to be built, extends further. The  tax receipts from Ireland’s multinational sector, Apple, Google, and Microsoft among them, are allegedly responsible for gross exploitation of people and planet in the global south. Millions of tech products sold by these firms contain cobalt scraped from the earth by child labour in the Democratic Republic of Congo. These products also use intellectual property owned by these firms, some of which is resident in Ireland for tax purposes. When 1 in every 6 euros of corporate tax collected by the Irish state is paid by just ten corporate groups, including Apple, Google and Microsoft, the Irish growth model can be said to produce ill-gotten gains of a deeply immoral value chain.

Nation-building in a climate-changed world

What does all of this amount to? It is clear that a powerful and inspiring vision for Irish reunification can be made which has the welfare of people and our planet as its defining objective. It is a case built on the economics of the 21st century. It is a case which understands the world as it exists in 2024, one which faces an ecological reckoning of an utterly terrifying scale. The mainstream economic case for reunification offers no change to an unjust and unsustainable status quo, and therefore stands mute against the approach of this reckoning.

Despite the ecological costs of the Irish growth model in the 21st century, it cannot be said Ireland bears primary or sole historic responsibility for climate change. But it can be blamed for seeking to give life to a nation-building project based on the plunder of our planet in its dying state. Reunification can only succeed where we are in harmony with the natural world. The pursuit of this harmony will demand an economy built on sufficiency, ecological and social rights, and wellbeing. Let these be the tenants of our reunification project, and let them form a credible, hopeful, and evidence-based alternative to the status quo.

This is a slightly edited version of an article that was written for a series called Answering Ireland’s Call: Thoughts for a new republic (Freagairt ar Ghlaoch na hÉireann: Smaointe ar phoblacht nua). The series publishes articles discussing the reunification of Ireland but within the context of early 21st Century ills such as the climate crisis, capitalism and fascism. Rundale is happy to support this excellent initiative and if you have insights and ideas on the subject and want to make a contribution, email irelandscall@mailbox.org.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *