Gay Mitchell (Dublin South Central, Fine Gael)

It is time to be more honest and open. No society stands still. The challenge is to build a new inclusive nationalism. More than 200 years ago Wolfe Tone spoke of uniting the then very different traditions of Protestant, Catholic and Dissenter under the common name of Irishmen and women. Today we must be equally visionary to develop a new broad form of inclusive nationalism. Even in traditional terms we must ask ourselves whether the majority community in the Republic of Ireland is truly nationalist. Are a good number of us really partitionist because facilitating a united Ireland would be discomfiting? If we want to bring about a united Ireland, are we prepared to consider what it would take?

Our parliamentarians are now elected to the Dáil, Seanad and European Parliament by the register the Minister is preparing. In the North parliamentarians are elected to the European Parliament, the Northern Assembly and the parliament at Westminster. If we were to ask our Northern fellow Irish to give up electing members to the British House of Commons, could we, together, make another proposal? We learned last night that the British House of Lords is to be reformed to include elected members. Could part of the island elect members to the House of Lords who would take a special interest in Anglo-Irish issues? We already have the precedent of a particular group, namely, university graduates, having the unique right to elect Members of Seanad Éireann. Without diminishing the office of the President of Ireland, what role would we be prepared to consider for the British monarch? Section 3 of the Executive Authority (External Relations) Act 1936 left such a role open in the area of diplomatic representation and international agreements. For example, Articles 29.4.1° and 29.4.2° of Bunreacht na hÉireann, which created the office of President of Ireland, specifically allowed for this and was approved directly by the people. Although we have had a President of Ireland since the enactment of the 1937 Constitution, the British monarch continued by ordinary law to be capable of acting in our affairs until 1948, provided the Executive Council, the then Government, agreed.

Would we be prepared to allow our Parliament sit in Belfast while Dublin remained the capital? Alternatively, could the Seanad meet in Belfast and the House of Representatives, the English name for Dáil Éireann, meet in Dublin?

If those of us who say we are constitutional nationalists are really interested in uniting the people of Ireland and bringing about consensus in the North on such unity, we will have to address these or similar questions. It is not good enough that we abandon the question of Irish unity to the one group which has no hope whatsoever of bringing it about, Provisional Sinn Féin.

The success we enjoy today was in great part brought about by politicians and public servants. In modern Ireland, politicians should have the courage to insist on respect for politics and stand up for the public service tradition. Those who do not have the gumption to stand for public office should be taken on more often when, as hurlers on the ditch, they overstep the mark and demean the value of public life.

Politics and politicians have been rotten from time to time. Some standards have left a terrible stench, although politics should not be cast to one side because of such appalling occurrences. Charles de Gaulle claimed politics is too important to be left to politicians, and it is certainly too important to be sullied and brought into the gutter by people whose capacity for political abuse is often in inverse proportion to their knowledge of current affairs.

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