Would you support Ireland ending the common travel area with Britain?

Absolute nonsense….. and to be clear no. I can vote, drive, work, scratch my arse if I do wish, over here with no hassles or rules. Why make things more complicated?

the Italians killed Jesus…. Should we boycott Italy also?

Let me guess something to do with magical non existent technology?

In an ideal world, and for ideological reasons, it would be nice to be able to join Schengen instead. I don’t feel in any way British, whereas I do feel European, and would support the closer integration being part of Schengen would bring.

In reality, no. It would create a hard border on the island of Ireland. It would make things a lot more difficult for those Irish people who have chosen to live and work in the UK. And, since we live on an island, being part of Schengen wouldn’t really bring any major tangible benefits. Shorter airport queues, sometimes. That’s hardly worth sacrificing all the good the CTA brings, including blasting the GFA out of the water.

The only way it would work would be in a United Ireland, and even then it would take generations, if it ever worked at all. One would have to assume that people in NI would retain the right to British citizenship post unification, and where would that leave them if the CTA were scrapped?

What I would like, would be for Ireland and the UK to both join Schengen, but whatever slim chance there was of that in years gone by, it’s simply not going to happen now.

Just for the sake of balance so....

I wholeheartedly endorse the ridiculous and badly thought out proposition outlined by the OP. I further propose the blocking of BBC, ITV and Channel 4. Because they’re British, like. Also, Walkers crisps. They can fcuk off too.

Out of curiosity have you lived in a British country? I lived in England for a time and I was quite surprised at the difference. Obviously there are a lof of things that we share (e.g. climate, language, landscape) but there are a lot differences too. Growing up in Ireland we receive all of their media so it feels like we're in tune with them culturally but when I was over there I just really noticed that they really are a different people. Also I was shocked at the ignorance I encountered about Ireland from them. I had previously lived in New Zealand and there didn't seem to be much of a difference in the average knowledge about Ireland between the people of those two countries despite one being next door and the other being on the other side of the world.

I was working in a professional environment in a regional town so the people I would have been interacting with were educated middle-class types. Obviously that's only one strata of society but I would have worked in similar companies in Ireland so I could make a direct comparison with similar people here. I found that the English tended to have great manners but that came at the expense of a kind of aloofness. I guess it's what people call "reserve". It's kind of like they're holding back their real feelings and therefore have a much narrower emotional range. Personally I found that difficult to warm to. I found myself hanging out with a guy from Zimbabwe as I felt like I had more in common with him than our English colleagues.

I started to notice as well that the white English people look slightly different to white Irish people here. For example there are a lot more blonde people there and also you see a lot more people with sallow skin (kind of like Gary Lineker). I believe that, although there has been plenty of cross-breeding over the centuries, we have our roots in different tribes of people and this is still evident in the genetics even today.

I lived in a garrison town with an army base and a recruitment office for the British Army on the main street. Coming from a place where the military is practically a non-entity to a place where it's very overt was a little jarring. The town itself was quite grim. Even though it was was surrounded by the countryside the houses were tiny. I found it impossible to find a house-share with a garden because most houses didn't have any. I guess that's a byproduct of the higher population density there.

There seemed to be lot more income inequality over there. Like I remember seeing an advert for a cleaning job paying £6 an hour (this was in 2010). They don't pay the high rate of tax until much higher in the UK so you don't get that same societal wealth transfer that you get here. People can argue about whether that is fair or not but one thing it does is reduce dire poverty. I lived in a few houses with cheap rent and there seemed to be dire poverty in those areas - similar to that TV show Benefits street. Now obviously we have poor areas here too but I went to school in one of them and this was on a different level. As an aside I checked the area after the Brexit vote and it voted for Brexit with over 60% of the vote.

Beyond that then there all the little things that make it obvious that you're in a foreign country:

• Different coloured post-boxes, signs and road-markings (those squiggly lines for example)
• Going into a pub and not recognising the majority of the beers and ales
• Free healthcare (this was a welcome surprise when I had a GP visit)
• Being able to easily get around by train (also a good thing)
• Less fields in between stations on the train since it's far more developed

Interesting discussion and I’m firmly in the “heart says Schengen but the head says retain the CTA” sine of the argument.

Not wishing to take this off topic but can anyone explain what is actually in the CTA for the British. Why did they agree to it in the first place? I’ve never really had a satisfactory answer to it.

For the record I benefitted from the CTA in the late 80s / early ‘90s working in London when there was precious little here. Been over and back many, many times but in recent years England has become a very strange sort of place.

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