Former taoiseach Leo Varadkar speaking during a pro-unity group Ireland's Future event at the SSE Arena, Belfast on Saturday. Photograph: Brian Lawless/PA Wire
David Puttnam: ‘The Irish invented immigration and went through every single form of the immigrant experience’Call for new rules relating to tax and welfare for cross-Border workers Though it started deliberately slowly, Shared Island is now significant in cash terms, with a €1 billion budget behind it, and significant, too, in having overcome the objections of unionists at the outset to having anything to do with it.
Clearly relaxed now that the pressures of office have been left behind, Varadkar joked that he had not raised his funds idea with his successor, Simon Harris, or, just as importantly, with Minister for Finance Michael McGrath. Sinn Fién president Mary Lou McDonald speaking on a panel at the Ireland's Future conference in Belfast on Saturday
If Varadkar is right, and if the next Dublin government is proactively seeking unity, rather than simply arguing for reconciliation, then that will have a not-insignificant impact on the politics of the island, and between Dublin and London. There are a lot of “ifs” in all of this, admittedly. Labour leader Ivana Bacik speaking at the Ireland's Future conference at the SSE Arena, Belfast. Photograph: Brian Lawless/PA Wire
However, there are times when gut instincts in Ireland’s Future offer arguments to its opponents that it sees progress coming on the back of demographic change and a sectarian headcount, rather than by overcoming divisions in Northern Ireland’s society. “But worse by far, some of your most vocal leading lights have from the outset been expressing their opposition to it. They obviously believe that unionist/Protestant votes won’t be needed in any Border poll,” he declared.
“Now think about that for a second, coming as it does more than 100 years after Irish independence,” said Adams, who was deeply involved in the efforts in the early 1990s that led to the loyalist paramilitaries’ “abject and true remorse” ceasefire in 1994. Varadkar agreed. Apologies from Republicans have been issued in “general language, expressing sorrow that everyone suffered, but that will not be enough. I think if you’re going to start to change minds and hearts among partisan people then a much more stronger, specific apology for what was done is needed. That would help to change minds,” he told the SSE audience.
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