IT can hardly have escaped your notice that in the last month, developments on the matter of Irish reunification have accelerated.

Last night Sinn Féin’s bill requiring the government in Dublin to publish a Green Paper on preparations for reunification reached the second stage in the Dáil – a major step forward.

A month ago Fine Gael leader Simon Harris announced his party will publish by November a blueprint which “would define what a unified Ireland could mean in practical terms, politically, economically and societally”.

The Minister for Justice, Fianna Fáil’s Jim O’Callaghan, has said: “The next government must prepare for Irish unity.”

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Even the late 20th century iteration of northern nationalism, the poor old SDLP, has at last caught up with the inevitable, started to talk about preparing for a referendum and, as Alex Kane noted last week, is now on the same page as Sinn Féin, asking for a Dublin minister to be responsible for steering the ship of state towards reunification.

Why the sudden rush? After all, last year Simon Harris said unity is not his “immediate priority or primary focus”.

Southern politicians dodged the issue repeatedly, talking about seeing........

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