Tom Clonan (Independent) | Oireachtas source

First of all, I want to apologise. My son was in here this morning. He is 20 and a wheelchair user. He had to go through a health and safety briefing of the building. I watched the witnesses' contributions on the monitor, however. I am delighted that they are here. They made a very important point about young people. Believe it or not, I was once a young person. I did my leaving certificate in 1984. Do not add up the numbers. That is the equivalent of A levels. I went to Trinity College Dublin. I represent Trinity graduates now as a Senator. I was in the school of education in Trinity and we had sister colleges in Belfast. We had St. Mary's teacher training college on the Falls Road and Stranmillis University College with people from both communities.

As a young fellow from Dublin, I went up on the train. We had a couple of exchange weekends and my goodness, Belfast in 1984 to 1987 was a revelation. I do not know if these places still exist but we used to go to the Botanic and the Eglantine or as they were known then, the "Bot" and the "Eg". One of my favourite places was Lavery's. I see some flickers of recognition. I think I might have left some graffiti in the bathroom. It was an extraordinary experience for me as a young man to go to Belfast in the 1980s and make the friendships that we made. I had friends from St. Mary's and from Stranmillis.

I am sure everyone is familiar with "Derry Girls" and some of the issues around cross-community identities where people in one community might keep the toaster in the press while others have it out in the kitchen. I can tell you, we noticed straight away coming from Dublin that everybody in Stranmillis and St. Mary's were much better looking than we were, and they had better record collections. We made friendships. I remember I met one girl in particular who was in Stranmillis. She brought me home to her house and the first thing I noticed when I went in was that they had a picture of the Queen on the wall. I had only ever seen Queen Elizabeth on the television but there she was on the wall of the house. That girl's father was very suspicious of me. I do not think it had anything to do with my political views or what community I came from but eventually I kind of-----