Any result other than a Yes vote in tomorrow's referendums on the Belfast Agreement in Northern Ireland and the Republic "would send us into the greatest and most profound political crisis since the start of the Troubles," the Lord Mayor of Belfast, Councillor Alban Maginness, said in Wexford yesterday. "It is my belief that there will be concurrent majorities both North and South. It will mark a decisive moment in the history of our country," he told over 200 delegates to the annual Irish Vocational Education Association conference.
"The use of the dual referendums to validate the Good Friday Agreement is the first occasion when voters North and South will have the joint opportunity to express their binding opinion on a matter of major importance," he said. "The use of dual referendums is also ingenious as it simultaneously deals a fatal blow to both republican/nationalist irredentism and loyalist/unionist rejectionism."
Mr Maginness said that "a majority vote in Northern Ireland must be viewed as a definitive and binding decision of the greater number of people living in Northern Ireland, and the binding approval of the Good Friday Agreement will defeat even those rejectionists in the unionist/loyalist camp including Paisley and McCartney."
Delivering the Sean Conway lecture during the IVEA congress, he said concurrent majorities in the North and the South tomorrow would be a telling blow to the nationalist, republican right and the unionist, loyalist right. The Belfast Agreement "represents an unparalleled opportunity for political development in the North," he added.