Mr. John Cushnahan:

To respond to Senator Black, informing people is crucial. That is why I say we learn a lesson from Brexit and the way it should take place, not on the basis of a citizens' assembly but academics, who are more qualified than anybody else. All this research is going on but it never reaches the voters or even the elite. Committee members probably do not know about it. None of the similar bodies in Westminster or Northern Ireland are given this information. Planning is critical.

I have argued the inter-university project must not be prescriptive or come to a conclusion. It provides the various structural options for going forward. I am not against a border poll. I am against the premature timing of it, which will exacerbate the problem when there is total political instability and fear in the North. Timing is critical. Another thing that is critical, no matter how long it takes to have such a poll, is how those leading the campaign for a border poll on Irish unity argue their case. It cannot be about arithmetic. It has to be about persuasion and must convince unionists that a united Ireland will not be as cold a place to live as Northern Ireland was for Catholics. There are not many good signs about that.

I mentioned in my submission the opinion poll in the Business Post. What was horrifying about it was the reluctance to think about changing the national anthem or having unionists in a form of power-sharing in government. The younger they were, the more hardline they were against making any change which would persuade unionists. That has to change. We cannot expect unionists to surrender to nationalists. This has to be something where unionists and nationalists walk together to try to create institutions which respect their different identities and, most important, assure them they have a place in it and are part of it and it is an inclusive project.

On Senator McDowell's point, if there ever is a united Ireland, we have to protect the British identity. There was a committee in this House that saw the basis of doing that in the comprehensive debate about the Good Friday Agreement. The British-Irish Council should continue to represent the interests of those with a British identity, just as the Good Friday Agreement represented nationalists in Northern Ireland. That should be a critical point of any architecture in an all-Ireland-----