Please give me the reasons why you feel they should remain here?

Because, by majority vote, that's what the Northern Irish want. I don't believe there's any mechanism in international law for unilaterally expelling a region from your country if they don't want to go. You can sign them up to another country if you want, but they have to be assigned to some country.

Which leads to another point. Since you're an Irishman and Republican, you might like to talk to your political representative about Eire's views on NI. Because since the Anglo-Irish Agreement, Eire has consistently said that it wouldn't take NI if it was handed to them on a silver plate. Eire has got its economy in order, and the last thing they want is a bunch of nutters dragging them down.

Because there's some semblance of peace these days, the English, Welsh and Scots probably aren't too worried about keeping them in the UK. Had you asked any time between 1980 and the late 90s though, the majority would probably have voted to cut the whole damn lot adrift and let the loonies on both sides go kill each other.

The problem is that both sets of loonies have nothing in common with the countries they want to be members of. The Republicans want to be part of Eire - but Eire won't have them. The Unionists say they're British - but the British think they're racist scum. Go figure...

Graham.