Neale Richmond (Dublin Rathdown, Fine Gael)
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I thank Ms O'Connell for her presentation and for carrying out this research. I have a few questions that will build on what Deputy Haughey raised. I was struck that 84% of respondents support remaining, which is, statistically, more or less the same as the referendum result in 1972 that led to Irish accession to the European Communities. I acknowledge there have been a couple of changes in our guests' findings over recent years, which is to be expected with the highs and lows of Brexit and how that transpired, but it is nonetheless remarkable that the figure is still so high. As Deputy Haughey rightly said, that should not be taken for granted. How resilient does Ms O'Connell believe the figure is? I appreciate that European Movement Ireland is part of the wider European Movement International network. Has any similar research been carried out by its sister organisations? How does Ireland stack up in terms of approval for remaining within the EU?

I was struck by Ms O'Connell's comments on the Conference on the Future of Europe and the important role her organisation will play in that. I appreciated her presentation to our committee on the previous occasion, and I hope the findings that her organisation sends to the Department of Foreign Affairs and the Minister of State, Deputy Byrne, will also be sent to this committee. When we talk about the future of Europe, that 52% approve of holding the conference is all well and good but it is not a massive number. There is a danger the conference will become an internal reflection for the European institutions, as opposed to a real discussion among the citizenry and member state parliamentarians about how we can move Europe forward. Whether we like it or not, there are considerable challenges facing the Union at the moment.

I do not buy into the narrative, which is probably put across in other jurisdictions, that the EU is facing a crisis, that it may collapse, that this is the end of the EU and that it is a Franco-German hegemony. The European project was born out of crisis. It thrives in crisis. Its raison d'êtreis to respond to crisis. Between the global pandemic and the climate emergency, there are certainly plenty of crises to go round and for the Union to play a strong role in. How can we, as member state parliamentarians, best feed into this process to ensure it will not just be a talking shop and that there will be some tangible contributions in order that what emerges from the process is not just something that could have been done around a boardroom table in Brussels without talking to any citizens?

On defence and security co-operation and our allies within the EU, while the figure is still generally positive in regard to increasing co-operation, I am struck by the decline in opposition to such. The cyberattack on our systems in the past week goes back to the importance of co-operation with other member states in the context of security and defence. That does not necessarily mean sending troops to some far-flung battlefield or building up armaments but it does mean the exchange of data and information, with the levels of smart policing and security that are so necessary at the moment. Does Ms O'Connell believe that will feed into the conference or is the issue a little removed, with people simply not thinking about it until it is on their doorsteps?

It is interesting that the vaccine strategy received a relatively low approval rating. We are all politicians, and as much as we may deny it in public, we love opinion polls. We read each one of them and pay attention to them, even though we say the only poll that counts is that on election day, which is of course true. Even so, they are a snapshot in time, and an opinion poll taken a couple of weeks ago, such as this, could have very different results if taken today. I wonder, therefore, whether that result might be slightly different if the poll were taken now.

I should declare I am on campus in Leinster House. I am not in that squeezed middle cohort but I wish the Chairman the best of luck with his vaccine registration. In due course, I hope to get there myself. As the roll-out moves through all the different cohorts and registration opens to them, we see how important the issue is.

We are very grateful to Ms O'Connell and Mr. O'Shea for the report. The importance of it is that it is consistent over a period. They have asked topical questions but the same questions, and we start to see interesting patterns emerging. Colleagues will want to raise various issues but my final question relates to the feasibility and possibility of a united Ireland. One of the early achievements of Enda Kenny as Taoiseach, straight after the Brexit referendum, was to get European Council approval that if, at a future date, we voted for unification on this island, that would be automatically accepted by the EU following the precedent of East Germany and West Germany. That is obviously a major issue for us in Ireland, but as when we talk about Brexit and the Border issue, the level of awareness and knowledge among colleagues in other member states, including former member states, is pretty negligible about what is happening on this island. Harking back to our guests' engagement with European Movement International, in which they play an important role, are the feasibility and permutations that a vote on a united Ireland might lead to ever raised, even anecdotally, post the Brexit process?