Professor Christopher McCrudden:

I will just add a footnote to that. This is where I probably will be extremely unpopular with members of the committee, particularly those from the South. From the point of view of someone sitting in the North at least, there needs to be a real, serious discussion in the Republic about what changes the Republic is willing to contemplate were there to be unification. We all know there will have to be some kinds of changes. The question is what kinds of changes can be contemplated. Should the flag or the national anthem be changed? What is the status of Irish? We have already seen discussion on how far should there be guaranteed unionist representation in a new Irish Cabinet etc. All the kinds of issues that arose in the context of the Good Friday Agreement with regard to Northern Ireland will essentially have to be replicated in the southern context. Speaking as somebody who is sitting in the North and comes to the South quite often, that discussion seems to be very rudimentary at the moment in the Republic.

The question of how to organise that discussion in a way which will be respectful of the different traditions in the island really remains to be thought about much more seriously than it is at the moment. The Royal Irish Academy's Analysing and Researching Ireland North and South, ARINS, initiative, is a start in thinking about these things. Taking up Mr. Farry's point, there are academic forums in which these discussions can take place, but they remain pretty rudimentary at the moment.