Professor Fidelma Ashe:

Some people are advocating that we should not have a plan before we go to the referendum but to have the plan afterwards. I do not share that view. The plan is really important. From my work and that of Professor Jennifer Todd and Dr. Joanne McEvoy, we have found that the key issues for people are socioeconomic ones. There is going to be division and dispute if we reach the point of a border poll. There is no way around that. What we can do is try to reduce the amount of division and the impact any border poll would have on community relationships. People are very worried about that but this is why some of us as academics are arguing for expanding these kinds of engagements with people so that we can reduce the divisiveness of the debate if people have the right information and information they can trust. The information cannot be fear driven because fear-driven knowledge will increase division. It is also important that people feel they are being acknowledged and recognised and that their position, no matter what it is, is being respected. We found that will reduce divisiveness. Then, of course, it is also about the big issues. People really want to know what kind of standard of living they would have in any future Ireland. What would the healthcare and transport systems be? They want to know what will happen to their pensions and if there is going to be free childcare. These are what we used to call the bread-and-butter issues. When you focus on those issues, what we have found - and I can only say what we have found - is it decreases divisiveness over the constitutional questions and other identity issues. They are still going to be there.