The Irish Passport

The dramatic UK election result has suddenly made Northern Irish politics more pressing than ever. Are you trying to figure out what the DUP is anyway and what all this means for Brexit? We answer all these questions and more in this special UK election edition of The Irish Passport. It includes a report from a loyalist pipe band event where we asked marchers what they thought of Brexit, and got some surprising answers....

What will happen to the border between Ireland and Northern Ireland after Brexit? We discuss how Britain has ignored this problem, and speak to ordinary people on the border about their lives and their fears about any hardening of the border. Naomi reports from the border on how Brexit could affect a family of farmers and a man who has to cross the border four times in 10 minutes to get to his nearest town. We hear how talk of a united Ireland is on the rise, and a Sinn Fein councillor who is missing a few fingers from his struggles against a hard border in the past tells us a return to violence "depends on what conditions are created". Tim lays out how the border came to be in the first place, from the plantations, through religious wars, rebellions, and the war of independence that led to the emergence of the modern Irish state. What is Ireland anyway? This episode gets the facts straight.