About a year ago, Declan O’Loan of the SDLP came up with a cunning plan.
Basically, he was disgruntled that letters sent from N.Ireland to the Republic operated on international rates (price of stamp at the time, 50p), it was time for an "all-island" postal tariff he reckoned. A first class stamp in ROI, at the time, cost an equivalent of 49p; in Northern Ireland a letter could be posted to any destination in the UK for 39p. Do the maths.
So, an all-island postal tariff, on those figures, would have proven a stunning victory for the "Ach sure, wouldn’t it be grand?" school of all-Ireland economists but one which would have resulted in NI residents paying substantially more than present for letters to the UK (which obviously also includes Northern Ireland) in order to save 1p on the sending of a letter to the Republic.
Thankfully, as St Etienne points out on Open Unionism, the "Ach Sure…" Brigade have been given a wake-up call both by the realities brought to surface by the economic crisis and more pertinently by the reaction of the ROI’s government and businesses to the “foreign” competition originating from north of the border.
