Michael McDowell (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I am honoured to be allowed to participate. I listened very carefully to the remarks of Mr. Swaine.

He asked what is a unionist in a united Ireland. It is arguable unionism is extinct in terms of the view of a unitary Irish State. Therefore, when you ask the unionist community and middle ground in Northern Ireland to opt for a new constitutional order on this island, you are asking a substantial number of people to extinguish their ideology in practice and to revert to a sense of Britishness or whatever in a unitary state. Andrew Gallagher has put forward a paper which accords entirely with my view concerning a confederal arrangement whereby both parts of Ireland, as partners in a confederation, share membership of the European Union on agreed terms and Northern Ireland continues to be and develop as a political community and changes the Good Friday Agreement to provide for a more majoritarian, less mutual-vetoing architecture. That is the way forward. If I were an Alliance or unionist voter, I would never vote "Yes" in a referendum for Irish unity unless I see the package. The package will never be devised by me because, if I am a unionist politician, I will never participate in its design. These are the crude facts.

The best chance of having a change in the constitutional architecture of this island is for the two parts of Ireland to come to a partnership together. It means radical unitary state republicans have to accept that their ideal be postponed for a while in order that the confidence of those who want to remain British in Northern Ireland, and to retain their own police, parliament and capacity to make laws, is retained. No amount of dialogue will come up with a model in whose development unionism can participate because it is too risky for unionist politicians, but the confederal path is the right path. You can get two component parts of this island to share their membership of the European Union. You could even have some vestiges of linkage to Britain remaining in the northern architecture, as long as there was an Irish confederation.

I have done a paper on this and put it before Jeffrey Donaldson a few years ago. I believe to ask unionists to surrender - I am using that term in the most technical sense, like people getting married surrender to each other - to an order in whose design they have not participated is fatally flawed and not likely to succeed, whereas to respect the fact Northern Ireland exists and could be a partner of the Republic in a confederation would enable confidence to be built in Northern Ireland.

Going back to what was stated by Senator Ó Donnghaile, there are things we can do ourselves, such as the Seanad and all the rest of it. Northern Ireland needs to remove the mutual veto on the petition of concern and that kind of stuff, and to address each other as fellow citizens, one of whose votes is as good as the next and who are no longer dominated by identity politics. I put that to Mr. Gallagher in particular, I suppose, since he agrees with me most.