Mr. Rory Montgomery:

I thank the Senator for his questions. I do not know if it was his father or grandfather, but Mr. Neil T. Blaney was a member of the Forum for Peace and Reconciliation, chaired by Judge Catherine McGuinness, from 1994 to 1995. I was in the secretariat at the time and I had the honour of meeting and talking to him then. It is good to see the family continuity.

I do not underestimate Bertie Ahern's achievement for a second. I know his majority in the Dáil was tight. I worked with him on this and I worked very closely with him on European matters later on. He was an extraordinary negotiator. The substance of my point is there was a broad consensus across political parties in the South, especially once the agreement had been reached with 94% in favour of it in a referendum. There were no divisions in the same way there were no serious divisions within Northern nationalism about the agreement as a whole. The unionists were the one group that was split 50-50.

On the question of fleeing responsibility, Mr. Tim O'Connor told me he was delighted with himself for using the term "it takes a village" last week because he felt it did take a village. We could pick many people out. The importance of John Hume cannot be underestimated, clearly. He was the intellectual architect of the three-stranded approach and he was the person who took the biggest risks personally and politically in the opening up to republicanism, and the dialogue with Gerry Adams and so on. We were also very lucky that the two Governments came into power within a month of each other. Blair had a big majority and was not subject to the pressures others have been. There were some excellent officials on both sides, including senior officials and people like Mr. Seán Ó hUiginn, Mr. Dermot Gallagher and others on the British side, with an outstanding set of political leaders across the board.

The Senator asked about how best to approach things today. That is a rather different question. As I said, I am involved with this group set up by the Royal Irish Academy and the University of Notre Dame, which is engaging in commissioning lots of research on all sorts of different issues relevant, in some way, to the future of the island. Some of it is directly about how Northern Ireland is constituted. What is the Northern Ireland subvention? How big is it? How might it be retained or replaced? There are also human rights questions and the question of the franchise to be used in a referendum.

There are other questions on issues such as co-operation in health, sport and so on. There is a lot of work of that sort going on. The Department of the Taoiseach is sponsoring a lot of that work through the shared island unit. The Ireland's Future group, which is a civic nationalist group, is also very active. There are lots of things happening. On the question of whether it is the moment to bring the issue to the political level, that is a political decision. My personal view is that for the moment at least, it is perhaps best for politicians, as politicians and as Members of the Dáil or others, not to take the leading part. It is clear that there is no basis on which the British Government or the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland could possibly be required to call a border poll within the next five years, given the Assembly election results. Who knows if and when there would be such a majority? We talked about criteria earlier. My inclination is to feel that the work should continue. On the question of whether there is an advantage in bringing people together in a citizens' assembly or otherwise, there might be. My mind is open on that. The great juggling act, at all times, is how to carry forward these discussions in a way that is not seen as threatening or damaging to the current environment. For example, do we complicate getting a deal on Brexit if we take the discussions forward? I just do not know the answer. I will say that even the Royal Irish Academy body, which is essentially academic, has huge difficulties in getting unionists to take part in its research. The same is true of other studies which have been undertaken.