Joe Conway (Independent)

Tá sé de phribhléid dom a bheith páirteach sa díospóireacht thábhacht agus thráthúil seo anocht. Fearaim fáilte roimh an Aire Stáit. Tá sé ag fágáil faoi láthair ach ar aon chuma, it is very nice to see him here and ably replaced by the Minister of State, Deputy Murnane Connor, whom I am meeting for the second time today.

I would like to share with the Minister of State the fact that I am equally privileged because even though I have been living in County Waterford for close to 40 years, I was brought up in a small village in County Longford called Ardagh. Ardagh is an ecclesiastical establishment that dates back to St. Patrick and St. Mél’s time. It is celebrated both in the Anglican Communion and the Catholic Church as an episcopal and diocesan centre, that is, the Diocese of Ardagh and Clonmacnoise, which the Minister of State will probably be familiar with, and the Anglican Communion Diocese of Kilmore, Elphin and Ardagh. It is a planned village. Those of you who ever get the chance should go and see it because it is the most beautiful planned village, with cut stone and immaculately kept. It twice won the Tidy Towns competition.

I am saying all of this because the village was planned by the local landlord, George Fetherston, back in the early part of the 19th century. He built those houses that are still there today to house his imported workforce. I do not know why he did not trust the Irish locality to supply him with labour and skills, but he did not anyway and a lot of the people who lived in those houses came in from the UK. That left a village that I grew up in that was still significantly a Protestant village. Maybe 25% or 30% of the village population were from the Anglican Communion, and I am delighted that it was so, because it gave me a lifelong acceptance and enthusiasm for neighbourliness between Catholics and Protestants in this country, which is fundamentally behind the whole issue we are discussing tonight and that is unity.

During the past summer, I was on holidays on Inis Meáin. The Library service here gave me the loan of a very fine book, which I saw on the shelves down there and asked if I could take it with me for the summer. I think it should be mandatory reading for every politician in this country. Its title is Southern Irish Protestants: Histories, Lives and Literatures, written by a fine academic called Ian d'Alton. He never uses the phrase "Anglo-Irish" but refers to the Irish Protestant class from the 19th century into the 20th century when they were fearful seeing home rule coming down the road, how they responded to the challenges and the new State, and how they were fearful of the new State and all the things that were part and parcel of the Irish southern Protestant. If we want to seriously look at the challenges of unity, we should look at this. Every section of Irish society has been mentioned in the debate so far, but nobody has said a word about the Irish southern Protestants. They have a huge amount to contribute to the unity debate in their own quiet way. I will cite for the Minister of State a small section from one of the final chapters of Ian d'Alton's book where he wrote that how we treated them or how we had treated them since the foundation of the State should really be a pointed template to the Protestant community in the North of Ireland.

As Senator McDowell listed out, there are enormous challenges to be overcome socially, politically and economically - the challenges of a united Ireland. It is so easy to talk about the aspirational business of a united country. I remember my late father used to say that he would never see it in his lifetime. I do not suppose I will see it in my lifetime either, but it is a wonderful aspiration to have. It is not without its pitfalls, however, and the last thing we want is something to happen as happened in 2014 in Scotland when the referendum on nationalism went off half-cocked and, of course, was defeated. Therefore, there has to be an amazing amount of preparatory work put into this before we take it on. Members might bear with me while I put on my spectacles. I just want to read these four or five lines from Ian d'Alton's book because they are rich in wisdom.He says:

...it may be presumptuous and utopian to offer the southern Protestant journey as possibly, in the fullness of time, one for consideration by my northern co-religionists and unionist friends [Ian d'Alton obviously is a Protestant]. They're welcome to the template.

The theme is echoed in the foreword to the collection. The distinguished author, historian and civil servant that he was, Ian d'Alton lists out the great challenges we have to convince the people of the unionist community in the North of Ireland that maybe we can offer a more successful and exciting template of a unified Ireland than we have seen emerge since the independence of 1921 and 1922. I do not want to see a united Ireland where any part of the community is cowed into an unwilling silence that in many ways the southern Irish Protestants were.

We have a lot of thinking to do and unity is so aspirational. It is a wonderful thing to throw out, but by God it is going to give us a lot of challenges in the years ahead. I implore those who are driving it that they do not fall into the same pitfall of a mistake that was made in Scotland a decade or so ago, when it was done without prior forethought and was then too easily torpedoed. I think it has put the whole question back for generations to come in Scotland and I would not like to see a cock-up here that would put it back in the same way for the society on our side of the Border and on the other side. There is so much to be done before any unity poll should be considered.