Queen Elizabeth says Irish spirit of friendship fills her with hope

FallsRNat Quote"This conflict will never be solved by outsiders".Unquote.How can you make a statement like that?The real facts are the conflict in NI would never have have been solved by the insiders.Can you remember Seamus who was involved in the peace process?For you to equate NI with Australia is unbelievable.It's all a mystery to you Seamus.I'm actually beginning to believe that.You don't even see that the conflict was caused by one group imposing it's will over another group.You talk about democracy in action.Did the Irish people agree to partition in 1920?Did the Irish people get a vote?No and No.Even a vote now would have the Unionist's grabbing their guns because they don't want to obey the will of the majority.But they will sooner or later because Stormont and NI are a drain on the Brit taxpayer.

kinvara7 - keep taking the tablets, the UK is the 7th largest economy in the world, they trade with us like they do with the rest of the world, any suggestion that we somehow have the ascendancy in terms of trade etc is just a fantasy.

And your point being!!barneyjo.Fallsrnat 2 COUNTRIES IN NORTH AMERICA!!!better update your atlas.

and a few years ago as a democratic state in their own right, they held a referendum to decide whether they wanted to be a republic or not, the australian people voted no, i didn't hear bombs going off & shootings as royalists & republicans fought in the streets to impose their own will on the rest of the country, that's democracy in action, they obeyed the will of the majority & stayed will a constitutional monarchy, they can have another vote anytime they like, QE II maybe a figurehead H/State, but the laws, economics quite rightly sit with the Australian parliament as they do in the UK. Thailand has a similar system, so do Sweden, Spain.

@SeanOMelbourne - Last time I checked, Elizabeth was still Head of State in Australia as well!!

People cannot be given what doesn't exist, geographically Ireland is an island that 2 countries occupy just like North America, are we serious saying that if the US wanted to occupy Canada, they should just take a vote in the US & when the people vote for it, the Canadians would have their country acceded to it, of course not, the Irish Republic came into existence less than 100 years ago, what right do they have to dictate that a part of the island belongs to them, i'm afraid my friends you don't understand international law & politics. The Irish Americans are always quick to criticise the brits, but i don't see them supporting the rights of the Indians to have the US returned to them, why well is it that they don't want to surrender something they have worked & lived for all of their lives, a nice house, education for the sins of their fathers, it is an appropiate analogy here as they are asking for the very thing from the Ulstermen that they deny the Red Indians, this comes from a few that has been inbred into them as part of the glorious republican myth. I can take seano & sirpeter's cheap snide remarks about being pro-british etc, because unlike them, I lived here during the Troubles, I have had family members murdered by both sides, that isn't being a traitor that is realism, this conflict will never be solved by outsiders.

Tom S: As far as inheriting the British institutions you are right, But that is not the vision that Collins and many of the other founding fathers had for Ireland. They did not just want to copy what the English had left behind, but rather build a new Ireland, taking what worked of the British institutions,a nd combining them with aspects of institutions in Switzerland, the U.S., and yes even the ancient Brehon Laws (those laws in many respects are quite progressive) he wanted to create a new way for Ireland to move forward, and create her own institutions, just like the U.S. did upon independence. Sadly however, that was not to be, and Cosgrave and O'Higgins wanted nothing to do with any of that, hence the abolishment of the Sinn Fein courts and all the rest. De Valera was content to carry on in the same way as well.

Falls: I would like to think that most nationalists thought Collins was right, the freedom to achieve freedom. However, he did not as you say sign away the 6 counties, as he was lead to believe that the boundary commission would address that issue. Had he known how it was to turn out, and had he lived, I believe he never would have agreed to the permanent partition of the country, or at the least he would have accepted a much smaller northern state than the six counties. You may be right about how soldiers in the British army feel, however, some I knew did not really care, it was a job and a pay check, and nothing more. Also most people in En glad today would love to be rid of the north, and if a referendum were held they would vote by a substantial majority to be rid of it. However, it is England's creation, and now they are stuck with it. I think most people in England are more concerned with what England will look like if Scotland chooses to leave the U.K. That is something the people in the north should be concerned with as well. It will be interesting to see how that all turns out, and if England will let the Scots sort out their own future in a democratic fashion, or will they resort to some of their less than honorable shall we say tactics of the past.

interesting post eiriamach, but you do the brits a great diservice by proclaiming their ignorance on the Ulster question, yes they maybe disinterested, but they are very musch aware of the NI situation. I spent a lot of time & have many friends from my time in the BA, what motivates the ordinary brits & why the PIRA campaign was doomed to failure was their undying commitment to the principle of democratic right of the people of NI to settle their own future whether it be in a UI or as part of the UK, the inability of our own political elite in Nationalist Ireland in misreading this ideal has destroyed any hope in the present of producing a UI in the present & near future & has prolonged the pain & suffering of 1000s of innocent people, they're not about to hand over part of their country to a marginalised PIRA who can't command the majority support. The brits live for the future & that is the only way ahead, you can't justify murder for political aims based on the past & anyway which is the correct republican myth, my family fought on both sides of the Irish Civil War, the majority supported Collins (who would have signed the 6 counties away) & a minority for a 32 county state, which side is right, i don't know & to be honest I don't care.

What a maudling bunch of royalist serfs we have on this site.

There is a misleading sentence in this piece which gives the impression that the land area known as the 'Republic of Ireland' is the totality of Ireland, which is in itself very erroneous- "..Her words were accompanied by images from her visit to Ireland, the first time a British monarch had visited the country in a hundred years..". The British monarch has visited the territory which Britain still holds called 'Northern Ireland' a number of times before her state visit to the Republic of Ireland. As far as I know 'Northern Ireland' is still located within the confines of the Island of Ireland, which was a country in it's totality, although within the confines of the UK before partition in 1922.

I know its always theoretically possible to have so many "Blow-holes" posting at one time on IC, but to actually see it happening is a wonder to behold. Y'know what, the Royal State Visit to Ireland was in May; its almost December now, and the world hasnt ended. I watched Tommy Gorman's reflection of the visit "The Queens Speech" over christmas, and it made me proud to be an Irishman over again. I recall at the time having some banter with SirPeter (and others) about the degree of interaction that the Queen had with Irish Citizens. It did not sit well on his shoulders I recall that it was his home city of Cork which welcomed the Queen in such great numbers. At the time there was a lot of talk about camera trickery, captive audiences etc. But the efficacy of the brief contact with Corkonians in effect put the icing on the cake for the visit. And that is no shame on Cork. As it was pointed out, many people who welcomed the Queen to their city would have had ancestors who fought in the War of Independence, but yet were able to extend a cead mile failte to the "old enemy" in the personage of the queen. It was referred to in the programme as the "Dialectic" - the ability to hold two polar opposite points of view but giving respect to both. Corkonians showed that is no bad thing!!A point of clarification; I do not consider SirPeter to be one of the "blowholes" to which I referred - because he isnt :)

I know its always theoretically possible to have so many "Blow-holes" posting at one time on IC, but to actually see it happening is a wonder to behold. Y'know what, the Royal State Visit to Ireland was in May; its almost December now, and the world hasnt ended. I watched Tommy Gorman's reflection of the visit "The Queens Speech" over christmas, and it made me proud to be an Irishman over again. I recall at the time having some banter with SirPeter (and others) about the degree of interaction that the Queen had with Irish Citizens. It did not sit well on his shoulders I recall that it was his home city of Cork which welcomed the Queen in such great numbers. At the time there was a lot of talk about camera trickery, captive audiences etc. But the efficacy of the brief contact with Corkonians in effect put the icing on the cake for the visit. And that is no shame on Cork. As it was pointed out, many people who welcomed the Queen to their city would have had ancestors who fought in the War of Independence, but yet were able to extend a cead mile failte to the "old enemy" in the personage of the queen. It was referred to in the programme as the "Dialectic" - the ability to hold two polar opposite points of view but giving respect to both. Corkonians showed that is no bad thing!!

@FallsRNat: British Bank exposure to, what were then, private Irish banks is far greater than the bilateral loan provided by the UK. Just over 12 months ago RBS (just one British Bank) had an exposure to the Irish banking system of £40 billion. So I wonder what motivated the UK to lend £7 billion to the Irish Republic with an interest rate, after the Irish government stepped in to underwrite private bank debt? Hmm, tis a head scratcher. So in reality the thank you should come from the other side of the Irish sea. The great institution of Ireland is the Irish people -they are the ones who will 'save' Ireland, as you put it. Although it is clear that you are not much of an authority when it comes to Ireland's 'great institutions'.

@Tom: While I respect your post, I think it ignores certain matters. To suggest that political corruption seeped into Ireland due to Irish independence is silly: Look at the political manouvering around the Act of Union in 1800; look at the Marconi scandal in 1912 etc. I could list more recent matters if you wished. The idea that Ireland is a great deal more corrupt than the UK is nonsense (the 2011 Corruption Perception index 2011 ranks the UK 16th with a score of 7.8 and Ireland 19th with a score of 7.5 -the US is ranked 24th with a score of 7.1). As regards the institutions Ireland inherited -well why throw out the the baby with the bathwater. Ireland had produced the earliest written laws in Europe north of the Alps, and if left to its own devices centralised institutions would have evolved over the centuries -let's not shower the coloniser with too much praise, for putting in place the necessary institutions to control its new colony. Since independence, Ireland enacted a progressive written constitution where the people rather than the crown are sovereign; elected a protestant as their first head of State (a catholic can still not be head of state in the UK); and began to fashion distinctive institutions. Indeed we import many things from the UK; they do more trade with us than the BRIC economies combined. Anyway, I'm glad that the Queen's visit was such a success; it was certainly long overdue. I agree that those who constantly beat the anti-British drum are wrong and that carrying bitterness forward is pointless. However carrying understanding forward is not, and that has always been one of the key problems with the relationship between the Republic and the UK.