Paul McAuliffe (Dublin North West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

The Good Friday Agreement brought an end to a violent conflict by settling and putting in place the constitutional arrangements on these islands. The peace process involved compromises on all sides. It involved different building blocks from different parties to the dispute.

After centuries of action to the contrary, the British Government stated in the Downing Street Declaration that Britain had no "selfish strategic or economic interest" in Northern Ireland. This was an essential foundation for what was to follow. It enabled a confidence in the Irish people that led them to agree to the principle of consent and to remove our constitutional claim to Northern Ireland. For 20 years, people in the North have lived under this settlement and British-Irish relations have normalised. There are people alive on this island today as a consequence of the settlement who would otherwise not be. We have peace on our island and we have goods and services flowing freely across both parts of it. Brexit has changed this dynamic but the obligations of previous international treaties continue to bind all parties, including the British Government.

For the past year and especially in recent weeks, the British Government has indeed demonstrated a selfish strategic and economic interest in Northern Ireland. There is no doubting it. Now the British Government is playing games with the peace process itself. By seeking to pull out the foundation block that is the Downing Street Declaration, it is playing Brexit Jenga with the Good Friday Agreement. The Northern Ireland protocol ratified in January provides that the North will come under the EU's customs code and Single Market rules. It prevents a hard border. The Single Market ensures a level playing field for businesses in the EU to trade without tariffs. Would that level playing field still be as level if the UK, from outside the Union, were to give state subsidies to its businesses, allow products produced at a lower standard into the EU market or have workers employed on poorer conditions? Giving the UK access to the Single Market without some checks on state aid and standards would not just be a bad deal; it would leave all EU companies at an unfair disadvantage in their own Single Market.

I remind those in the UK who believe that the conditions required of the EU in respect of Northern Ireland undermine the integrity of the UK or infringe on its sovereignty that the North of Ireland is not North Yorkshire and Foyleside is not Tyneside. Until 1998, the North was a disputed territory. Sovereignty is one thing but when competing sovereign claims rub up against each other, they create friction. The EU and the Good Friday Agreement were tools designed to prevent such friction and to maintain peace. The unpredictable nature of British politics and the changing demographics on this island mean that a border poll may be on our agenda sooner than we imagined it might be when we ratified the Good Friday Agreement. The Republic, at civic and governmental levels, is ill prepared at this time to begin the vital debate around unity that is needed before we even contemplate a border poll and the related referendum in the South. A border poll will trigger a multiplicity of questions and debates about how we share this island.

We need to prepare for that debate and for how we see a new way of sharing this island. How do we envisage the Six Counties on our island that have been governed by a different regime for 100 years relating to the other 26? How will people on both parts of the island access health and education services? How will we decide the areas that will benefit from inward investment? How will we avoid another tribal conflict, the previous one having been the almost inevitable consequence of the original crude sectarian division? What are the necessary conditions we want to see for the unification of our country? How do we ensure that unionists and loyalists, who do not have an Irish identity and cherish their own identity, do not fear a shared island and can see themselves as part of the outcome of a unification and sharing process? How do we avoid a situation where a narrow victory for unity in a future border poll inevitably provokes instability in communities where a majority or large minority of people do not want it? There are many such questions that remain unanswered. The process of addressing them will shape the thinking in the Republic as much as it will enlighten people in the North as to the reality of what a shared island means.

Fianna Fáil is ready to lead that process. We want a united Ireland but we also want a unified people. We want everybody on this island to be unified around shared values that are not about a fourth green field but, rather, sharing our labour and sharing the fruits of all our fields. The challenge set out in Wolfe Tone's vision is to bring the people of this island together. Never has a generation needed to hear that message more. As we prepare for the coming changes, we must remind ourselves to follow Wolfe Tone and not to be tone deaf to the views of the other people who share this island. The challenge for this generation is to take the settlement offered by the peace process and to decide how our island, within Europe, will look post Brexit.

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