Goal of unification is not in anyone's economic interests

A confident unionism will be prepared to take its message of promoting the Union to any audience. That is why I recently addressed a Sinn Fein conference on Irish unity: I did so as a committed unionist, as a Northern Irish person proud of his identity as a British citizen.

The purpose of the conference was to explore the economic case for Irish unity. I shared why I am passionately convinced that Sinn Fein's goal of unification is not in the economic interests of Northern Ireland - nor, indeed, of the Republic.

Of course, any society is not defined by economics alone. Identity, culture, allegiance and our past significantly define who we are. Economics alone neither explain the allegiance of unionists nor could economics alone ever persuade unionists to support unification.

It is here that republicanism must confront two challenges. The first is that unionists are not labouring under some type of false consciousness. It is not the case of getting the Brits out and then unionists will discover they're republicans. The Brits are people like me and those who voted for me. We are British. Republican thinking does not appear to recognise this reality.

The second challenge for republicanism is 'the past' - the decades between 1969 and 1998. I know that unionism has hard questions to ask of itself.

One of the founding fathers of my party said this in 1921: "We used to say that we could not trust an Irish parliament in Dublin to do justice to the Protestant minority. Let us take care that that reproach can no longer be made against your parliament, and from the outset let them see that the Catholic minority have nothing to fear from a Protestant majority."

Unionism fell short of Carson's words. That is a part of our heritage that we have to confront.

Republicans, too, have painful questions to ask themselves. The 1916 Declaration talked of "cherishing all the children of the nation equally". Republican actions between 1969 and 1998 told a bloodily different story.

Building a shared future in Northern Ireland will require republicans to recognise that, for unionists, IRA violence was inherently sectarian. Whatever the perceived injustices - for unionists and for many nationalists - the IRA's campaign of terror was entirely without moral justification.

Like the difficult questions those of us who are unionists have to ask ourselves, I realise this will be painful for republicans. But reconciliation requires it.

So what about Sinn Fein's economic case for Irish unity? Present circumstances certainly present a challenge to those advocating the economic benefits of Irish unity.

The economic woes of the Republic, however, cannot be blamed on partition. Amid the most challenging global economic conditions since the 1930s, blaming the Republic's economic woes on partition isn't serious economics.

On this island and on these islands, we sink or swim together in the global economy, because we provide markets for one another's goods and services.

That is why the Government of the United Kingdom rightly contributed £7bn to the bailout of the Republic's economy. As Chancellor George Osborne stated, the Republic of Ireland "is our very closest economic neighbour".

Building economic prosperity across these islands is in the interests of all of us.

It is the Union which offers the framework allowing us to build a shared Northern Ireland; working with our neighbours to the east and the south in the interests of economic prosperity for all of us.