Dr. Duncan Morrow:

There are a number of questions, which I will try to answer. Personally, I think the gushing stuff is catastrophic because it is delaying us getting to the nub of the issue. It would be better if, in a non-alarmist way, we were extremely matter of fact about the issues in regard to the Good Friday Agreement. This is why I am suggesting that, in short order, somebody is asked to take six months to go through the issues and potential risks in detail, so these can be central to the debate.

I am concerned about two things. First, either Northern Ireland is collateral to Brexit and, therefore, is essentially ignored or, second, it is peripheral and is treated as a secondary issue, and it does not come up early enough. My real concern is not to say this is necessarily going to be the worst of all possible worlds but that it is urgent that we get serious about what are the issues. We need to drill down past reconciliation in general to those things which make for reconciliation, and consider what it would do if that strut is taken out. There is now a real need to be serious and matter of fact about that and not gushy at all. Everything gushy which tells me we are going to have a common travel area and it is all going to be fine strikes me as uncertain and, in fact, creates more uncertainty for all of us because it does not even give us the range of what we are negotiating. I personally want it to move to being matter of fact so people can start speaking to me about what the real risks are.

Speaking personally, I think there is some evidence that the UK Government and the Conservative Party regard the agreement as an agreement for Ireland, not as a watershed in British-Irish relations - perhaps this is not fair as a whole, but that is my view. Therefore, they see it as an external thing, not a hugely radical change in the way the United Kingdom relates to Ireland, which it is, in my view. It is the most radical document that was ever produced and it has in many ways upended British-Irish relations from a fundamental default of enmity to a fundamental default of partnership. If we have taken partnership out, then that has significant questions for all of us. We cannot go on pretending that is not serious. We have to work through what is the new partnership, how Ireland feels about being forced unilaterally into a renegotiation of these fundamental issues and how we are going to renegotiate these. We have to get serious about that.

In practical terms, two weeks ago I was speaking at the Centre for Cross Border Studies conference and, prior to speaking, I met representatives of a number of community organisations which had worked along the Border. I had a lot to do with this kind of work in terms of supporting community activity in the years while I was on the Northern Ireland Community Relations Council. I heard about the implications for some of those people who had spent literally the last 15 to 20 years building up the things which had been really significant in their quality of life, for example, Protestants in County Cavan who felt they had been entirely isolated and who felt this agreement had opened things up with their neighbours and had created much freer circumstances for them. It is not a one-way street. What happens to those things? Do these things matter in Brexit? Are we going to maintain that intimate level between towns and villages such as Lifford and Strabane? Speaking about Brexit when one is in Derry is quite a dramatic event because, essentially, one is putting back something which has been extremely important to people and which is family, because Inishowen is family, as is the Newry-Dundalk Border area. These are human issues, not simply political decisions about economies. They are real issues where real questions are reopened. We have to be serious about all of that part too.

In regard to state visits, it is not so much state visits for me. The issue that is really at hand is that, in all of the crises in Northern Ireland, the British and Irish Governments have been the necessary backdrop to the crisis by upholding the notion of partnership and that this will be fulfilled within the principles of the agreement. I am very worried about any potential risk to that. I am concerned that the need to assert independence from the European Union will make it more complicated in regard to allowing a EU state to be engaged directly inside Northern Ireland. The importance of the British-Irish relationship to stability in the North and in the North-South relationship is not peripheral; it is central. Therefore, changes in that diplomatic level really matter for us at a very specific level.

I have forgotten Senator Feighan's other question.