Reconciliation has been achieved. Sinn Féin can transform the reunification debate…

Last year’s ARINS/Irish Times polling found that the vast majority of Northern Ireland’s voters are reconciled to living in a future that most of them would prefer not to happen. In essence, reconciliation has been achieved.

However, reunification appears stuck. Since 2022, the last 13 polls have averaged 58-42 in favour of remaining in the UK, excluding undecideds. The high point in the polls for reunification was in 2020-21, though still 54-46 pro-Remain. (Graph 1, below. I wrote an article for Slugger in February 2025 discussing poll data.)

There is no Catholic majority (i.e. greater than 50%) in any age group according to the 2021 census (see graph 2, below). Paradoxically, this demographic stalemate offers the perfect opportunity to build a radically transformed Ireland. Suppose there were a border poll in May 2026 and the result favoured reunification? We could conclude, on the basis of the 2021 census figures, that sizeable numbers of Protestants, non-Christians and atheists had voted for reunification. Such a state would be more stable than one achieved by only nationalist voters.

What can be done to energise non-nationalist voters into voting for reunification? There are two significant obstacles.

Firstly, while the vast majority of both Sinn Féin and SDLP politicians believe reunification would be a good thing, they are deeply divided on whether the Provisional IRA’s armed struggle was a just war. For non-nationalists, no such chasm exists: practically all such voters believe there was no justification for the IRA’s campaign of violence. This chasm plays out in local and Assembly elections where SDLP voters tend to transfer more to Alliance than to Sinn Féin.

Professor Richard Rose’s research in Northern Ireland in the sixties found that 20% of Protestants regarded themselves as Irish (see his book Governing Without Consensus). That figure is now only four percent, according to the 2021 census. Rose’s survey found that 43% of the total sample identified as Irish; in 2021 29% identified as Irish only, with a further four percent identifying as Irish plus another identity (such as British or Northern Irish). As the Catholic share of the North has increased, Irish identity has decreased (see graph 3, below).

The effects of republican violence – and continuing justification of it – seem to have embedded death, destruction and glorification of violence into Irish identity for huge numbers of non-nationalist voters. And this has made Irish identity repugnant to them. On Sunday, Mary Lou McDonald – in an Easter Rising commemoration speech at Arbour Hill – said that:

… the biggest barrier today to preparing and planning Irish unity is the Fianna Fáil-Fine Gael Government.

Unity-agnostic and unity-hostile Northern voters might disagree, as they continue to disagree with Michelle O’Neill’s comments that I think at the time there was no alternative” (to armed struggle).

But these voters will decide whether reunification occurs.

For unionism, continued republican justification of IRA violence is the gift that keeps on giving. What need have they to counter pro-reunification arguments when such justification speaks volumes?

Secondly, the Irish government is opposed to a border poll in the short-term, believing it would fail given the opinion poll data. While northern nationalism is so fundamentally split on the legacy of separatist violence, it is hard to see Dublin getting involved in detailed planning for something it doesn’t think will succeed. A Sinn Féin-led government in the South is unlikely to achieve reunification while that party continues to justify armed struggle.

The effect of these two obstacles on Northern politics is significant. The January 2026 LucidTalk poll found that 71% of those sampled believed that the return of Stormont and the Executive has not had a positive impact on their lives. Stormont ministers have never been photographed together. We await, as if for Godot, the multi-year budget. Lough Neagh – the biggest sewer on these islands – continues to fester. Yet the devolved government’s abysmal performance has not prompted a sea-change in public opinion towards reunification.

In the 2023 local elections, when a Sinn Féin candidate was available for transfers (but an SDLP candidate was not), more Alliance votes were non-transferable than were transferred to Sinn Féin. A 2023 LucidTalk poll found non-communal voters disliked Sinn Féin more than any other party. It would appear that continued justification of the armed struggle is preventing pro-reunificationist sentiment building among non-nationalist voters.

However, there is some evidence that unity-agnostic and unity-hostile voters are less wary of reunification. i.e. that the possibility exists of building a pro-reunification majority.

Firstly, non-communal voters, as well as increasing their vote share, are also transferring to nationalist candidates (mostly SDLP) in greater numbers (see graph 4, below). I estimated in an article in Irish Studies in International Affairs (an ARINS / RIA journal) that about half of Alliance and Green Party transfers went to nationalists in the 2022 and 2023 elections. This is up from a quarter or so around 1998. This gives the ‘notional’ nationalist bloc almost 52% of the vote, roughly 11% more than when the Belfast Good Friday Agreement was signed.

Secondly, the 2024 ARINS/Irish Times survey (slides 20-23) shows that reconciliation has occurred between the vast majority of the people of Northern Ireland. An overwhelming majority (96%) of SF voters are reconciled to (either ‘not happy, but could live with it’ or ‘happily accept’) a border poll result in favour of remaining within the UK. A majority (60%) of both DUP and TUV voters are reconciled to a result in favour of reunification. When Micheál Martin says that reconciliation hasn’t yet been achieved, he’s wrong. Losers’ consent, on these figures, exists.

Another thought experiment: imagine a reunification campaign in the North where (a) an alliance of nationalist parties agreed that violence from their side was unjustified and unjustifiable, and (b) such a statement was gratefully accepted as genuine by many non-nationalist voters. It is likely that such a cathartic moment in Irish politics would increase support for reunification in the North, perhaps towards 50% (towards the percentage for the notional nationalist bloc). That would attract the interest of the Irish government, who would have to then formulate a coherent, visionary and pluralist reunification plan before the Secretary of State would call a border poll.

In 1994, the then-leader of the UUP, James Molyneaux, stated that the IRA ceasefire was the worst thing that has ever happened to us”, and that a “prolonged IRA ceasefire could be the most destabilising thing to happen to unionism since partition” (article by Ciarán Hartley of DCU, p.365). One could imagine a transformative statement from Sinn Féin on the legacy of republican violence (that enables transcendance of the cycles of violence and whataboutery), would also be destabilising for unionist reluctance to debate reunification.

Should Reform UK win the 2029 Westminster election, politics in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland – all three of whom are likely to be led by secessionist First Ministers – will be hugely destabilised. A border poll may be foisted upon Northern Ireland without adequate preparation by both the northern nationalist parties and the Irish government. All the more reason to lay the groundwork now.

Perhaps the hardest psychological thing most of us will ever have to do is to rethink how we think about the twists and turns of our country’s past in order to bring our desired future closer. But it is a necessary task if we are, as Seamus Heaney wrote in his 1994 ceasefire poem, Tollund:

… to make a new beginning.
And make a go of it, alive and sinning,
Ourselves again, free-willed again, not bad.