yellow 
Keep asking questions. I'm Irish (not from Northern Ireland) and I didn't pay much attention to the referendum in 2016 as I had a lot of other stuff going on. DH is really interested in politics so he stayed up all night to watch it. I got up in the morning and I was so upset the people of the UK had been fooled by Leave lies. But I didn't immediately think of NI and the UK/Irish border and I thought it would be a soft Brexit. I thought the Single Market and the Customs Union were kind of the same thing.
To be honest I voted against one of the treaties Ireland signed when we had the first referendum on it, but our government went back to the EU and got things changed so I voted for it the next time (as far as I remember we were going to lose our EU commissioner). We also got an independent booklet explaining everything from both sides. For one of the referendums there was a lot of lies about an EU Army and stuff like that.
We don't have referendums here to check public opinion. We have referendums when the consent of the people is required to change our constitution, which is a written one. So the question does have a yes/no answer - but it's "do you agree to change this "bit of formal legal text" to this "bit of formal legal text". And we get independent booklets before hand explaining what the things mean and the consequences of each thing.
We're so used to elections not really changing much in daily life (until your family is affected by cuts) that a vote one way or other doesn't seem to make much difference. But in the UK the 2016 referendum will make and has already made a huge difference and it will likely get worse when the UK exits. I think people have trouble accepting that, they just don't really see what it all means.
In Ireland we're happy to be an equal partner in the EU. We were not treated well as part of the UK and we wanted to be a country ourselves. In the EU we're a country like all the other countries. Equal. Sometimes I wonder if this is what people who led the UK Leave campaign were unhappy with, that the UK was equal to other countries rather than on an upper "in charge" level. Of course France, Germany and the UK had a bigger voice in lots of ways because of numbers of population and much larger economies. Doesn't bother me, it is what it is.
We also have a healthy attitude in Ireland of it being a good thing the EU has a strong legal status so our own government can't fuck things up too much, so the environment is protected, and the economy is protected to a certain extent. I've got no problem with the economic bailout for the banks and paying it back, the banks and Irish people went nuts. Maybe people will think twice the next time. And the EU makes it much easier for us to trade, everything is all set up already.
I also think it makes people more aware of what other countries do, so for example, childcare costs are very very reasonable in Germany, and life long renting is a secure choice there as tenants' rights are very good. Perhaps this is another reason the powers in the UK wanted out and the press have been against the EU, they don't want people to start comparing what other countries do for their people compared to the UK. I'm always shocked at how low benefits are in the UK compared to ours.
Anyway, they are just thoughts. It's never too late to all questions.