Dr. Alan Renwick:

I wish to make a further point in response to Senator Blaney. It is a point that relates to his first set of questions that we failed to answer. Senator Blaney asked us to flesh out what we had said about the alternative ways of running the referendums. We see two ways of doing so. Either one holds the referendums late in the process once a plan for a united Ireland has been developed or holds the referendum earlier in the process when one has an agreed process by which a united Ireland would be designed but on which that work has not been done yet.

The first of those options, having the referendum late in the process, is in one sense clearly preferable in that it allows voters to make more of an informed choice. It allows voters to know exactly what they are getting if they vote for a united Ireland. On the other hand, as Professor McCrudden suggested, we find it difficult to see a scenario in which at least political unionism would engage on a large scale in the process of developing those plans for a united Ireland before a referendum took place while it was still possible to stop unification, in their eyes. So that is, potentially, an advantage of having the alternative approach. Then one has a process for working out the form of a united Ireland. We see two ways in which one could do that. Either one has the referendum and then one has unification on an interim arrangement and then one has a detailed process of constitutional design, or one has a referendum and then a process of constitutional design before the transfer of sovereignty, which takes place later. These options become complex because in either scenario one would need to have some kind of interim version of a united Ireland, or one would need a default arrangement for a united Ireland if one fails to agree a new constitutional settlement. They are complex but are, potentially, a mechanism for getting greater unionist engagement in the process of designing a united Ireland.