Mark Daly (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister for coming to the House. This situation means that Ireland has to reimagine its future. The ramifications of Brexit will magnify not lessen as time goes on. Over the next two years those in Northern Ireland who are in the UK face a challenge they have not faced in the past 100 years: they must imagine that they must leave the UK. The future of Northern Ireland must be viewed through an economic lens, not through the political or religious one. We need to have an informed discussion on the best future for the people of Northern Ireland and for the people of these islands as the Senator from Dublin has pointed out.

The status quowill not be allowed to remain because Northern Ireland, according to the United Nations, UN, human development index ranks 44th in the world, the Republic ranks sixth. The index measures health, education and income. We are equal to Germany, are one ahead of Canada and the United States and the UK is 14th. Northern Ireland will now slip below the 50th ranking which will mean it will join the likes of Romania and Kazakhstan. It is quite obvious that if we reimagine the future of Ireland together and bring it up to where we are, the future of every citizen in the North would be better if we were together. The Good Friday Agreement allows for this and while we might differ with colleagues on this side of the House on how we achieve the outcome, the outcome we in Fianna Fáil would like to see is a united Ireland but it has to be by agreement. The challenge is how to reach that.

While others would anticipate a demographic tidal wave and that parity would be achieved with a convergence of the two communities in the next few years and an overwhelming majority by 2030, that is too simplistic a way of seeing it when 20% of Catholics in the North would vote to stay in the UK but 12% of Protestants in a Belfast Telegraphpoll said they would like to see a united Ireland in the next 20 years. It is a question of how we reimagine the future of Ireland together because what the UK has done to itself, what opportunities it has foregone, are hard to imagine. As Scotland looks towards a renewed independence debate we have to consider the opportunity that Germany did not have in terms of time and space and the democratic structure under the Good Friday Agreement to have that debate on how we can have a better future on this island together.