By South China Morning Post | Created at 2026-09-02 11:31:53 | Updated at 2026-09-02 12:31:30
1 hour ago
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Ireland needs to be prepared for a vote on whether to reunify with the UK’s Northern Ireland region, Irish Foreign Minister Helen McEntee has said.
“I do believe that there will be a border poll at some stage,” McEntee told reporters in Wicklow, Ireland, ahead of a European Union foreign ministers meeting on Wednesday. “It is for the people of Northern Ireland to decide this and it is only where there’s a view that there may be a majority that we should move forward on this.”
Her comments came after UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham said any conversation about uniting the Republic with Northern Ireland was “off the table”, comparing it to Britain’s divisive Brexit referendum. Burnham made the comments during a recent visit to Northern Ireland, signalling he would stick with the position of past prime ministers.
The issue of a border poll, as the vote on unification is known, is contentious in both the UK and Ireland, which act as co-guarantors of the 1990s peace accord that largely ended sectarian violence between British unionists and Irish nationalists in Northern Ireland.
