Joe O'Reilly (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Is cúis áthais dom páirt a ghlacadh sa díospóireacht thábhachtach dhearfach seo. I welcome my friend, the Minister of State, Deputy Brophy, who brings hard work and intellectual rigour to the Department and to anything he does. I salute Senators McGreehan and Blaney and their Fianna Fáil colleagues for bringing forward the motion. As a neighbour of Senator Blaney, I know he is steeped in a history of interest in the Northern Ireland issue and connection to the people of Northern Ireland. He speaks with great sincerity on the question.

Before I give my substantive remarks, I believe that, without prejudice to our view, the UK should not take unilateral action, there is much merit in, and great reason to reflect seriously on, the points made by Senator McDowell earlier on legacy issues and dealing with them. Senator McDowell's observations and citing of historical precedent in a post-Civil War situation merit consideration and should be brought into the mix of any discussion. That does not prejudice our concern that there would not be unilateralism. I also accept the point made by Senator Wilson regarding Senator McDowell's input into the peace process. That should be acknowledged.I aspire to an inclusive, diverse, peaceful and prosperous united Ireland. It is incumbent on all of us to do what is within our power to advance this objective. While a border poll is inevitable, there is a great deal of background work to do initially. Even from an optimistic nationalist perspective, a border poll would only achieve a narrow result at the moment. Were it to be narrow, there would be a destabilising factor that could conceivably result in violence and permanent civil disobedience, preventing a peaceful and harmonious State. That we do not want to hold an immediate poll by no means precludes the need, and our responsibility, to reflect and work towards creating conditions of unity and peaceful coexistence on the island, which is the kind of situation that will result in the poll creating a united Ireland.

In the meantime, we need to continue to working with the Good Friday Agreement, the merit of which is that it features power sharing within Northern Ireland, east-west structures and co-operation ad North-South structures and co-operation, and has given us two decades of peace. Securing the absence of a hard border at Brexit was a great achievement and crucial to maintaining the Good Friday Agreement and building conditions of peace. However, we should be sobered and tamed, as it were, by the violence of a few months ago. It tells us that we cannot take peace for granted. Since then, the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Deputy Coveney, has had a number of engagements and been in touch regularly with Northern Ireland and London. There is a pending British-Irish Intergovernmental Conference.

I support the idea of the shared island initiative under the Department of the Taoiseach. We should work with it. I have argued in this Chamber that we should build into our sports capital grants, town and village and renewal grants, rural regeneration grants and CLÁR grants a condition that there be North-South co-operation and interaction with corresponding villages and towns in Northern Ireland and that points be given to projects that result in such interaction. While there has been a level of interaction between health services recently and it has operated satisfactorily, it needs to be built on further. educational co-operation needs to be built on further.

We need to look to new imaginative structures when we eventually move towards a united Ireland. It may have to be a federal Ireland, one that gives expression to all of the traditions on the island. That might need a federal structure and new and diverse types of governmental arrangements in the interim. We cannot create a situation where there is a dissenting minority that is alienated and potentially violent. That would undermine the concept of unity. We should build a set of structures that will give expression to all traditions on the island. We should also bear in mind that we have a new population on the island of people who have come here in recent times and are not orange or green. The entire complex strata of the island need to be incorporated into new arrangements, which could be federal initially.

I support the motion. This has been a particularly reflective and serious discussion. That is good, and more such discussions are needed.