Ireland’s take on Brexit: Ironic but potentially disastrous

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A century has passed since the bloody rebellion that led to Ireland's independence from British rule. A host of commemorative events has taken place and the Irish government, seeking to underline the nation's political maturity and confident prosperity, has been at pains to include Britain, most notably in this week's ceremony in Dublin to honour the British soldiers who died in the 1916 Easter Rising.

The Irish have long moved on from political rancour and bitterness. Contrary to what is often said, time does not heal emotional scars. What changes views is moving to a bigger place and that was made possible when Ireland joined the European Economic Community in 1973. Slowly but inexorably, Ireland was dragged out of its economic and cultural isolation through trade and investment. The United Kingdom also joined the EEC in that year and the collision of old British industry with more efficient German and French competitors provoked a whirlwind, sweeping away an entire class of patrician owners, antiquated mills and their cozy ties with former colonies.

Both countries prospered as Asian and American investors imported new money, new ideas and new businesses, seeking to exploit the two islands as springboards to a vast mainland market. Ireland's new prosperity even revived the Port of Liverpool, replacing lost colonial trade with Irish exports.

However, the extraordinary transformation is viewed differently on each side of the Irish Sea. At the end of June, British citizens will decide in a referendum whether to remain in the European Union and the possibility of a so-called Brexit is provoking a slow-moving panic in Dublin.

According to Enda Kenny, Ireland's Prime Minister, Brexit would be "a major strategic risk" for Ireland. Two-way trade between the U.K. and the Republic is running at a rate of more than €1-billion ($1.45-billion) a week. Links between the two islands go beyond trade, with about six million British residents claiming Irish connections. Since the war of independence, there have been no immigration formalities between the two countries and the Dublin-London air route has become one of the world's most heavily travelled.

Instead of nostalgic reflection about 1916, the chattering classes in Dublin have been forced to contemplate the potentially disastrous consequence of a British declaration of independence. Mr. Kenny is not reassured by comments from the Tory Brexit campaigners who say that there would be new arrangements for Anglo-Irish commerce. "No alternative arrangement will be better than the one we have: a single market and seamless flows of goods, services, capital and people," he said.

Mr. Kenny has made a direct appeal to the half-million or so Irish citizens with a vote in the June 23 referendum, urging them to choose to remain in the EU. His concern goes beyond the prospect of a slowdown in trade, serious though that would be for the export-oriented Irish economy. EU membership has not just brought the Republic prosperity but it has pumped large sums of cash into Northern Ireland, thus playing an important role in bringing about the two-decades old peace agreement between Republican nationalists and Unionists in Ulster.

The meandering border between the Republic and Northern Ireland, which crosses fields, towns and divides farms, was once picketed with watchtowers and patrolled by British soldiers. Today, the border has all but vanished.The prospect of it returning with Brexit is like a hideous spectre from the past: a segment of Europe hurled back into its troubled history with radical Unionists triumphant while angry and embittered Republicans shout betrayal and threaten revenge. For the Irish Republic to be threatened by Britain's assertion of its right to sovereignty is an irony not lost in Dublin but no one finds it amusing.

Carl Mortished is a Canadian financial journalist based in London.