If you think Brexit is complex – try planning a united Ireland

When I was growing up, there were few people I knew in Galway who were out-and-out IRA or Sinn Féin supporters – but just about everybody believed in the aspiration of a United Ireland.

Of course there were terms and conditions. Unionist consent was always a consideration. Then the need for majority consent became one of the key preconditions in the Good Friday Agreement.

Back in early 2016, I spent some time in the unionist and loyalist communities of Northern    Ireland to find out their thinking on the Brexit referendum.

Everywhere I went, most wanted to leave the EU. The immigration issue wasn’t a factor. Migrants never really arrived in the North in the same way as they did in other parts of the UK.

For the loyalists, the reasons went back to the core; they did not want to identify as European, rather as British.

When I spoke to loyalists in Belfast – on the Shankill Road and on the Sandy Row – they reminisced about the huge employers: Harland and Wolfe; Mackey Engineering; and Gallagher’s tobacco.

Two of them are no longer there. The third, H&W, has has gone into administration only this week. How the mighty have fallen.

I copped on fairly quickly that these people were hankering for a Britain that no longer existed, a fairytale Britain of the 1940s and 1950s.

Funnily enough, Boris Johnson is trying to revive that Blitz spirit now. But the Britain of 2019 is not the Britain of 1939 when it comes to being a world player.

But the other side of the coin to Brexit – which loyalists hope would make Northern Ireland even more British – is a united Ireland.

A slim majority voted against Brexit in the North. So the first basic tenet is that the Northern state is slightly more pro-European in outlook.

And then there will come a time very soon when Catholics will be in a majority – meaning a united Ireland is more possible now than at any time over the past century.

Read Harry’s full column in this week’s Connacht Tribune.