Richard Bruton (Dublin Bay North, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I welcome this debate because it comes at a difficult time. As we have seen in recent weeks, tensions are high in the aftermath of Brexit. We should view Brexit not as a trap to try to confront the constitutional issue, which is so divisive in Northern Ireland, but as an opportunity to show that we can offer a practical partnership in helping people in Northern Ireland to confront some of the problems they face. Ironically, the EU's blunder may be an opportunity for Ireland to demonstrate its capacity within the EU to watch out, as we are obliged to do under the Good Friday Agreement, for the interests of people on all sides in Northern Ireland. This is not a time for delighting in the discomfort of the unionist community or for reinforcing the binary politics that have been so damaging in Northern Ireland. It is a time to seek to understand the challenges that those communities face, and it is important that we do so now.

Over the summer, I had the opportunity to read Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Irelandby Mr. Patrick Radden Keefe. His book shows the sense of betrayal that many people who have been willing to give their own lives and injure or kill other people in the pursuit of their goals are likely to feel in any political vacuum that might emerge. It is important that we use the concept of a shared Ireland to create a new arena where we can find aims that we share in common and work together to achieve them.

It would be remiss of us today not to consider another community that is struggling to protect its parliamentary institutions. I speak of the people of Myanmar. A junta seized power on the day a new parliament was to convene, a day of great hope for the people of Myanmar, based on trumped up complaints about election procedures, false and threadbare accusations against the political leadership and enforced digital surveillance. As a country that has seen the benefit of democratic institutions, we need to stand up and support those in Myanmar who are calling for the restoration of their democracy.

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