Pádraig Rice (Cork South-Central, Social Democrats)

Like Deputy Bacik, I wish to express my concerns about the scenes we are seeing in Dublin tonight and I ask Members to think twice before inflaming tensions even further. It is something we should all be mindful of.

On the motion at hand, I believe in a new and united Ireland, one with a thriving all-island economy, with universal public services and inclusive politics. We have a real opportunity here to create a new and better Ireland, one that enshrines rights in a new Constitution, including a right to housing, a right to healthcare, that guarantees equality and delivers a more inclusive kind of Ireland for all of us. Before we get to that new and united Ireland, we need to unite communities before we unite territories. There is a lot of deep work that needs to be happen in preparation for that. This is work in which I am proud to be involved with some of my Social Democrat colleagues. Recently, we did a trip to Belfast and engaged with colleagues in Stormont. We have engaged with unionists over the last year to listen, to learn, to understand and to have a better understanding of Northern Ireland and the North in preparation for that. In my previous role, I worked with LGBT Ireland and in that role I set up an all-island LGBT forum funded through Community Foundation Ireland and the shared island initiative to bring together people from the LGBT community North and South whose lives had not crossed before.

One of the community workers working in Dundalk mentioned that she knew people who worked in the community right across the Republic but did not know any of those working in the North and that there was an invisible wall there. This kind of forum, over two weekends across the year, was designed to bring people together and for them to sit down with people they would not meet otherwise - people from different backgrounds and different perspectives but all of us part of one community living on this island. That is the kind of work that needs to happen, and more of it needs to happen.

We need to give a lot of consideration to some of the issues that will dominate a unification referendum, including flags and anthems. We need to give these things deep consideration. That is work that should happen now.

We need to learn from our nearest neighbours. I lived in the UK in 2014 and 2015, around the time of the Scottish independence referendum and in advance of Brexit. What we learned from the Scottish independence referendum was that they failed to prepare properly. They lost that and it set back that movement about a decade. There are lessons to be learned from that. Similarly, in terms of Brexit, the result was so close - 52% to 48%. We should take cognisance of the real tensions and the divide that exist in British society as a result.

We need to think back to the Good Friday Agreement and the promises that were made about peace, prosperity and an end to violence. There is a lot to be done to deliver those promises to people in Northern Ireland, particularly around prosperity. There is a lot left to be done about living standards, eradication of poverty and concerns about suicide. I recently read the book Lost, Found, Rememberedby Lyra McKee. In it she talked about the suicide rates and about the fact that, according to a report in The Guardianin February 2018, around 4,500 people had died by suicide since the Good Friday Agreement. She wrote: "It's the most tragic of ironies that 20 years of peace could rob us of more lives than 30 years of war did."

Lyra also wrote in that book, "I don't want a United Ireland or a stronger Union. I just want a better life." I think there are a lot of young people in Northern Ireland who are of that perspective, who want better living standards. We need to ensure that is part of the debate and the consideration in preparation for that new and united Ireland that I would like to see.

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