Dr. Martina Devlin:

The committee has my submission. I would like to tell the committee a story. I often go North. I am originally from Tyrone. Sometimes I go to Belfast. Whenever I am there, I love to visit the peace wall to admire the art. Often graffiti artists are at work there and I will stop and chat to them. Before the last lockdown, I spoke to some young men who were working on the Shankill side of the peace wall. As it turned out, they were from Drogheda and born around the time of the Good Friday Agreement. They did not care very much and knew less about the geopolitics of the area. To them, it was just a magical big blank wall they could shape in some way. I thought that was a metaphor - the idea of the tabula rasa. Could the same be said of a new and reimagined Ireland? There is something about walls. I know it has been said apropos fences and poetry but there is something in human nature that makes you want to climb over or go around walls.

A wall has grown up metaphorically between the two parts of this island. Increasingly, people want to find ways around that. It is not just people from the nationalist community. The Brexit shock and the chaos at the heart of the British establishment have accelerated a process. Recently I have been speaking to people who could be loosely defined as cultural unionists - persuadables. They are not afraid of this conversation. They just want to know the detail - what is on offer. They also want to know that the Republic is willing and able to welcome them. They are conscious of a lack of engagement here sometimes. It is extremely hurtful not just to nationalists but to people from a unionist background, who are trying to look at the bigger picture, which for them, is re-admission to the EU, the economic outlook and the opportunity to be part of a large minority rather than part of a grouping where you cannot even vote in the government let alone vote them out.

This is a conversation that is happening in civic society even if political unionism is not engaging in it and it is a conversation for everyone to participate in. What I have noticed is that increasingly people are leaning towards the idea of a hybrid identity. Hybridity is a positive thing. We have this idea of purism - to be pure English, pure Irish or pure Scots, which is nonsense if you drill down into our DNA. Hybridity is the way forward. The census results show that to a certain extent. They show crudely the idea of Catholics outnumbering Protestants. That does not matter in the sense of one block replacing another, particularly in an increasingly secular society. What it does is act as an indicator of people being open to constitutional change. Someone who defines in a particular way may or may not vote for unity but that person is willing to examine the evidence and make an informed choice. What I have noticed with the people from both sides of the Border with whom I speak, particularly in the North, is that what people want in common is the opportunity to work, thrive and have an improved outcome for their children - better opportunities than they had. This transcends these binaries we keep hearing about to do with class and tribe.