Earlier this year Leo Varadkar was invited to the Keough School of Global Affairs, at Notre Dame University foe a public discussion of Irish current affairs specifically on current changes in Irish civic life and the political future of the island of Ireland.
The Keough-Naughton Institute is a multidisciplinary global research hub “bringing Ireland to Notre Dame, Notre Dame to Ireland and Ireland to the world”. The institute characteristically hosts programs and events to highlight how Ireland’s uniqueness speaks to the universal human experience.
Talking about the invitation in advance Varadkar said
“I am looking forward to visiting the University of Notre Dame, an institution which is a bridge between Ireland and America,……..I am particularly interested in the research the Keough-Naughton Institute is partnering on the future of the island, and I look forward to discussing that and how the relationship between Ireland and the United States can develop in a time of great change in our world.”
The visit took place from 3 to 4:30 p.m. on Sept. 20 (Friday) in the Hesburgh Centre Auditorium on the University of Notre Dame Campus. Varadkar used the invitation to launch a new inititive over reunification. Significantly this initiative included a call on all parties contesting the next Dáil general election to pledge in their manifestos to make Irish unity “an objective, not just an aspiration” and in addition, that a party consensus should be agreed to establish “a New Ireland Forum Mark II”, modelled on the project developed in 1983 by Fine Gael taoiseach Garret FitzGerald advised by the then SDLP leader John Hume. The original Project brought political and academic figures together to examine systematically different ways of bringing a “lasting peace and stability” to a new Ireland. t and was chaired by the president of University College Galway, Colm Ó hEocha. A report was produced in May 1984 that recommended three models: a unitary state, a federal-confederal state, or joint British-Irish authority over Northern Ireland. While none of its recommendations were finally adopted aspects of what had been discussed formed the basis of discussions that a decade and a half later bore fruit in the Belfast Agreement. The New Ireland Forum was itself arguably the single most significant initiative that intellectually primed the thinking behind the Agreement itself
The Irish Times report described his thinking
Varadkar said his speech a new Forum setting out to examine the difficult issues around reunification “would tease out some of the details about what a proposal on unification would look like and study how we would merge the two systems – judicial, education, welfare and health.”
Varadkar favours a New Ireland Forum Mark II rather than the citizens’ assemblies that have been frequently used in the Republic over the last decade to tease out contentious issues.
“This isn’t the topic where you pick a hundred citizens, randomly selected. There would be real difficulties, because a minority would come from the North and a minority, again, would come from a Protestant/unionist/loyalist background.
“I think they would feel crowded out,” said Varadkar, adding that the forum model would be able to include political parties and civic groups with a “better chance of producing a report and teasing out some of the issues”.
His call for a unified policy on the reunification of the island of Ireland comes after his earlier call in June for dedicated funding to be set aside from current budget surpluses in Ireland to pay for the transition to a reunified island. He was speaking at the Ireland’s Future event the SSE Arena, the site of Bill Clinton’s year 2000 welcome to the Belfast Agreement
In a less degenerate age, the sixteenth century Lord of all Ulster, but in my current incarnation, a one time film maker, animator and producer/director, currently a visual artist, iconographer, writer, historian, neo-Jacobite and, I believe, a political moderate with serious polycultural leanings. Even so, I would like the old place to perhaps develop some of its own culture rather than simply borrow styles from the homogeneous mix available for the discerning plagiarist from other International art sources. I remember the Queens Festival when it was worth going to, not so very long ago. Also, I’d give a lot to see a serious re-forestation project, deciduous please.
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