Mr. Niall Murphy:

In the immediate context, the legal position as to how constitutional change can be managed and given effect to is one that needs to be discussed, debated and understood. It is our firm view, and two of the research publications we have published speak to this, that the full outworking and expression of the Good Friday Agreement resolves itself in the respect for the principle of consent. It is almost 25 years since the Good Friday Agreement and the principle of consent has not yet been tested. What would anybody have to fear from getting a barometer on testing the principle of consent? I have spent my entire life observing the principle of consent. Generations older than me and younger than me deserve the opportunity to test it. Within the lawfulness and the constitutionality of a border poll being reflected in Bunreacht na hÉireann and the Good Friday Agreement with regard to its success, we then must examine the minutiae of all of the systems and how we would meld them and truly become one new unitary state sharing one island, and what this means for a civil service, a police service, a health service or an education service. I have to say I was very enlightened to read the observations of Deputies Neale Richmond and Jim O'Callaghan in their public essays and lectures to the university in Oxford. There was some very blue-sky thinking.

Discourse is defined by people who are willing to take a public position and seek comment on it. The most natural constitutional place for this to occur in a democracy and a republic is within a citizens' assembly. I do not believe we would find time to assess any of these issues in a morning's session in a committee. They all require the appropriate expertise and data. It really is only the southern Government that can critically test tax yields, demographic population shifts and where services will be required. If one were to attempt something as significant as a realignment of constitutional arrangements, all of these things must be very well tested in advance. We have seen the madness of an ill-prepared and ill-defined question on an unsuspecting public. We have seen how it convulsed the body politic in Britain. We must learn from this experience and undertake not to repeat it, which is why we feel our call for work to be done now is critical and appropriate.