Dublin's difficulty is unionists' opportunity

In between knocking lumps out of each other in 17 Parliamentary constituencies, unionists might take time out to peer across the border.

What they will find is a country on the edge of bankruptcy and a people seething with anger over the greed and profligacy of the nation's political and financial elite.

What they will also find, to borrow and twist a phrase from Irish republicanism at the outbreak of World War One, is that the Republic's difficulty is unionism's opportunity.

The grim facts and figures of the Republic's financial and economic crises are horrifying.

The toxic loans caused by the country's main banks lending money, principally to property developers, are currently running at levels of nearly half as big as the entire Irish economy. Irish taxpayers are forking out around £7.5bn to bail out a number of key banks, some of which also trade in Northern Ireland.

So the same banks which refuse to loan individuals and small businesses money, hike up interest rates and threaten to start re-possessing homes, yet still receive massive injections of public cash - much to the disgust of the ordinary southern Irish citizen.

On top of what many see as a gross injustice regarding the banks and their former property tycoon chums, Irish public sector workers have seen deep cuts to their wage packets, while private sector employees face the ever-present danger of unemployment.

In spite of a report last week from the Dublin-based Economic Social and Research Institute that Ireland would return to growth in 2011, the overall picture remains bleak.

The amiable and very capable Irish Finance Minister, Brian Lenihan, believes the latest projections of growth next year are encouraging.

Lenihan has asserted that confidence is returning and that the Irish economy is "stabilising".

Yet even if Lenihan is correct and the country's fortunes are slowly turning, the damage caused by the Celtic Tiger's collapse is going to have long-reaching consequences.

For the next 10 years, for instance, the average worker in Ireland is going to have to pay for the staggering sums of money the state is handing over to shore up the banks.

Around €4,600 will be paid out by that worker every year for a decade to cover the cost of the bank rescue.

Meantime, there may be further cuts in public spending to prevent the IMF from taking over the running of the Republic's economy instead of the national, sovereign government. This means slashing public sector wages, a freeze on new jobs and a number of key capital building projects.

So far, few commentators have considered the impact the Republic's Herculean struggle to come back from the brink will have on Northern Ireland.

On a basic level, the north has benefited from southern shoppers seeking cheaper bargains in places like Newry, Strabane and Londonderry.

There are, however, fundamental political questions to be raised now that the Celtic Tiger is dead and the Irish state is dealing with the consequences.

In the heady days of the southern boom from the late 1990s, nationalist Ireland believed it would be the economy that would eventually and inexorably lead to unity on the island. The projection of 'soft southern power' in the guise of cross-border capital building projects, the use of southern Irish public money in social programmes designed to benefit all communities in Northern Ireland and the shining example of an independent country enjoying Euro-induced low interest rates would make the concept of unity more attractive.

There were smug predictions that those 'hard-headed northern businessmen' in the unionist community (so the cliche went) would be won over and eventually run into the embrace of Celtic Tiger Man.

Southern Ireland's main preoccupation today is concentrated on economic and social survival, rather than on grandiose notions about the possible economic absorption of the north. Considering this, perhaps this is now the most optimum time for unionists to demand a border poll. Although such a plebiscite would undoubtedly be communally divisive, from a unionist viewpoint, at least, the timing could not be better.

If the costs of unification were made clear and the loss of economic and social benefits for entering a state that is broke are laid out, it may convince not only unionists, but an important sector of the Catholic middle-class to vote No to unity.

They will not say this too loudly in Dublin either, but among that same political elite there would no doubt be a sigh of relief if that vote was indeed negative.

To take over the north under the prevailing economic conditions and the cost of bailing out of the banks would have an even more dire impact on the Irish economy than unification did for Germany post-1989.

Northern Ireland is, after all, at least in terms of the economy, akin to the old German Democratic Republic, given that 60% of workers up here serve state enterprises and civil bureaucracies.

One of the gifts, therefore, that the UUP and maybe even the DUP could demand from an incoming Cameron Government is a promise of a border poll within the lifetime of the first Tory administration.

Given the present economic reality on the island, it could turn out to be a shrewd move, but that, of course, assumes that the leadership of unionism is capable of strategic thought.