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Two studies on Tuesday are reminding Ireland about Brexit’s dramatic stakes.

The century-old freedom of travel and residency arrangements between Ireland and the UK, which many people have assumed will endure post Brexit, are in fact “written in sand”, some academic lawyers warn.

The common travel area lacks a single legal agreement and is “a hotchpotch of laws”, according to an 85-page report prepared for the Joint Committee of the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission and the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission.

Meanwhile a poll conducted jointly by RTE and BBC which questioned more than 1,000 adults on each side of the border found that 62% of people in Northern Ireland think the UK’s exit from the European Union makes a united Ireland more likely. In the Republic, in contrast, only 35% think Brexit makes a united Ireland more likely - reflecting, perhaps, awareness of the economic cost of unification.

If that all seems existential and confusing there is one ray of bright news: New Zealand opened its first ever embassy in Ireland. “The moment the Brexit decision happened on the 23rd of June 2016, it became very clear that we would have to, with respect to Ireland, set up an embassy here,” Winston Peters, New Zealand’s deputy prime minister and minister of foreign affairs, said at the embassy’s opening on Monday. It came with a traditional Maori blessing.