Paul Howard's A Nation Once Again hit bookshelves in August, 2026, just before comments on a United Ireland were made by Donald Trump and UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham.
Talk of a United Ireland has been rife in recent weeks, and recent events in Northern Ireland seem to have highlighted just how far we have to go until that moment comes.
Comments made by US President Donald Trump and UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham on the topic have made headlines, making people wonder would we actually see it happen in our lifetime.
News of the Garvaghy Road standoff coming to an end with the Northern Secretary Chris Bryant banning the Orange Order from marching down the street, and the incident has highlighted how deep the trauma of The Troubles runs for people.
Speaking on The Pat Kenny Show about his book A Nation Once Again, which focuses on a politician working on how to unify Ireland, Paul Howard shared how the Garvachy Road protests have shown the country that there's a long way to go, and a lot to be considered, before a United Ireland is a possibility.
He shared: "United Ireland, another problem Donald Trump was going to solve as well by just coming in and saying I think this place should be united.
"The Garvaghy Road protests are a reminder that it's a huge job uniting Ireland. It's... I mean it's part of the conversation now isn't it?
"I never thought in my lifetime that it would be, you know, it was always something we talked about, what we talked about in school.
"We used to write in our copy books 26 plus 6 equals 1. That was kind of you know the trend of the time, but I never ever thought in my lifetime that this would be something that was part of a serious conversation and it is now. That's what I wanted to do with the book A Nation Once Again."
A Nation Once Again follows Fiach O’Bric who is a career diplomat, recent widower, and a man looking forward to a peaceful retirement.
However, just when he thinks he's out, he is strong-armed into taking over a shadowy top-secret department tasked with preparing for a United Ireland; a job so surreal it makes his last posting, in Beijing, seem like a Buddhist retreat.
"Fiach finds himself managing a team of oddballs, timeservers, and a die-hard nationalist from Dundalk,' the official synopsis explains.
"And he spends his days refereeing rows about everything everyone has failed to agree for about 800 years, as well as absurd new suggestions... like conjuring a capital city that nobody actually wants. In Westmeath."
Mr Howard actually got the idea for his book after rereading Spike Milligan's Puckoon, which talks about dividing Ireland in a humorous way.
He explained: "When I read Puckoon, and I reread it recently, maybe three or four years ago, and I was thinking that absurd as it was, absurd as the job of partitioning Ireland was, putting it back together is going to be even more absurd in so many ways.
"Because, over the course of a century and a little bit, obviously, attitudes have hardened, institutions, we've got different institutions, we've got different flags, we've got different anthems, what do we do with those?
"So the idea of A Nation Once Again is there's a civil service department called the Department with Responsibility for making arrangements for the unification of Ireland working out of behind a Georgian door in Fitzwilliam Square and they're tussling with all these problems."
