I welcome the opportunity to contribute briefly on this debate. I was listening to some of it. I echo some of the comments made by Deputy Gogarty about the provocative nature of some of the matters that he raised and the wide range of issues we would need to consider. We do not talk about the North in this House enough. I have been here ten years and it seems to me that we are only really beginning to have a discussion about it. There is nothing for us to be afraid of once we have open minds, open hearts and are respectful to the stance that everyone else takes in this House. If we were to agree on something, it would be that we all want to live on an island that every single person on the island can call "home". If we were to start from there, it would be as good a starting point as any. However, it would also give a real indication of the challenges that lie ahead of us in order to make that feeling of home for everybody who lives on the island a real possibility. That means there is a huge amount of work to be done. The shared island project is a clear example of the kind of work that can be done, dealing with tangible projects being delivered in a non-threatening way, either reinforcing historical, infrastructural connections that used to exist but were broken and re-establishing them or creating synergies on the island, and trust, dialogue and research in relation to specific projects. However, we can be braver than that. I look at the things that partition robbed us of. We can outline a lot of them but I am thinking of how we had a natural federal system on this island with four provinces. It lends itself to a very natural system of federal government where there is a capital in each province determining - not ruling, but representing everybody in those provinces - and maybe a central government made up of representatives of those four provinces. Partition robbed us of that natural four-province political framework on the island. Even if we were to start there and re-establish four provinces, we could see the concessions that would need to be made. We could say that Belfast was the natural capital of the province of Ulster. It would require concessions on the part of the three counties of Ulster that remain in the Republic. It would require concessions on the part of the Six Counties that are in Northern Ireland to incorporate the other three counties into the administrative system. I do not want to name what might be the capital cities of the other provinces because that could get me into an awful lot of trouble.

Sentiment score: 0.21

That simple structure in Ireland of four provinces offered and offers a very simple federal system that could be taken going forward, and then we would decide where central government is organised from. It would clearly have to have a Belfast dimension as well as a Dublin dimension. I do not think one-upmanship in the House assists this because we all have ideas and they are all valid. I do not think there is any one Member or party that is the exclusive carrier of the flame or the ambition for unity. In the foreign affairs committee, which I chair, we often meet diplomats from other countries and when we talk about this country I often describe it as an unfinished story. In the current debate, when we talk about security, defence and how Ireland is going to approach this, I always say Ireland is having a conversation about this for the first time. Nobody needs to pressurise us about this; we will make our decisions about it ourselves in a mature way. In the context of the Thirty-two Counties, we often do not remember that six counties of the country are essentially in NATO, for example. Deputy Gogarty referred to those kinds of conversations. They cannot just be one-way conversations. They are real conversations that have to be had. They lead me to the conclusion that the difficult considerations are not around how much it would cost but they will be about the give and take. For example, let us say, hypothetically, that unionism would agree to a united Ireland if the Republic joined NATO. What kind of reaction would that receive? What kind of reaction would it receive on the opposite side of the House or this side of the House? As Deputy Gogarty asked - and I am not outlining a personal position on this - what if we said the price of a united Ireland was rejoining the Commonwealth? What would be the reaction to that? I am not suggesting we rejoin the Commonwealth but I think it is realistic to suggest that it might be a unionist part of the conversation we would have to have down the road. We had a very interesting presentation by IBEC. Some of my colleagues across the floor were with us this morning when IBEC presented some of the real practical challenges that partition causes, particularly for people who work on the Border. There are real tax implications if they live in the Republic and work in the North, or if they live in the North and work in the Republic. We have not actually established some kind of common area or system that enables people to do that and it is actually hindering economic development and progress. IBEC has said that. I agree with Deputy Lawless as well, and this is not an attack on anybody's position. This is the citizens' assembly and I think we should trust ourselves to debate this as we are doing now, in a respectful way. In regard to one of the things we can do as well, economically, so many people in the Republic have not been to the Six Counties. I think that is a real piece of work we need to continuously work on. I know we have the all-island tourist body and it has done phenomenal pieces. I am not the world's best traveller to the Six Counties but in the past two years, I have been up there at GAA matches following Dublin and Derry. I am thrilled to say I went to see the Heaney homeplace in Bellaghy. I have not been this year and I think it ought to be on our agenda to visit and to get to know it. It was difficult for us to do it in times gone past. I want to say this as a Fianna Fáil politician. As someone who joined the party as a young man, one of the things that motivated me was that I wanted to see our country united. I still want to see our country united. I have learned, I think. I have listened, read and continue to listen. I remember sitting in the back seat of my parents' car as we crossed the Border for the first time, a British soldier talking to my father, seeing his gun and having an awful gut feeling about the idea that a British soldier would be stopping my father's car. I was from Dublin. I had no experience of what it was like to have occupying forces on my doorstep but I know it was a gut feeling. I also know that now I have travelled a long distance, it does not mean the notion of uniting the country has become diluted for me. I hope, however, that I recognise - if I come back to the point I started with - that if we want to create a place that everybody on the island can call home, then there needs to be a much more sophisticated conversation than maybe we have been used to. The Government could do an awful lot more to lead on this. That is not a criticism; it is just an exhortation to say it needs to trust people, and to trust the people of the Republic to be able to have and cope with a sensitive conversation about sensitive issues. The sooner that conversation starts - here is a good place to kick it off - the sooner we discover the things that are on people's minds when it comes to a discussion about either uniting the people, uniting the territory, or creating a place all of us can call home.

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