Niall Blaney (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I want to say first that my opinions in respect of the report are personal. Coming from a very republican background, I, as much as anyone in this line, want to see unity of our people and our country, but I am also conscious of how where we have got to was achieved. With all due respect to the two witnesses, how it was achieved has been missed with regard to their report. For me, it does not give enough recognition to the background work that was done with regard to the coming together of the Good Friday Agreement. Incidentally, the Good Friday Agreement was never done with a time limit over anybody's head. It was a culmination of years of work that allowed us, in the end, to enter a room and get an agreement. If truth be known, it goes back to the 1990s. If the question of Irish unity was that easily settled, it could have been done with the Good Friday Agreement, so let us not cod ourselves. This is not something that will be easily achieved, but the one thing the Good Friday Agreement did have was respect for opinion and an assurance that everyone around the table had their say.

I was taken aback somewhat by the language used in the report and by the witnesses reporting on it. I believe they are predetermining the outcome of the poll with the continual talk of a united Ireland. Last night, Deputy Mary Lou McDonald spoke about not putting the cart before the horse. We all need to step back a little bit. This is not an effort to attack anybody at this meeting because that is not useful, but we need to be honest about how we approach this issue. I asked the witnesses several times on the previous day if they had engaged with unionism in terms of communities or political parties and they failed to answer that question. They danced around it, so to speak.

At the outset the witnesses said they had EU oversight. What EU oversight do they have? I do not believe they have any EU oversight. Their funding was got as a result of a couple of MEPs pulling funds together.

I believe their report is of a strong nationalist view. That is grand but I believe we need to start getting a view from the other side. I hope they take these comments from the perspective of me being helpful. For their report to have better grounding and an understanding all round, they will have to start engaging with unionist communities and politicians because its opinion is too much on one side. It is not grounded on enough academia. There is too much personal opinion in it.

I do not want to knock all of the report. Some of it is represents a useful start but I do not believe the witnesses' report is complete. I think they could take it further and I would encourage them to do that and make an effort to start engaging with unionism because we need to come at this from a whole-of-picture perspective.

As far as preparing the ground is concerned, the Good Friday Agreement is not complete in all its entity. That is the first bit of work we need to do because if we do not do that, we do not have everybody around the table. This committee we sit on is not complete because everybody is not around the table. If we have learned one thing over the past decades it is that coerciveness does not work. We need to be inclusive and bring everybody on board. People like the witnesses are critical with regard to that.

This could be a good report but there is some work still to be done. That is my point of view.

Some may be critical of it but there will not be an agreement down the road unless we are more inclusive and show the hand of friendship. Unless we show that we are all willing to share this island together, there will not be a happy conclusion to this.