Niall Ó Donnghaile (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Although I am proudly green, I am much more than just green. It does a great disservice when we reduce people to those one-dimensional labels, and I am not doing so from the perspective of my party or my politics. The main point we must remember is that the majority vote to remain was not green or orange, it was multicoloured. We had the great advantage in the previous Seanad and on this committee of the membership of then Senator Ian Marshall, a proud unionist from a unionist tradition who was also clear in being anti-Brexit. This Oireachtas could have returned him to the Seanad and our committee but it did not do so. As such, perhaps colleagues in the Government parties might question how to involve unionist parties in this institution. The great strength of the Seanad is that it can be nationally representative of all of our different colours and traditions.

As committee members here will know, the Joint Committee on the Implementation of the Good Friday Agreement experiences the same problems. We do a great deal of work in trying to encourage our unionist colleagues to attend meetings, although it seems only one party ever gets criticised for its abstentionist policies. I agree with the sentiment that we need to do more to hear unionist voices. There might be legitimate reasons for some of our colleagues not to be present today. That is fair enough, but it emphasises the need for more meetings to try to give them the space and encouragement to come along.

The constructive strategy that Senator Martin argues for is 23 years old. It is in the Good Friday Agreement and we need to look towards it. While I am delighted and greatly encouraged to hear our Chair and the assembly committee's chair advocating for preparations in advance of potential upcoming votes on the protocol, I hope that applies across the board. I will ask that it be applied in respect of other potential votes, namely, those contained in the Good Friday Agreement that allow a pathway out of this damaging Brexit, which has been inflicted on us all.

There is a notion that people can be told how an election should be fought and a presumption of the grounds on which they vote. That comes from a place of supreme privilege, if not arrogance. I go into republican heartlands all of the time. They vote on issues of health, housing, welfare and so on. Brexit has upended all of those issues. It impacts every aspect of our lives. Of course it will be a factor in how people consider their future options. My opening point was that we needed to be calm, level headed and measured in this period and that remains my steadfast position. We must also be careful because people are not one-dimensional. I know people from within the nationalist and republican traditions who are indifferent to all of this. I know people from unionist and loyalist traditions who are asking fundamental questions and re-evaluating fundamental beliefs they have held for all of their lives. This is our current dynamic and we cannot tell people how an election should be approached or how they should vote or presume to know that they vote on one issue and one issue alone. That has not been my experience of voting or of engaging in elections for a long time.

I am glad about today's discussion. It has been helpful and I think that we can do more. I hope to see colleagues from different parties attend the next meeting so it is crucial that we get that date in the diary as soon as possible.