Very much so. The Irish & Irish connections in the US want to see enduring peace with eventual unification. The great divide
that had existed in Ireland before "The Troubles" in the late 1960s has essentially disappeared;
-The RUC (old police force) with the "B Specials -a notorious style army style police - have been disbanded
and replaced with a 50/50 Protestant /Catholic PSNI (Police Service Northern Ireland)
-there is now no property prerequisite to vote in Local Elections (only few Catholics then had property
while Protestant property owners had multiple votes based on property valuations)
-Catholic/ Protestant mix in the 60s was 40/60..............now 48/52
-The abolition of the Border post the Good Friday Agreement meant better cross border business for Protestant
small business owners particularly during the Celtic Tiger period and they are now addicted to that extended market.
-Deminished influence of the Orange Order on Politics and the Police Force
-arrival of East European migrants (mostly Polish) both South & North has given both Catholics and Protestant working class a "foreign enemy" ( The violent conflict between Protestants & Catholics in NI was predominantly a working class conflict.)
US/Irish and US Irish sympathisers are pleased to wait until the Catholics are in the majority in a decade or so
which will position NI & the South for a unification referendum. It will be interesting then to see if the Orange Order
and the rabid Unionists will accept a majority verdict. Perhaps it may then give rise to a new conflict only this time with the Protestants in the minority.
Catholic & Protestant Churches both North & South of the Border are fast running out of Clergy and they have to import
candidates from the 3rd World. Perhaps this also will take the edge off sectarian conflict over time.
Many US Irish believe that the South has to become more secular, particularly in education and health, to accommodate
the Northern Irish.
