[wideawake]

The bad blood is mostly between Protestants and the Sinn Fein/IRA radicals.

The Fianna Fail and Fine Gael parties represent the great majority of the Irish population, and they are ideologically the parties that agreed to the partition of Ireland - as opposed to the bomb-throwing Sinn Fein deadenders.

If the Protestants were to vote to join the Republic, Sinn Fein would lose all rhetorical justification for terrorism and 500,000 new Protestant voters in the Republic would obliterate Sinn Fein's representation in the Dail.

[redgolum]

I worked with a gentleman from Dublin for a while, and he was quite disgusted with the IRA and the Protestant counterparts (Forgot the name). He also said that the feud was not really about religion.

As you said, he really didn't like either group, and wished that they would just shut up and watch soccer instead.