Keynote Address to the Irish Association

Brendan O'Leary, Keynote Address to the Irish Association November 2007.

The subject matter of our conference is "Southerners in the North, and Northerners in the South". The objective data on the subject matter are minimal – as you can see from glancing at these figures [Slide 1]. There are more Northern-born people living in the South than there are Southern born people living in the North (50,000 compared with 39,000). Though Southerners living in the North form a higher proportion of the relevant polity's population, they still compose a small minority of 2 per cent. They are not politically organized, or homogeneous. They are not a demographic threat. Fears about their prospective numbers led to unjust electoral arrangements in Northern Ireland, which meant it was easier for a Southern-born person to become entitled to vote in Great Britain than it was in Northern Ireland. The appropriate reform of these discriminatory laws had no dramatic effect on voting outcomes. But, given the ease, especially now, with which one can emigrate between the two jurisdictions, both because of British and Irish reciprocity over citizenship, and because of European Union laws, it will be interesting to hear all of your speculations about the relatively low migratory flow of Irish people across the border on the island, and about whether this pattern will persist. That sets an agenda for you; it is not a question I intend to try to answer.

Let me instead begin with the subjective, as I have been encouraged to do. You may well ask given that our subject-matter is "Southerners in the North, and Northerners in the South" why are you being addressed by a Professor of Political Science at the University of Pennsylvania? By a resident of Philadelphia? And why is he speaking with what many assume is an English accent? Has some dreadful geographical faux pas been made by Professor Murphy to whom my invitation is owed? Are you about to hear a disquisition on the long-run consequences of the American civil war? Or, to hear tell of what it is like for a genteel Georgian to live in the city of Philadelphia? Or, of the visits of Scarlet O'Hara's relatives to Martha's Vineyard? Never fear, Professor Murphy was not entirely wrong to ask me to speak. For I am an Irish Southerner by birth, but I became a Northerner. And a Northerner is what I think I am whenever I am in Ireland, North or South, whatever you may decide to judge by my name, voice, place of work, or after hearing what I say. The choicest words I learned as a teen-ager have a "Norn Iron" inflection. I swear in Belfast argot. Annoy me, and I will utter an Anglo-Saxon four lettered expletive in such tones that most of you could be persuaded that I number Ulster Scots among my languages.

How I became a Northerner may be worth a long diversion, and it has been encouraged by our organizer. I was born in Cork city, the son of Donal O'Leary, born in Cork in 1925, and the late Margery (Margaret) O'Mahony, born in Cork in 1930. Their respective titular families had come into the city from the west of the county in the nineteenth century, from Inchegeela in the case of the O'Learys, and from Skibbereen in the case of the O'Mahonys. My father was educated at University College Cork, where he earned Bachelors and Masters degrees in Chemistry – interrupted at the age of 19 when he volunteered to fight Hitler through joining the Royal Air Force. Fortunately, especially for me and my siblings, his eye-sight was not good enough for the status of a combat or bomber pilot, so he became a ground specialist in the new technology of radar.

After he was de-mobilized and had completed his education Donal O'Leary eventually decided to seek employment in Africa. My father's older brother, Paud, was an SMA missionary. Societas Missionum ad Afros may have been the first Latin words that I learnt. Paud would die in Ghana in a car crash in 1963. My father had no theological impulses, and remains an agnostic. His tale of leaving Ireland was not untypical: there were not then many jobs for the highly educated in the natural sciences. Emigration offered better economic prospects. It also offered warmer and drier weather, an important consideration for an asthmatic in the world before Clean Air Acts. Emigration also offered adventure. My father was not forced to emigrate as so many Irish people felt they were in the 1950s. My father's four other siblings remained in Ireland – his younger brother, who had the same name as me, was educated in History, and became the Town Clerk of Tralee before his premature death in 1972.

My father's family was politically divided between Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael for as long as my father and I can recall, though his father, the Royal Liver Insurance manager of Cork, voted Labour on occasion, at least somewhere in his single transferable ballot papers. He had aided the Volunteers in the war of independence. My father's first cousin, my first cousin once removed, was Sean O'Leary (1941-2006), who became a Fine Gael Lord Mayor of Cork, a Senator, Garret FitzGerald's national election campaign manager, and later a senior judge. He died last year. My O'Leary grandparents put their three boys though university education; they had a live-in maid; and priests and nuns constantly called at their house. They were comfortable by the standards of the era. Bourgeois, but not high bourgeois. My grandmother O'Leary, born Ann O'Farrell in Enniscorthy, hoped I would follow her oldest boy into the priesthood, and told me I would make a great Bishop. I would have disappointed her. I have only been called "the Bishop" by my comrades in my first university's Left Caucus – I earned the epithet because of my ability to enunciate the correct position on matters of then left-wing dogma.

My mother's family were working class in origin. My O'Mahony grandparents were failed migrants to the United States, but failed migrants because of war. My grandfather Jer O'Mahony had worked in Wisconsin and on the railways. He journeyed back to Ireland in 1915, on the last trans-Atlantic boat to launch before the sinking of the Lusitania – another close escape for my genes. He was stranded, and could not return after war was declared on Germany by the United States, and he had failed to file his citizenship application. He had corresponded with my grandmother, who was working as a household cook in Boston, and they married on her return to Ireland after the war. They lived in a large house next to a convent – given to them because my grandfather worked for the nuns, and because he was paid in kind rather than in cash. They had five children. Their daughter Marie, and my mother, Margery, won sought-after places in the executive civil service through competitive examinations, and would experience living and working in Dublin. Their son, John, became a builder; another son Henry, became an accountant, and would marry my father's youngest sister, Una. The youngest son of my O'Mahony grandparents was Dermot, later Diarmuid Ó Mathuna, who obtained a doctorate in Mathematics purely through scholarships, and who would lecture at Harvard and work for NASA. From Boston he would send me books and dollars on my birthday. I believe he holds the distinction of being the only person since de Valera to be a member of both branches of the Institute of Advanced Study in Dublin – Celtic Studies and Theoretical Physics. My mother's family were Fianna Fáil or Labour until the 1980s.

My father and mother met in Cork, and she agreed to join him in Africa. He was to work in the copper mines of what would then become Zambia. They married and honeymooned in Cape Town in 1956. The maid of honor was my mother's sister Marie, and the best man was Paud McGuone, her husband, who came from an ardently republican family. The decision of my aunt and uncle to live near Belfast in the mid-1960s helps explain how I became a Northerner. But in the meantime I must explain that – at least according to my calculations - I was conceived in Cape Town, which makes me of Southern origin, by anyone's geographical perspective. I was, however, definitely born in Cork in 1958, shortly after my parents had lost their first born child, a daughter Kathleen, to the influenza epidemic of 1957-8. The year after my birth my sister Mary was born, and the following week we accompanied our parents to Kaduna, in northern Nigeria. My father had decided on a job with the Nigerian Geological Service. We had an idyllic childhood in a lovely milieu, not far from rivers, and with the enormous savannah bush-land as our garden. We were schooled mostly with English kids, but also with some Americans, including African Americans, one of whom got in touch with us recently. We went back to Ireland every so often, and we learned a little bit of Hausa.

My earliest political memories include a visit home to Ireland for my brother Raymond's birth in 1963, shortly after which President Kennedy was assassinated. My Grandmother O'Mahony made me get down on my knees, and pray as if my own father had died. I somehow gathered the impression that Kennedy's death was more important than that of Pope Paul the 23rd earlier that summer. Both men's photographs adorned the wall as was then customary if not constitutionally obligated. I did as instructed, as you do if you are a good boy, aged 5. To this day I always feel sentimental when I see a picture of Kennedy's handsome face, though I now think of it as affected by medication, and made-over by the kind of professionals whose services I will shortly need. The day was significant in my development because I think I learned then, aged five and a half, that I was Irish, and that President Kennedy was an Irish American. I remember wondering whether that meant I was an Irish Nigerian. Two years and three years later I had another sister, Lynda, and another brother, Donal, both born in Nigeria, but by then I had learnt that did not make them Nigerians.

In 1966 my sister Mary and I were playing in a tree in Kaduna when we saw a man with a machete approaching, a Hausa man – we knew how to distinguish Hausa, Fulani, Yoruba and Ibo people. He asked us whether we knew where Adolphus was. That was the name of our Ibo cook, educated by Catholic missionaries. We knew the man with the machete was up to no good. I think my sister took the initiative and we ran into the house screaming that a man with a machete was after Adolphus. I remember that Adolphus, who must have known the local atmosphere, looked terrified. My mother encouraged him to go inside a pantry and then stood in front of its door, confronting the assailant, while we hid in her skirts. He demanded that she make way. My mother refused. He eventually thought better of his planned ethnic murder, and went off. My mother called my father, who arrived shortly after with policemen. We went off with the police because my mother's eyesight was poor, and she had not been wearing her glasses during this episode. It was hoped that we would be able to identify him. We were taken, nervously, through local villages but saw no one resembling the man with the machete, who would today be labeled an ethnic cleanser. But on the way back Mary spotted him hiding in a ditch. He was arrested. My father told us later that he was let go because the evidence of young children was insufficient to convict him.

The Nigerian civil war had begun in our backyard. Pogroms of southern Christian Ibos, executed by northern Muslim Hausa-Fulani, started in Kaduna, triggered by fears created by coups and counter-coups in the federal government. The pogroms prefigured the attempted and bloodily blocked secession of Biafra. We would later collect money for the victims of the war-induced famine that may have starved Adolphus and his family, whom my father had helped to flee to Enugu.

These events affected me deeply. I knew I had good reasons to admire both my parents. They had stood for universal values in circumstances in which some other Europeans had looked away, either while their Ibo servants were butchered, or, worse, had handed them over to mobs.

One of my parents' responses was to resolve to send their children back to Ireland with my mother. They had been contemplating this idea because they thought we would soon need good high schools. We spent some months in Cork – where I attended Strawberry Hill Primary School, and I had my first experience of violently coercive and allegedly Christian teachers. I also remember failing to pronounce Irish nouns successfully. We then headed to Northern Ireland. My mother had decided to explore the North because she believed it had better houses, and better schools, and because my mother's sister was already there. She may even have believed it had better weather. If so, she was not the first to take "the blue skies of Ulster" as a fact rather than a specimen of wishful thinking.

In short, the Nigerian civil war led to our placement in the opening sparks of what we now euphemistically call "the troubles". We first lived in Cloughey, near Kirkistown, in the Ards peninsula, chosen naively for its beauty and relative proximity to my aunt. My mother sent my sister and I off to the nearest primary school. On our first day the kindly headmaster, a Mister Wilson, asked us, as he asked each child, as he was filling in the new register, "Religion?" I recall turning to my sister, and saying in a very English voice, "Oh, I don't know Mary, but I think we're Roman Catholics!" There was a deathly silence among the other children. We heard the word "Fenian". And sometime later I was ritually challenged to a fight by each boy of roughly my size in the playground: childhood sectarianism has its codes of chivalry. My mother had simply sent us to the local school – because the nearest Catholic school was miles away. We soon learnt that we were the only known Catholics in the village. It felt a little strange, but then we were used to being social minorities. We had been among a small number of Europeans in Kaduna.

I won sufficient fights to become accepted as a peer, though my sister and I remained worried by a bully-boy called William Palmer, who insisted on calling us "Fenian eariwigs". We thought eariwigs were insects, i.e. earwigs, but I've researched this mildly diverting topic. In Ulster Scots, at least so some allege, an eariwig is someone who listens in on another person's conversation, as in "He's eariwiggin' again". I suppose we were often doing just that, trying to master the local tones and idioms. So William Palmer may have been right to dub us "eariwigs", though I still suspect he had an anatomical insult in mind. Whatever about the wigs, we certainly didn't know what Fenians were. We acquired that knowledge when the small Orange lodge increased the intensity of its summer drumming whenever it passed our rented house.

Mr. Wilson put us in a separate room at the start of each school day, while the other children had bible classes or religious education. This separation made us realize that we were truly different – and not only in our voices, names and surnames. We had not had this sense in Nigeria. But it also enabled me to become fairly good at mathematics, and to read a lot of children's history books.

In May 1968 my parents bought a house just outside Carrickfergus, in a new housing estate, which had oil-fired central heating. They thought it would at least ensure that their Nigerian reared children would regard home as warm. It was also close to Aldergrove airport. They thought the cost of oil would be cheap – and that the heating system would not induce asthma. They had not foreseen the Yom Kippur War and the formation of OPEC, and had not researched the repercussions of air-blown heating. Once again, however, we were sent to the nearby state, i.e. Protestant school, auspiciously called Eden Primary. Eden was no paradise, and it had no garden of any kind. Its alumni now number convicted killers of the Ulster Volunteer Force, as well as my sister and me. The children with whom we played were no more bigoted than those of Cloughey. Our cross-community friendships would be weakened both by the political events of 1969 and by subsequent schooling choices.

The civil rights movement, in which my aunt and uncle were involved, and its aftermath may have affected my mother's next choices. So did her religious convictions, which were mild, but firmer than when she was younger. She decided in 1968 that the Pope was wrong on birth control, but that Catholicism would remain her faith. From 1969 we were sent to Catholic schools. I went to Saint MacNissi's College, Garron Tower, on the Antrim coast; my sister to the Cross and Passion Convent in Ballycastle. I had passed that cruel test, the 11 plus, one of but two to do so – the results consigned the rest of my peers to the joys of secondary modern school if their parents had no money to spend on their education.

From 1969 the rest of my nuclear family was living in Khartoum most of the time. My father had obtained a job as a geo-chemist with the United Nations Development Program in the Sudan. His arrival had coincided with Colonel Nimeiri's coup d'etat, and we would soon become familiar with another North-South conflict, in which ethnicity and religion were key markers of identity and conflict. Until 1976 my school terms were spent in Northern Ireland, but most of the long vacations in the Sudan. Once a month, and during the shorter Easter holidays, I stayed with relatives or friends in Belfast, Carrickfergus or Cork. My passport was the envy of my peers – my trips to Africa took me through such places as Beirut, a peaceful Greek-like city in 1972, and Cairo.

So I became unambiguously "Norn Irish" in a boarding school. Garron Tower was then a hybrid between a grammar school, a fee-paying school, and a local school. It was boys only. The other boarders hailed from places in the North which lacked Catholic boys' grammar schools, or from Belfast – i.e. from families determined to keep them out of trouble for most of the month. A very small number of us, two in my year, were of Southern origin. I received an excellent education in the humanities and in mathematics, and I was encouraged to debate – it would culminate in winning the prize for the best individual speaker at the all-Ireland Irish Times sponsored debating competition in Trinity College Dublin in 1975. I spoke against the motion "Extremism in defense of liberty is no vice". I still speak against that motion.

My excellent ancient history teacher, Liam Agnew, who had been an activist in the civil rights movement, and who turned every Friday into a discussion of global current affairs, encouraged me to take the Oxford entrance examinations, and I won a scholarship to study Philosophy, Politics and Economics. I did have a choice; I was also accepted to Trinity College Dublin, to study History, though not Law. I chose Oxford for three reasons: it offered me a scholarship, it would cost my father much less, and I was in love with an English girl whom I had met in the Sudan – and who I knew would be there. The last reason was by far the most important at the time; and the least rationally based: not for the last time I over-rated my prospects.

Surprisingly, perhaps, Oxford made me even more Northern Irish. I read widely in politics and philosophy and became radicalized. I returned every vacation to our home in Carrickfergus, or to visit my father with my siblings in Uganda, where he had gone after Sudan, and after my mother's death. Because of the administrative incompetence of the United Nation my father would lose all our family mementos in the Tanzanian intervention which led to the overthrow of Idi Amin's regime, but we all thought it was an intervention that was correctly motivated. Let that tale enable me to bring what - for a social scientist - is an embarrassingly personal and anecdotal account of my formation as a Northerner to a halt. And let me start to segue, as promised, into some long-range reflections on transformations in Ireland, past and to come. So, what has my past, as a Southerner who became a Northerner, meant for me?

My father's work was deeply affected by wars – World War II, and civil wars and wars of intervention in Nigeria, Sudan and Uganda. Some of his staff and some of his laboratories were destroyed in ethnic civil wars. Partly in consequence I grew up thinking that ethnic conflict was normal – and my family's entry into Northern Ireland did nothing to suggest otherwise. I also grew up shaped by my father's liberalism and internationalism – the United Nations is usually hopeless organizationally, but some of its values are fine. I was equally deeply shaped by my mother's courage and moral clarity. I had had multiple experiences of being in a minority – a foreigner in Nigeria, a perceived alien Southern Catholic by young Northern Protestants, a perceived English accented Southerner by Northern Catholics. "O'Leary of Khartoum" had had no long-run experience of having been a member of a majority group; in either Ireland or Oxford.

I had also learned that identity is neither given nor chosen. If you are lucky your identity is negotiated and you have some say over the outcome. You may and, of course, you should define yourself; but your choices will not always be respected by others, including governments, and others will code you in ways that surprise you, despite your protestations. I have, for example, given up trying to say I am not a Catholic because I am an atheist. I am labeled an Irish Catholic by my friends, as well as my enemies; and because they say that is what I am, that affects how I am regarded. Of course, it really does matter which God you do not believe in, and I am a Catholic rather than a Protestant atheist.

I learned the situatedness both of identity, and of solidarity, from my Northern childhood. Some of my Southern relatives were sympathetic to the lot of Northern nationalist before 1969; some of them became less so when Northern nationalists took matters into their own hands, either peacefully or violently. In doing so they forget their own collective past, including one of my grandfather's past. Because of the environmental influences on my voice I could pass, without ever intending to do so, as southern Irish or later as southern English. When I was assumed to be in either one of these categories I would often be angered at the patronizing tones in which both sets of southerners in these islands analyzed "the North", usually showing only the most shallow appreciation of the passions and interests that had locked people in conflict here. Out of these impulses have come my books on Northern Ireland with my friend John McGarry, and many articles with many others.

My education at Oxford and subsequently at the LSE enabled me, I hope, to make productive uses of both my Irish pasts, and of my African pasts – thinking comparatively comes easily to me. I now move easily between British, Irish and American cultures, perhaps because it was not always so easy. I became one of the advisors on Northern Ireland to the British Labour party in the run up to the Good Friday Agreement, helping Kevin McNamara and the late Mo Mowlam. I became an advisor to Irish Americans, notably Chuck Feeney and the Morrison delegation, and did a little to encourage the British and Irish governments to do the right thing on a range of occasions. Engagements in the analysis of other national and ethnic conflicts, and active prescriptive work on constitutional and institutional design and re-design have become the themes of my professional life. They have taken me to Somalia, South Africa, Kurdistan in Iraq, and to Nepal. In all this activity I am helped a little by my formation as a Southerner who became a Northerner.

Before I turn to more analytical matters perhaps I should answer the test question which may soon replace religiosity as an identity test in these parts. "Do I support the North or the South on sporting occasions when they clash?" My answers are nuanced, though I hope not evasive. In any all-Ireland Gaelic games final between Antrim and Cork I would unequivocally support County Antrim. At county level I am a Northerner: I would also support Down or Derry against Cork as well, but in hurling largely out of empathy for the underdog. Until 1998 in a soccer match between independent Ireland and Northern Ireland I would have supported independent Ireland. But since 1998 I have resolved that I should support Northern Ireland. That has been difficult, especially because initially the team was so much worse! It is true, however, that I remain torn, and that I usually hope for an honorable draw. Perhaps in the spirit of consociation and confederation I should support the North when it is playing at home, and the South when it is playing at home, but I must admit that most of the time I hanker after a unified team, like the rugby team. The disadvantage of an all-Ireland team, of course, is that one major excuse for poor performance would no longer be available, as we can see with our rugby team. And having raised the idea of "all-Ireland" I can now address, some all-island transformations of the last century, before offering some speculations about the future.

Let me begin by reminding us of what we all should know. In the last century Ireland, North and South, witnessed the practical extinction of agricultural employment (Slide 2). What became independent Ireland had nearly a quarter of its population employed in agriculture in 1926; today the figure is down to one in twenty. What became Northern Ireland started the last century with a much smaller share of agricultural employment, and today less than 2 per cent of its employed are in agriculture. This is a long-run secular transformation, that will not be reversed – unless the European Union decides to pay people to be farmers for solely ecological reasons, or unless we become cost-effective organic farmers on a huge-scale. I doubt whether either of these possibilities will make a major demographic impact. I do suggest to any rich people that I meet that they should construct vineyards in Ireland. After all, there will be benefits as well as costs attached to global warming, one of which may be that Bordeaux will move to Bundoran, or to Drogheda.

The long-run political significance of the death of agricultural employment is less clear. Farmers' lobbies have remarkable staying power, but their days in Europe, I suspect, are numbered. The standard assumptions of social scientists are that non-agricultural populations are more urbane as well as urban, less subject to the moral surveillance of their neighbors, less religious, less censorious, more criminal, more fearful, and more anomic. I think I could provide data to confirm these propositions, but have no wish to score easy victories. More interestingly, the late Ernest Gellner, in his last book, thought that people tied to the land were more politically territorial, and that therefore that the diminution of agricultural populations might, over time, take the heat out of nationalist conflicts, especially over disputed territories. Perhaps that will be the long-run effect in our case, but plainly such causation did not have a dramatic impact between 1969 and 1994. That period was accompanied by increased urbanization but no diminution in national conflict; moreover our recent conflict was arguably more urban than rural. What is clear is that in this economic comparison – the death of agricultural employment - there is no longer a fundamental contrast between North and South. We are more like one another.

Let us turn now to another big picture story. Much of the last century saw a general stagnation of the population of Ireland, North and South, with high out-migration off-setting high birth-rates by western European standards, especially in independent Ireland. In the North, by contrast, Catholics emigrated disproportionately more than Protestants between the 1920s and 1971, which stabilized the demographic and electoral dominance of the Ulster Unionist Party, which ran a one-party government between 1921 and 1972. The table here illustrates the impact [Slide 3] – the calculation is owed to Professor Bob Rowthorn of Cambridge University, with whom I once co-authored a book. Had Catholics and Protestants emigrated from Northern Ireland in equal numbers the Catholic share of the population would have reached 43.1 per cent in 1981, from a starting share of 33.4 per cent. Once the Ulster Unionist Party's ability to control Northern Ireland was broken, once it could no longer be a "cold home" for Catholics, as David Trimble put it in his Nobel valedictory, the question then arose: Would Catholics' higher birth-rates transform the demographic ratios in Northern Ireland and therefore the electoral balance of power?

As a young political scientist I was the first to notice and tabulate a sustained rise in the Northern nationalist vote [Slide 4]. In this table, taken from my old work, I smoothed the data to show the trend over time, and suggested its major causes. No one doubts this transformation now. The Northern Nationalist vote doubled between 1969 and the turn of this century – partly because it was at a low ebb in 1969, because of the decline of the old Nationalist party, and the strength of abstentionism. The growth of the Northern nationalist vote, now shared by Sinn Fein and the SDLP, has become a standard part of explanations of the willingness of the leaders of the Ulster Unionist Party to negotiate the Belfast Agreement, and to share power in ways that were previously refused. They were making a deal partly because to make a deal at a later time might have been worse for them. The growth in the Northern nationalist vote is also a standard part of explaining the political confidence of Northern nationalists. The proportion of cultural Catholics in Northern Ireland, those born to Catholic households, is now, at 43.75 per cent, what it would have been in 1981 had Northern Ireland been governed in a non-discriminatory fashion from its inception.

But the obvious question is: Will this trend continue? You may be familiar with the ditty, "A trend is a trend is a trend/
The question is will it bend?/
Will it alter its course/
Through some unforeseen force/
And come to a premature end?"

In this case, the trend of growth is bending, and may be coming to an end. The pace of growth in the nationalist vote is slowing down [Slide 5]. You can still see this, I think, when I combine the two graphs, and if you focus on the smoothed curve, which is intended to measure the core trend, and eliminate anomalies [Slide 6]. I suggest we are certainly witnessing a slowing in the growth of the nationalist vote. Between 1969 and 1989 we may say that it grew at an annual average of 0. 8 per cent; by contrast, since 1992 we may say its annual average growth rate has been 0. 53 per cent. At that pace we might extrapolate to predict a Northern nationalist majority in 2023. But, looking at the raw data, it is just as possible that the Northern nationalist vote has reached a plateau. In all twenty first century elections the bloc's share has hovered between 40 and 42 per cent of the vote, with no growth trend. Its spectacular performance in the European elections of 1999, when it reached 45. 4 per cent, now looks anomalous rather than a portent – though on previous occasions there was a European vote peak ahead of the growth on other region-wide voting occasions.

What is happening? The political explanation would be that there has been a higher unionist turn-out in important elections after 1998. Competition between the UUP and the DUP and other unionists intensified, and raised turn-out among Protestant voters. That may be the most important explanation, and I prefer political explanations.

But the long-run explanation may also lie outside the electoral arena. If we accept the premise of a very strong correlation between Catholicism and voting nationalist, and being Protestant and voting unionist, we may ask in the century ahead what will determine the demographic ratio of Catholics to non-Catholics, and correspondingly, the ratio of the electorate comprised of cultural Catholics, compared with non-Catholics? The Catholic birth-rate in both parts of Ireland is slowing down, though it is still ahead of the Protestant birth-rate in the North. Falling birth-rates exist because secularization is happening on a significant scale, as I will stress in a moment. In the North the implications of a lower Catholic birth-rate, may be masked for a while by the higher proportion of Catholics of child-rearing age among younger age-cohorts, and by the higher share of Protestants among the elderly. But, if young Irish culturally Catholic women follow their counterparts in Italy, Spain and Quebec, and move toward having less than two children, matters will change very quickly, though not perhaps before cultural Catholics have reached a bare demographic majority of the Northern population.

It is, of course, possible that there may be an even faster fall in the Protestant birth-rate in the decades ahead, but let me suggest that comparatively speaking it is more reasonable to believe that Irish Catholics will secularize like their Mediterranean and Quebecois counterparts – and have dramatically less children than their grandmothers. Such outcomes could only be partially reversed by very strong pro-natalist policies, such as those of France or Scandinavia.

The ratio of cultural Catholics to non-Catholics might therefore not be definitively affected by movements in birth-rates in the two decades ahead. But it may be affected by different rates of emigration across the two major communities. If Northern Ireland is governed fairly in the decades ahead, as it should be, given the rights, protections and electoral weight of both unionists and nationalists, and as I expect it to be, then there is no obvious reason to expect one population to out-migrate at a faster pace than the other. Moreover, there are good reasons for believing that a consolidated peace, and a period of decent governance with significant economic growth (all of which are now plausible) will encourage more of all locals to stay – after all on average, the human impulse is to say put, rather than to leave. In short, Northern Ireland's population including its domestic-born population should expand in the century ahead. But what does that tell us of ratios?

One can imagine plausible scenarios in which either Catholics or Protestants would leave Northern Ireland disproportionately. Catholic Northerners might choose to become Southerners in greater numbers if the economic rewards for re-locating in the Celtic Tiger are very powerful. They seem more likely to do so than Ulster Protestants, but nevertheless they have not done so on a major scale. Alternatively, Ulster Protestants might choose to become denizens of Great Britain in greater numbers, perhaps because of their greater propensity to go to Great Britain for their university education. With nearly half the UK population now targeted for undergraduate education that is not an unreasonable guess. But, charging for university education - a universal trend in public policy that we may reasonably expect to deepen for the next fifty years - may in fact reduce the number of those who leave their home regions for their first degree. Moreover, all sections of the political class here have strong reasons to ensure that the local universities are generously funded and become fully internationally competitive. If so, there may not be the expected "Protestant brain-drain", and there certainly won't be the high Catholic brain-drain of the past.

My limited inspection of the variables just discussed suggests that they will not be hugely transformative in affecting Protestant-Catholic demographic ratios. To the extent that they exist they partially cancel one another out.

So, it is perhaps much more interesting to speculate what will happen on the inward side of migration, and on inter-group behavior within Northern Ireland.

The consolidation of the peace process, prosperity in the United Kingdom, the expansion of the European Union, and a liberal immigration policy by the UK, will likely combine to increase the number of non-Northern Ireland born residents. In 2001, 8.9 per cent of Northern Ireland's population was born outside the region, of which 4 in 10 were English, 2. 5 in 10 were Irish, and 1 in 10 Scots. The rest of the EU and elsewhere, by contrast, did not provide a significant portion of those born outside in 2001. But the total EU origin population (including the British and Irish) was 7.7 per cent, and the reasonable prediction is that it will rise, especially if Northern Ireland consolidates its consociational peace, and even if the eastern European economies become more robust.

Since EU citizens are entitled to vote in local government, Northern Ireland Assembly and European parliamentary elections, the question arises: How will such persons vote on the Irish national question? And when they take out citizenship, which one will they take, and how will they vote in Westminster elections, and in any parliamentary elections? These questions have even more importance if, as I have suggested, the Catholic growth rate and the Northern nationalist vote rate are slowing. It means that the potential influence of the new "others", those who are not Unionists and not Protestants, may be increasingly pivotal. Will a future referendum on the possibility of Irish unification be decided by the votes of Polish Catholics with UK passports? It is quite possible.

UK immigration policy for now is decided in London alone – the Belfast, Edinburgh and Cardiff governments have no say on the subject. But we all know that the expanded EU makes it far more likely that Eastern and Southern Europeans will move in significant numbers to these islands. They have already done so south of the border on this island – though less than sometimes suggested, and not always by skipping through the border. Even though the UK is likely to become more restrictive on immigration, we are, ceteris paribus, certain to see a rise in new immigrants into Northern Ireland. In my view, adult migrants will be tempted to be neutral or indifferent on the national question – and thereby inclined perhaps toward the fading Alliance party. By contrast, their children's political preferences will initially depend on where they go to school, whom their relatives marry, and with whom they socialize. East European Catholics will likely send their children to Catholic schools. I do not know what the Orthodox will do; they are neither Protestant nor Catholic – though a good argument could be made that they are doctrinally the real Catholics! Perhaps they will campaign for their own schools.

The political future of the new immigrants is a fascinating and open question, as a range of places have shown – including Israel and Quebec. The nationalist and unionist blocs would both be well-advised to court the votes of the new immigrants; to do otherwise would be electorally foolish. The electoral rewards will go toward the more inclusive and tolerant. But let me make a prediction. Since I think the East Europeans will constitute the bulk of the new immigrants in the decades ahead, I think the cultural Catholic bloc is more likely to expand than the non-Catholic bloc, because there are more cultural Catholics in Poland and the Czech Republic, provided the new immigrants feel welcomed by cultural Catholics, and because the Orthodox are neither Protestants nor Catholics. So, this possible future migration shift may increase the likelihood of cultural Catholics achieving a demographic majority.

The inter-group demographic future of Northern Ireland is equally fascinating. In times of peace we should see slightly greater experimentation by families. More people will do as my parents did in the 1960s, and choose their homes on assessments of transport, services and topography, rather than on closeness to their own. Absent a return to conflict we may see slow erosions of the voluntary residential segregation that deepened during the years of conflict. There will also be greater dating across the still slightly taboo social lines; there will be more mixed marriages; and more children from such engagements. In a world in which the two blocs are much more evenly balanced than at the formation of Northern Ireland it is unclear what will be the long-run repercussions of such changes. Optimists hope that it will dissolve sectarian animosities; pessimists worry it will create new fears and new bids for social policing of the young.

And what will happen in schooling? Northern Ireland has a fair consociational settlement. Each schooling system, Catholic, state (also known as Protestant), and integrated (which should be called mixed) receives equal funding, in capital and salary-support. That is as it should be. Third tier education, aside from teacher-training, by contrast is mixed, at least formally. The question arises: if the integrated or mixed schools sector expands, though voluntary choices, what will happen to local identity formation? Will the British ethos, or Irish ethos expand? Or, will there be a successful British-Irish hybrid, or a failed hybrid? There's the rub.

Whichever schooling system loses most to the mixed sector then its titular community may feel it is losing its cultural core faster than the other, or perceive that to be happening, and react with fear if not loathing. That is where to expect social tension in the decades ahead.

What I find fascinating is that northern Nationalists now seem more open to integrated education than they were – I have no similarly detailed personal knowledge on the Ulster unionist side. I am not talking about responses to surveys in which each community shows a willingness to have mixed schooling that is belied by their behavior. In the case of northern Nationalists I think that the attitudinal shift reflects greater collective self-confidence that mixed schooling would not have to take place at the expense of their national identity, and that is happening because they are more secular. In two senses: they believe less in Catholicism, and, secondly they strongly believe in the primacy of lay expertise over the declining clergy, who usually have inferior educational credentials to secular Catholics.

But I stress that I do not know what the outcomes here will be. Many new immigrants in urban locations may choose integrated schools. If so, that makes me inclined to believe that the growth of mixed schooling will deepen a specifically Northern Irish identity among such children, rather than a straightforwardly British or Irish one. The same effect may be transmitted from a durable consociational settlement in which Northern Ireland's political institutions work for several decades with cross-community consensus, no matter how begrudging.

As regards immigration, the experience of the South in the last fifteen years, you might think, is an advance picture of what may happen in the North. But that is not wholly the case. The South was arguably stabilized before the late 1980s by the out-migration of young and talented people who might otherwise have been politically discontented. Ireland exported those who may otherwise have been its socialists. Now demographic stagnation is no more. The population of independent Ireland has grown, dramatically, as it has become a richer place in which to live, and to which some of its diaspora has returned. Its total population now hovers near that of pre-partition Ireland as a whole; or, differently put, it has almost added a population of the size of Northern Ireland to its total stock. I do not expect any similarly paced demographic surge in the North – at least as long as its economic growth and economic public policy remain shaped by the UK Treasury.

The South has gone in just over fifteen years from being a country with a net immigration rate of zero or below, to a state in which approximately 10 per cent are estimated as foreign-born. Let us take a look at the South's new nationality composition (Slide 9). The largest minority nationality group stems from the UK, of whom about half appear to be northerners. The next largest describes itself in census forms as "Irish-English", and remarkably, the next largest is "Irish-Americans", followed by Irish-others, and then straight Americans – which is not a reference to their sexual preferences. Nigerians are next. This is not necessarily a pattern one can expect to see replicated in Northern Ireland, unless there is a major break-through in American foreign investment in Northern Ireland. That is certainly an ambition of Belfast's power-sharing government, but it is hampered by the South's prior enterprise clustering advantages, and its greater control over its economic policies.

What of the new European migrants to the South? The old EU, excluding Great Britain, and the new EU, comprises a heterogeneous set of peoples. Nationals from the rest of the EU now comprise nearly 4 per cent of the Republic's population, and the rest of Europe just over half a per cent. That's perhaps what one can expect in Northern Ireland before too long – provided peace and political stability are maintained. (Indeed one of the census tables from the Republic reports 10.6 per cent of Ireland's resident population as born in other EU countries, including the UK, which is not the same thing as having citizenship of one of these member-states).

Independent Ireland was a very homogeneous nation-state before its economic success made it a country attractive to immigrants. The transformation is excellent. The new immigrants are by no means homogenous, and are largely economically driven, and therefore comparative evidence suggests that we can expect them over time to integrate and assimilate to an Irish national identity – those who have voluntarily left their homelands are the most likely to integrate, and to assimilate. Political pressures have already limited the pace of inward immigration, and the South as a whole has proven less tolerant than its elites had hoped. But that is the universal story of immigration. A similar story may occur in the North; social conservatives in the two principal political communities, especially the less well-off, may be less welcoming to the new immigrants, with whom they may compete for jobs, housing and public services.

But the North is different from the South in one obvious way: it has two dominant national communities, now finely electorally balanced. Unionists are close to losing their electoral dominance, but nationalists remain short of the votes to displace them. Therefore the impact of new immigrants on the region's political future is going to be far more sensitive than in the South, independently of whatever social tensions arise from the response to newcomers. No restrictions on either Irish or within-UK migration to the North are legal or politically feasible. Long-run restrictions on movements of new EU citizens can only be temporary in either the UK or in Ireland. Therefore the North will have to adapt to immigration; it cannot shape it to the same extent as policy-makers in the South, though they too have lost full regulatory control through EU membership.

In no sense will the new immigrants be homogeneous. But in the North they will be subject to political competition for their future national identity allegiances, not simply their party or policy preferences. Watch this political space. Its most beneficial incentive may be described as follows. It should encourage republicans to confirm to their ideology, which is that of civic nationalism, in which residency on Ireland is what makes one Irish, not religiosity or ethnicity; equally, it should encourage civic unionists to live up to their formal statements that their Britishness is multi-national, inclusive and non-sectarian. The more republicans or unionists are tempted by their own versions of "nativism" (or of traditional "settlerism") the more they will lose the political competition for the new immigrants. The currently second-placed players within the two blocs, the SDLP and the UUP, have special reasons to reach out to the new immigrants, but the DUP and Sinn Fein may have more attractive policies – targeted at the less well-off.

How will the changes wrought by new migratory patterns affect Ireland's religiosity, North and South? One: it will increase religious diversity. Mosques, Orthodox churches, and perhaps Temples may out-pace Christian Churches in construction. Two: it may further weaken the Catholic Church's position as the largest church in the South, where the last census witnessed the first increase in the share of Protestants in the total population since independence; though it should be noted that over half of those of non-Irish nationality were Roman Catholic, and that the total number of Catholics rose.

But what may really matter in re-shaping Ireland, North and South, is that the increase in religious diversity is going to be accompanied by increasing secularization. People like me, atheists, are expanding in number. In the 2006 census in independent Ireland 186, 318 people said they had "no religion", and a further 500 said they were atheists, a total of 4.4 per cent. A small percentage, but a dramatic increase on the numbers of such in 1926, and six times the number of Muslims in Ireland. In one 2006 survey 7 per cent they did not believe in God, a category in which men outnumbered women by two to one; but the figure so affirming was 12 per cent among those aged 18-24, and aged 25-34 (Irish Political Studies 2007, IMS Survey, p. 204). By contrast, 233, 853 people in Northern Ireland in 2001 stated that they had "no religion", or did not state their religion, i.e. 13.9 per cent of the total population, i.e. nearly five times the numbers adhering to non-Christian religions; and 45, 909 stated they were brought up in a background without religion, i.e. 2.7 per cent of the total population.

The Godly are, proportionally, on the retreat. But what I and those who think like me regard as the march of reason is much less important than other indices of secularization. Let me select three from the South:-

• The numbers of religious personnel, both absolute, and per person, are falling – nun-production is negative; priest production is exponentially falling – in my opinion these professions will increasingly depend on immigrants;
• In the 2006 IMS survey quoted above a full 50 per cent in independent Ireland said "No" to the question "Do you think that the Catholic Church should continue to be involved in the running of schools or not?", with a higher 54 per cent among those aged 18-24 – a remarkable affirmation of lay and secular preferences;
• On abortion, we should note that those who respond to opinion polls by saying it should be permitted in "no circumstances" – the official position of the Catholic and some other Christian churches – are in a minority position. Larger proportions in a 2001 survey in the South thought it should be available to Irish women where the mother's life is in danger, where there is a risk of suicide, or where the pregnancy results from rape (Irish Political Studies 2002, Data Yearbook, p. 58). Abortion on demand is not a strongly held position but it is the one which is growing in support. What matters is that on subjects where religious personnel have clear and unambiguous doctrinal preferences, which they themselves regard as fundamental, they cannot command majorities.

These are a fairly random set of indicators - a much more nuanced discussion of their multiple meanings, and of other possible trends and counter-trends, is, of course, possible. But I think the trajectory, looking at other western European places and Quebec, is clear. After my death, independent Ireland, and Ireland as whole, will be much more like me than it is now. Atheists or agnostics of Catholic origin may well be the plurality group, ahead of Catholics, then atheists and agnostics of Protestant origins, and then those of other religions. What, if anything, are the implications for North-South relations?

Plainly, believing Ulster Protestants have less to fear that a unified Ireland will be one dominated by the Roman Catholic Church. The religious ascendancy of that Church over a majority of Irish people is coming to an end. So, one perceived obstacle to Irish unification will be eroded. But it was, in my view, never the most important obstacle. Religion here has been primarily a badge of national and ethnic difference, established in colonial times. The content of religious belief was always less important politically than its alignment with British and Irish national identities. It follows that secularization will not automatically weaken the intensity of anyone's national identity. That is clearly illustrated by Quebec. It will, of course, change the nature of what political rhetorics are persuasive. It makes no sense to talk of "Rome rule" when it is Rome of the pagans that holds sway in metropolitan Dublin, and not necessarily incorruptible pagans.

There is a political trend in Southern secularization which interprets the Northern conflict as predominantly sectarian in nature. Its political response is to reject alignment with Northern Catholics, and therefore with Northern nationalists. That trend, if it expands, may weaken support in the South for any all-island referendum on unification that may happen in the future. It may, of course, be reversed if Southerners understand that the conflict here has been primarily national rather than religious. But that is not what it is currently regarded as clever to believe in Dublin 4. There is a different incipient trend in the North. Protestants and Catholics, but here I am focusing on Protestants, increasingly affirm a Northern Irish identity. Perhaps the de-Protestantization of Great Britain may weaken the British identity more than de-Catholicization weakens the Irish national identity, precisely because the British national identity was initially pan-Protestant. It is true, of course, that a Northern Irish identity is not an Irish national identity, but it makes a co-operative and confederal disposition toward independent Ireland much easier, than a fearful and threatened British identity. There may be an interesting emerging political paradox. Northern Nationalists have strong political incentives to build a shared Northern Irish identity with Ulster Protestants – not least because that may, and only may, make Ulster Protestants less British. But the more they do that and the more they succeed the more they will become primarily Northern Irish themselves. And the longer a stable consociational Northern Ireland persists the greater that shared identity might matter, and give both communities reasons to avoid the dissolution of Northern Ireland into a unified and unitary Irish nation-state.

Finally – one should always say finally, it gives one's audience hope – let me indulge a further speculation. The expanded demographic size of the South vis a vis the North , which I have given brief reasons to expect will be sustained, over the long run reduces the incentive of both Northern nationalists and Northern Irish Ulster Protestants to consider joining a unitary Irish state. That is because their respective political influence and clout in a united Ireland would be less than it would have been, e.g. in 1969. Instead, it will make more sense for Northern Nationalists to argue for an Irish confederation, in which Northern Ireland would persist as a self-governing and self-policing entity, and which shared only European and foreign affairs with the rest of Ireland. If that becomes the project of Northern nationalists it is one that will be far less threatening to unionists than a future that involves being directly ruled by a Dublin parliament. That project would enable the preservation of the existing consociational arrangements, and ensure both communities as well as others of their futures, irrespective of whatever demographic or electoral loss they may experience.

That is the most dramatic political shift in North-South relations that I can foresee as plausible in my life-time, based on the trends that I have sought to reflect on here. It is probably a still less plausible future than a functioning version of the status quo, in which the North remains within the United Kingdom, but linked in productive all-Ireland confederal relationships, with an admirable internal power-sharing settlement. But I hope this speculation offers food for thought, and that it has earned me my dinner.