I would like to speak about a Bill that is due to be debated in the Dáil later. The Bill in question relates to preparations for reunification and follows on from a report of the Good Friday Agreement committee in October 2024, less than two years ago, in which all parties agreed that the Government should take the necessary steps to begin the preparatory work that would obviously be required before a referendum is held. It is in all of our interests to make sure that the process towards reunification is democratic, stable and smooth, with the maximum amount of information for those who will be voting. The Bill also follows on from motions which were debated in this Chamber and the Dáil and which, again, were supported by parties supported.

The practical next step is the legislation to which I refer, which essentially calls for two things. The first is for the Government to prepare a Green Paper on reunification. The process for doing so should take about 18 months. This would allow the Government to put together the resources to do all of the work necessary and set out its ideas about how reunification would happen and how various compelling questions in the debate on this matter, which is already happening all over Ireland, would be answered by the Government. The second thing the Bill would do would be to provide for the Government to establish a citizens assembly that would give the citizens of Ireland, members of the diaspora and, in particular, those in Ireland who are of a Protestant-unionist identity or a British identity the opportunity to engage formally with this process in order to ensure that their voices are heard.

In the almost 30 years since the Good Friday Agreement happened, the political landscape changed and changed utterly. We in the North now have a nationalist, republican First Minister in a state where it was determined that that would never happen. In Britain there are pro-independence First Ministers in Scotland and Wales. We have had the Brexit chaos and we are now heading for a seventh Prime Minister in ten years. There really is a desire north of the Border to get ourselves out of this situation to form something which is completely new in a stable situation where we can actually determine our own future and not have it determined as a consequence of other people's interests and actions.

This is really all about preparation, dialogue and engagement. A necessary part of this will also be engagement with the British Government because that dialogue needs to begin now. The still unfolding chaos from Brexit in Britain could lead to even more erratic governments in the future, so that engagement needs to happen now. We have engaged with all parties across the Oireachtas in the last number of weeks. We have had some very positive feedback from people. Obviously, all of the parties represented here subscribe to the idea of Irish unity. We might have different views on how that might come about or decided; that is a matter for Committee Stage of this Bill. I have been very heartened by the fact that there is a very strong desire to see this necessary work begin in the here and now. I sincerely hope that that is reflected in the approach to the debate tonight and that we get this legislation through its Second Stage. Let us then go into Committee and determine how we would bring this work forward.