As someone from a Northern Protestant background happily resident in Dublin, I know there is little or no point in trying to persuade my co-religionists that they should agree to do away with the border and become part of my society. I may have the nicest Irish house in the world, but the truth is that the vast majority of Northern Protestants and unionists want to continue to live in their British houses, however uncaring and untrustworthy their landlords are.

However for the purpose of provoking a little thinking (and because so many Northern unionists are still woefully ignorant about the South), I am going to argue in this column that in 2015 the Republic of Ireland is a good place for Protestants to live. Ireland, in the words of former Irish Labour Party leader Ruairi Quinn, is now a “post-Catholic society”. The old Roman Catholic Church which they so…