A couple of thoughts about today's cost of Irish Unity debate. I am struck that reports like FitzGerald/Morgenroth have a disproportionate impact because, yes, negative assessments are championed by vested (i.e. partitionist/Unionist) interests, but also 1/

because they are published into what is a surprisingly big gap in public policy research, they reverberate loudly. The gap is shrinking, owing to some excellent work under the ARINS Project banner, and the particular example of John Doyle's on the subvention (spot on, imo) 2/

ARINS Project John Doyle But there remains relatively little *research* on the political economy of unity vis-à-vis, for example, opinion polling around (largely secondary, in my view) qs about flags and anthems. Shared Island isn't *really* doing this work. 3/

ARINS Project John Doyle Under a Sinn Féin government, I hope that we would see the Irish state taking greater responsibility for doing the hard yards on the economics of unity. Ireland isn't close yet to its version of the 2014 White Paper for Scotland, for example 4/