Niall Ó Donnghaile (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I wish to thank our contributors this morning. There has been a broad range of fairly extensive legal questions, understandably given the legal complexities of this case and the challenge, so I will not rehearse all of those.

I wish to make a couple of observations. I suppose the core political component of this is that there should not be a dispute around this and that a dispute mechanism should not be sought, because of the nature of the agreement. For all of us, this may have been disputed beforehand but ultimately it was agreed. The British Government were a co-guarantor and a co-signatory to the agreement, and the agreement is explicitly clear in terms of the right not just to identify but also to be accepted as Irish, as British, or as both.

The other challenge and the other consideration for us in the Oireachtas is how this stance by the British Government does not just run up very roughly against the Good Friday Agreement but also runs up against Article 2 of Bunreacht na hÉireann in terms of our rights to be part of the Irish nation. There is a consideration for us, and Deputy Breathnach makes a very valid suggestion in terms of that cross-party motion. There is one on the Seanad Order Paper, which the Deputy's colleagues and others have signed, so maybe it is something that both Houses can pursue in equal measure going forward.

I am also encouraged that the Tánaiste has finally agreed to meet Ms DeSouza later this month, with me and a number of colleagues from the North as well. One of the things that we could do, if it is in order, is to suggest that this committee write to the British Secretary of State seeking an update on the review, because my experience, along with our visitors' experience, is that it has been like trying to grab smoke. I am not suggesting that we will have any additional success in that regard, but it is worth actioning off the back of today's meeting.

The question I always like to ask, and it has sort of been covered already, is what we can do, what pressure we can bring to bear on the Irish Government. The Irish Government, to be fair to it, has said all of the right things in terms of upholding Ms DeSouza's rights, and that it considers her to be an Irish citizen, which is very good of it 21 years after the Good Friday Agreement. Nevertheless, it is important that that is said. Perhaps the witnesses could expand on what they have said to colleagues already on the challenges and the work for us both as members of this committee and as individual Members of the Oireachtas.