Michael McDowell (Dublin South East, Progressive Democrats)

—or the people of this State giving something away. The people of this State made a positive choice to re-articulate their stance on the national question in a manner which would underpin and strengthen the emergence and persistence of democratic values in Northern Ireland. One must see it in context. One of the implications of the pre-Good Friday Agreement situation was that as a matter of international law, the United Kingdom was also being asked to say that in certain circumstances it would give effect to the wishes of a majority of the people in Northern Ireland as to the status of that part of this island. If one looks at these matters in the round, one will see a balance and there is no betrayal of the ideal of Irish unity or of the quest for Irish unity in the newly rephrased Articles 2 and 3. On the contrary, they best represent what most people on this island regard that ideal as being in substance.

There are people who are not in this House who have always rejected the 1937 Constitution and always decried it and said it was of no binding moral or legal significance. The alternative view was that the people of this part of the island were saying to the people of Northern Ireland that if there was to be Irish unity, it would be on our terms, under our Constitution. It was not a question of take it or leave it, they could simply lump it. That was the original implication of Articles 2 and 3. There was a reference to the right of the Government established under that Constitution to exercise jurisdiction over the whole of the territory. The only basis on which the southern Government can exercise jurisdiction is in accordance with the 1937 Constitution, so in effect it was a claim to impose the 1937 Constitution on the whole of the island, regardless of the wishes of a majority of people in Northern Ireland.