Jennifer Carroll MacNeill (Dún Laoghaire, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the witnesses for coming today. It is very interesting and important to listen to all the contributions. I challenge the witnesses on what I see as some contradictions between the different statements in their contribution. I read Ireland's Future economic paper and I respect what is in it but as elected representatives on this committee, we also had the opportunity to listen to the Economic and Social Research Institute, ESRI, which presented quite different conclusions. We have to acknowledge the different perspectives and analyses of these points. Ireland's Future's mission statement, included as part of their statement today, is about advocacy and promoting debate and discussion about Ireland's future, but it also commits to a position. This has been acknowledged, which is fair enough. To be clear, whether Ireland's Future is a debate group or is a campaign group is important in the presentation.

I have a concern about tone, in Ms Harmon's provided statement in particular. Her statement, delivered by Mr. Murphy, described an arrogance about the Brexit debate and yet the group's paper presents a border poll as inevitable. I find the tone of those statements contradictory because, of course, while change is inevitable over time, setting the outcome at the outset is not necessarily the solution. A border poll is not necessarily the mechanism for change. Change will come through thoughtful, creative, citizen-led conversations about all aspects of life. A border poll may be one outcome from that but there may be others. I have a difficulty with setting the outcome at the outset.

On the citizens' assembly, University College Dublin, UCD, is doing quite interesting work on how dialogues can be structured and citizens' assemblies are one model of that. I believe the issues in this are too complex for a single citizens' assembly. I was involved in previous citizens' assemblies but they were on very net points of constitutional change and very neat issues. This is much broader and, indeed, the constitutional point is very much a neat point, notwithstanding the complexity of it. It does not reflect anything like the cultural conversation that necessarily needs to happen. The work UCD does on this, in conjunction with the shared island initiative, will be very interesting.

I will raise an issue not directly related to Ireland's Future but I would like to get Mr. Murphy's perspective on it. The new Ulster Unionist Party, UUP, leader, Doug Beattie, wrote a really good article, published in yesterday'sedition of The Irish Times. One paragraph really stuck out for me and I ask for the witnesses' perspective on it. He stated:

There are no column inches with me criticising either the SDLP or Sinn Féin for not taking part in the planning discussion around how to mark the centenary of Northern Ireland. I can understand [this] position, yet I find myself facing criticism because I won’t join a discussion about how a united Ireland can be achieved. Surely people can see that this is an unreasonable ask, and a degree of understanding, as I have shown, stops unnecessary division.

It was a really fair point and I would love to get the witnesses' perspective on it, considering they are engaged with a broad group of people.