An increasing number of unionists in Northern Ireland are open to having conversations about a united Ireland, Mary Lou McDonald has said.
Speaking at an event in Dublin on Friday evening, the Sinn Féin leader said: “Increasingly you’re meeting people, especially from a unionist, a Protestant, loyalist background who are looking at this, saying: ‘tell me about this, let me into this, do not other me in this’.”
Ms McDonald was speaking during a panel discussion held after a screening of The Irish Question, a documentary that explores what a united Ireland might look like, at the Irish Film Institute in Temple Bar.
Sinn Féin has long called for a Citizens' Assembly to be held to examine the possibility of a united Ireland, ahead of a referendum on the topic.
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“I think we really need to move on that,” Ms McDonald said. “Provide the democratic space and people will come, I have no doubt.”
She said a Border poll is inevitable and “if we prepare well, I think we can make an incredible opportunity for our country and for everybody: British, Irish, both, neither – because that’s a dynamic in our communities and on our island now as well.”
Ms McDonald said, in her lifetime, there has been “a revolution in terms of how people self-define”, adding that most no longer feel “solely defined, or worse, confined because of the religious belief in which you happened to be raised or born into”.
During the panel discussion, which was moderated by Irish Times journalist Mary Minihan, Ms McDonald acknowledging that some people have concerns that moving towards a united Ireland could reignite violence in the North.
“It would be very, very foolish for anybody to entirely dismiss that fear.”
However, she said there is “a wide public appetite for stability, for progress, and certainly for no return to violent actions from anybody from any quarter”.
Ms McDonald said “a lot of hurt and a lot of damage was done historically” but she believes people with different views on an united Ireland can move forward together by “accepting that you always have things to learn, and just being respectful”.
A recent opinion poll for The Irish Times found that support for Irish unity has grown significantly in the past three years in Northern Ireland, though a clear majority remains in favour of remaining part of the United Kingdom.
Although the poll suggests that a Border poll would be soundly defeated in the North and passed comfortably in the South, the results over the past three years of annual polls suggest a rise in support for Irish unity in the North.
In addition, there are signs that “losers’ consent” among unionists – the willingness to accept the result of a referendum they would lose – is increasing.
