Skift Take
Whatever happens over the next few weeks, months, and years, Brexit has brought back some unpleasant memories and risks damaging the very united tourism that the north and the south in Ireland have worked so hard to build.
The only indication that you’re crossing over a border is a slight change in the color of the road surface and a different road sign. Nothing else. The green fields, the cars, the sky, and the houses are the same wherever you look.
Racecourse Road, just outside Derry, is one of the 208 crossings between Ireland and Northern Ireland. These days the checkpoints that became such a visible symbol of the split between north and south are long gone, but a unique set of circumstances has brought the border back into question.
Since the 2016 referendum, Brexit has consumed UK politics. Last Tuesday, MPs rejected for the second time the agreement Prime Minister Theresa May struck with European leaders, and there is still uncertainty on how, when, or even if the United Kingdom will leave. One thing, however, is for sure: Leaving the European Union will have significant consequences on both sides of the border.
Tourism is an industry that relies on the smooth movement of people, something the EU, with its abolition of internal borders, has helped facilitate. The United Kingdom’s increasingly acrimonious departure puts all this in jeopardy, with some suggesting it could cost the Irish sector more than $430 million (€384 million). Not only that, but the specter of violence looms large once again.
Irish tourism has performed remarkably well in recent years, but Brexit, and all that it entails, could threaten everything.
Tourism on the Island of Ireland
To get a sense of the peculiar way the island of Ireland is marketed as a destination, you’ve got to go back in time. Up until 1921, Ireland was one country and still part of the United Kingdom. Partition split it up into two entities, Northern Ireland and Southern Ireland. Northern Ireland — made up of six of the nine counties in the province of Ulster — was predominantly Protestant, while Southern Ireland was mainly Catholic.
Despite a desire for independence, both Irelands were part of the United Kingdom. This didn’t last long, and after the Irish War of Independence, the Irish Free State — eventually renamed Ireland — was born. The problem for those who wanted a united Ireland was that a majority in the north didn’t want the same thing and so opted out.
This state of affairs has lasted almost 100 years and, for a large part of the twentieth century, resulted in plenty of bloodshed.
In 1998 the United Kingdom, Ireland, and politicians in Northern Ireland signed the Good
