BY IAN JEFF WRIGHT, CONSTITUTIONAL CORRESPONDENT

ANY NEW IRISH Constitution will have to have a Unionist Veto, say Irish Government sources.

“Look it’s traditional anyway,” said a cabinet advisor who wishes to remain anonymous. “These people have been a privileged elite since they arrived. They’re going to expect it to continue in any United Ireland. And it’s a small price to pay for peace if we are forced to unite the island.”

Secret Dublin civil service teams have been preparing a new Constitution for some months now, with a new Department of Unionist Vetoes being prepared for establishment in Belfast. Possibly in the MI5 building in Holywood.

“It would prepare formal veto legislation as and when needed,” says Fred Cullybackey, a unionist who now votes Alliance after decades as a hard-line DUP stalwart. “Unionism would have the same veto rights in a United Ireland as Ireland has in the European Union. That’s fair enough, isn’t it?”

And if the constitution is to be changed, the flag will have to go too.

“A new Irish flag could be the four provincial emblems, perhaps overlain with a round tower,” argues historian Angus Ceol Easpaig An Craican. “Hints of old medieval pageantry and ancient royalty will go down very well with Unionists. The flag will look something like the British Royal Standard, you know, the one they fly over Buckingham Palace when the monarch is in residence. Better than the tricolor, if you think about it. It’s out of date anyway, and frankly useless for tourism. How many bloody tricolours are there in the world?”

It is understood that another proposal being considered was what were termed Unionist Locations – a term borrowed from South Africa – which would be solely Unionist, and where Nationalists could not live, or even enter, without permission -perhaps by way of a pass. This was dropped when it was pointed out that such a system already exists in many areas of the current Northern Ireland.