Richard Bruton (Dublin Bay North, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I actually said in my presentation that I accept 50% plus one is sufficient. We cannot change that at this stage. An attempt to change it would go nowhere. I do not believe in tilting at windmills for no purpose. That is what we have got to live with. However, we must ask the voters to take a more sophisticated view of the matter and ask, in deciding to vote at a particular time, whether that time is ripe for a united Ireland. They must ask whether it would work at the given time and whether sufficient reconciliation has taken place such that 50% plus one would be enough. If there is not enough groundwork for a harmonious united Ireland that fulfils the criteria that Albert Reynolds put forward in the Downing Street Declaration, people should not vote for it. That does not mean they should not be asked. They are free to vote. People are not obliged to vote for a proposition just because it is put forward. We are free agents and can decide. We can decide at one time to vote in one direction and maybe two years later to vote in another. We have seen that in referenda in Ireland in the past. We got it right eventually. We cannot change the 50% plus one.

I agree that partition was destabilising. I thank Mr. Brady for his patience. My address was rather long. In it, I tried to outline the background to the idea of partition. It did not arise in the 1920 Act out of nowhere; it had been canvassed as a possibility for the previous 30 years by certain people who felt there would not be adequate security and peace with home rule without some form of exclusion. I do not believe the Liberal Government of 1914 would have gone to war to impose a united Ireland under home rule. Maybe it would but it was never tested. I am not so sure that, if it had done so, it would have been in our interests. We have a legacy of violence and other things we regret, but things are not as bad as they could have been.

On the question concerning what I advocated, I was not involved in the final negotiations. I was present at the preliminary negotiations so I am not going to make any big claims. The framework document that was negotiated, principally by Mr. Dick Spring as part of the Government of which I was Taoiseach, and that we agreed with the British envisaged a much more extensive role for the North–South bodies than the Good Friday Agreement. In fact, the outcome on the North–South bodies was very disappointing, and the outcome in practice has been even more disappointing.