Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

While I understand the terrible personal experience and the trauma that former Senator Cahill was put through, and I understand where the Stack family is coming from, Féile an Phobail is really not a Sinn Féin event, it is a community event in west Belfast. There are many Sinn Féin supporters involved in it. This is a part of Northern Ireland where Sinn Féin wins five out of six seats. Quite frankly, nothing is going to happen in west Belfast without having some people there who have a history or background in Sinn Féin or the republican movement. It is my view that one does not boycott an entire community because it happens to vote for or support a party one does not agree with. My policy is always one of engagement not one of boycotts or no platform. That is one of the reasons I was very honoured to have been invited to attend the launch.

The event was set up in what was a very dark time in west Belfast when Belfast was a very difficult city to live in, very different to what it is now. When it was set up it gave people, in particular young people and children, a little bit of light in their lives during the summer and a little bit of hope. I do not think that is a bad thing. Other people who have attended in the past include Arlene Foster, Michael Moore, Noam Chomsky, Reg Empey and Mary McAleese. I cannot attend because I am not available the week it is on, but if the opportunity arises in future years I would like to be able to attend some of the events. I really do not think that launching an event is an endorsement of the entire programme. People launch film festivals, theatre festivals and art exhibitions. That does not mean they are endorsing everything on the programme or every piece of art that is being displayed. I think that is a very narrow-minded view. It is almost the kind of view one would have heard from Archbishop McQuaid or extreme Catholics in the past, that even to attend an event or launch an event implies an endorsement. It is a form of censorship and backward thinking that I do not share. It is the new version of that kind of extremism that existed in the past. The shoe is on the other foot so often when it comes to matters like this.

In terms of tectonic plates, Deputy Howlin is absolutely right - tectonic plates do shift slowly and also quickly. That is the nature of tectonic plates, but I did not say anything about tectonic plates on my visit at all. I did say that I was opposed to a Border poll and that I think it is a bad idea at this time and for the foreseeable future. First, I think it would be defeated, and all the polling indicates that. I also think it would be divisive and now is not a time when we need further division in Northern Ireland. I also think in particular it would send out the wrong message at this time of Brexit when all the time the Government is saying to the unionist parties and the unionist community that we have no hidden agenda when it comes to Brexit. All we want out of Brexit is that we retain the relationships that we have currently, namely, that there is no hard border, that citizens’ rights are protected and that we do not see Brexit as an opportunity to change the constitutional status of Northern Ireland. We are not going to try to take advantage of Brexit or exploit it to bring about a united Ireland any faster than the people of Northern Ireland want it. That is why we need to be very careful about these types of things.

The same thing would apply to the suggestion of a forum on the issue. In principle, the idea of a forum on what a united Ireland might look like in the future sounds attractive. We could have a discussion with civic society and political parties on what that might look like but the difficulty is that I feel, in particular at this time, when people are talking about border polls and Brexit that the vast majority of people who feel themselves to be British - the vast majority of unionist people - would not participate in that and then it would be seen as a pan-nationalist gathering or front.

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