Mansion House, Creggan, Backstop
In 2019 Ireland stood at an unusually charged intersection of memory, constitutional change and international uncertainty. The Republic’s economy was expanding and its population was growing, yet housing insecurity, pressure on public services and the prospect of Britain’s departure from the European Union qualified the language of recovery. For the whole island, Brexit made the border—largely unobtrusive in daily life since the Good Friday Agreement—an immediate practical and political question. The year also demonstrated that the constitutional and social histories of the two Irish jurisdictions remained intertwined, even while their laws and institutions differed sharply.