Feargal Quinn (Independent)

The Leader has agreed to have a debate on Northern Ireland and I urge him to do so as soon as possible. This morning along with Senator Keaveney I attended the launch by the Minister for Education and Science of the book, Journal of Cross Border Studies in Ireland, published by the Centre for Cross Border Studies. The Minister spoke encouragingly about the amount of cross-Border work going on and the amount of success that has been achieved. In the past when we have had a debate on Northern Ireland it has only been a debate about those with a link with Northern Ireland in some form or other. The Minister drew our attention to the amount of work already taking place in various ways, including in education, tourism, sustainability and trade unionism. Regarding all those areas, it is worthwhile having this debate. One of the other speakers at that function was the president of DCU, Ferdinand von Prondzynski, who told of how he grew up in Germany and was there when the Berlin Wall was built. His family came to live in Ireland a few years later. His father, having crossed from Northern Ireland into the Twenty-Six Counties, said that the Border here, even though it was not visible like the border in Germany, was much more ingrained because of the attitudes of people on both sides of the Border. He pointed to how that is changing dramatically. It is worth our while doing so.

In our company some years ago we decided to place a shamrock opposite each product on our shelves in the supermarket. I could not believe the number of people who asked me whether we put it on products coming from Northern Ireland. These were Nationalists who still did not believe Northern Ireland was part of us. The question would not even have cropped up in the minds of those of us with links to Northern Ireland. I urge the Leader to have the debate on Northern Ireland soon.

For many years I have argued that we should join central European time to get the benefits of the extra hour in the evening the whole year around. One of the reasons we failed to succeed was that people claimed it would be very dark when children were going to school in mid-winter. The United States changed their hour last weekend meaning that there is now only a four-hour gap between New York and here. If we are not going to join central European time at least we should make the effort to align with the United States and start summertime at least three weeks earlier than we normally do.