Any discussion on a New Ireland could be widened to consider what its position would be in an EU that had cubed its tax haven status

On hearing senior unionists agree that being annexed from the Brexit deal would result in a best of both worlds opportunity many were left — gobsmacked!

The strong message percolating across the Unionist Family which could not be clearer and cannot go unheeded by the DUP and UUP leaderships is ‘get your acts together and end the complacency both parties have lapsed into at the Assembly.’

The suggestion in Morning View (‘Unionists should not join discussions about destroying the UK,’ March 7) that unionists should not follow the Alliance Party leader Naomi Long in her willingness to participate in discussions about the constitutional future for Northern Ireland with respect to a New Ireland seems to be based on the assumption that such discussion would be about an Ireland isolated from all else.

If the discussion or debate between parties were confined to that notion of a New Ireland then Naomi Long could be seen as committing Alliance (it may have already in the inner sanctum committed itself) to a very exclusive view of the future.

But what if the scope of any discussion — and for that we don’t have to wait for any formal convening — were widened to take into account what the New Ireland’s position would be within an EU, for example, that may have found a way (what the Commission is trying to look for) of curbing the EU-tax havens for corporation profits, of which the Republic of Ireland is one?

Dublin at present is benefiting (and in that respect finds the EU attractive) but it is costing the EU as a whole billions of euros in lost taxes through companies under the single market sending their profits to the Republic and other such EU havens?

Naomi Long may have such an eventuality within the EU in mind although to date neither she nor the Alliance Party have made any comment on the matter.

Again, the discussion that Alliance is backing would have to take into account what stance to take on an EU should it be persuaded by President Macron of France that the only way of saving the EU is by a closer fiscal and political union.

What is the stance of Alliance or its inner sanctum on this issue?

The present reminds us of the past and similar issues faced by Robert Stewart, the later Viscount Castlereagh. John Bew has written a very good biography of Castlereagh.

It is well worth reading.

WA Miller, Belfast BT13