NI Census 2021

One point I found interesting was that debt servicing costs was a complete no no.

NI can’t fund itself, so some of the UK debt is as a result of NI. On the one hand we demand they pay pensions accrued over the decades, but the debt incurred to balance the books in NI, ah no, we won’t be having any of that.

You are bringing up a complete red herring, I never once mentioned defence or any debts related to it.

NI doesn’t appear to have funded itself for a long time, if ever.

Money has been poured into NI to balance the books, yet we can now rely on pension liabilities because it suits us, but conveniently ignore the debt servicing costs related to keeping the lights on in NI for the past few decades.

From the article and the report it’s based on, we want the UK to pay the pension liabilities(correct think to do), ignore all debt servicing costs and by the way, UK to provide additional financial supports for a United Ireland to be successful.

And when we have that squared off, we get our beggar’s bowl out and guilt the EU and USA to fund the balance until the 4 billion deficit disappears.

We are not demanding much, are we 🤔 🤔

A concern I have from the report on which this article is based on, is that it got down to a 4 billion deficit, then mentioned the poor health, education and pension outcomes and the requirement to focus future UI spend on each as they are behind the similar metrics in the South. The report doesn’t quantify those costs but had no issue getting from 10.5 billion to 4 billion with a few assumptions.

Changing the flag and head of state doesn’t mend the divided community in NI.

And a divided NI doesn’t portray a great image for foreign direct investment.

I don’t see any real reconciliation taking place in the short term, so with a UI, the financial enabler changes.

However it becomes more onerous when the shortfall lands on a population of 5 million.

And outside parties won’t bankroll this indefinitely.

We can all agree that The Northern Ireland economy doesn’t have enough tax revenue to meet it’s outgoings. The value of the shortfall is the great unknown, and I agree 10 billion looks inflated but perhaps 4 billion is a more realistic number.

I read most of the 132 page report and it has framed the analysis as an annual shortfall in the current funding received in the subvention, and hence why it is underperforming. To me, that sounds like the shortfall will increase rather than decrease because the authors want the same standards as in the South. Instead of trying to close the gap, we run the risk of widening it even further and I am not sure Ireland has the capacity to cover all this.

Please remember that in 20 years time there will be far less workers for every retired person and although we had longer to prepare for it than other EU countries, we did f all about it other than talk. We don’t plan for the future, we just talk about planning and kick the can down the road.

A UI is ideal that we all in the South aspire to, but not at any cost.

20 years is optimistic

State pensions are paid from current revenues. We will gain the tax revenues from Northern Ireland taxpayers yet some people expect us not to have to pay the expenditure due from those revenues.