Professor Peter Shirlow:

That is critically important. I am not against Irish unity. I have asked, and I was not being glib earlier: where is the plan? Where is this costed? If we want to have a rational and mature debate then let us have that rational and mature debate but because of Scotland or because of Brexit that does not mean that a united Ireland is around the corner because the Deputy knows as well as I do that when you ask the question, "Do you want a united Ireland?", there is the 30% or 40% who say "Yes" but in the South, when you ask the question 71% say "Yes" and when you ask the question, "Do you want to pay for it with higher taxes?", the share of people who want a united Ireland goes down. I am not making that as a pro-union point. That is the reality here. Some people who want a united Ireland are from a Protestant and Catholic background and some people who want to stay in the union are from a Protestant and Catholic background. That is the point that I was trying to make earlier that we have to get beyond this green and orange way in which we think. The group that will win the argument is the people who put forward a fact and evidence-based debate about what constitutional change or otherwise would mean. It is too serious an issue to simply wrap it up with Brexit or Scotland. One of the things that is really clear here is that as someone from the pro-union community, I am more than happy to listen to arguments for a united Ireland - it is not that I am blinkered or that I am deaf to what people say to me - but nobody has tried to either persuade me in a way that is meaningful or they have stereotyped and labelled me in who I am and what I am. I might be somebody who wishes to stay in the union but I am also culturally Irish. I think those things are critically important. What the protocol and Brexit has shown clearly is that type of stereotypical, populist-type rhetoric undermines any capacity to build a shared island and a shared future.