As I was reading through the entire Bill earlier today and over the weekend, memories started flooding back into my mind, stories of my grandparents, their parents, the republican struggles and the stories of their involvement in republicanism in Cork. In the house where I grew up, The Wolfe Tones was the only record played on a regular basis. I welcome this Bill. I truly do because it has merit. There are problems with it. There are little bits and pieces that need tweaking. I appeal to the Government to have an open vote on this and to allow it to proceed to the next Stage so that it can be tweaked. While the Bill acknowledges self-determination, which is incredibly important, what is seriously missing is costing, funding and how we are going to do this. There are questions, which many Members of the House have raised, about whether a citizens' assembly is the right place to do it. Do we need a new structure? Certainly, there is something radically wrong when our focus in this country, as an entire House, is not on self-determination and a united Ireland. That should always be the focus of this House. Let us all reflect on why we joined our political parties and got involved in politics on the first day. Whether we believe in left, right, centre or whatever, we are all born with a love for our country, and our country is still divided to this day. It is a very new State. Our work in this House should always reflect and look at the idea of a united Ireland. That should always be our number one focus. We have moved away from that in the last number of years. Some politicians and some people in leadership roles have almost made it seem like a dirty word. I have to thank Sinn Féin, in fairness to them. There are many things I disagree with them on but, in fairness, let us get this focus back again. Let us talk about self-determination, let us run with it and let us unite and work together. Let us move this in the right direction. Let us all thrash it out and say, "I don't think you're right on this" or "I don't think you're right on that", or "I think we need to cost this" or "I think we need to do that." Let us all focus together in this House. That is one thing that could unite the entire House: self-determination and uniting this country finally, recognising the work of those who died under our flag, and who had died previously trying to fly that flag and said it was a fight worth dying for. It is very important that we do that today. As I said, I do not overly agree with everything in the Bill, but I think it is a step in the right direction. I applaud my colleagues in Sinn Féin for bringing this to the House. We spend a lot of time talking in this House about issues we will never solve, such as international issues or we talk about a president here or there or we say this, that and the other about things we cannot affect or where we cannot make the change. This is something real and tangible that we can make the changes in. We need to go forward. We need to go to Committee Stage and we all need to feed in and sail the boat in the right direction. To my mind, the right direction has always been towards a united Ireland.

Sentiment score: 0.08