People in the Republic will one day need to offer apologies to northern nationalists for forgetting about them “for a very long time” after partition, former taoiseach Leo Varadkar has said.
Speaking in Dungannon, Co Tyrone, on Monday night, Varadkar said reconciliation was usually spoken about as if “it’s just about the two main communities of Northern Ireland becoming reconciled with each other”.
However, Varadkar told a conference organised by Mid-Ulster District Council that “we need to talk about the totality of reconciliation” required in any debate on constitutional change.
The South “went off and built our State and largely forgot about what happened up here for a very long time, certainly for decades. There’s a reconciliation process [needed], where we, to a certain extent, say sorry for the fact that that happened.”
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During the Brexit years, he said, he had only truly understood the depth of feeling on the issue when he told “the nationalist people of Northern Ireland that they wouldn’t be left behind again.
“It was only after I said that and people contacted me that I really understood how deeply that’s felt by hundreds of thousands of people north of the Border, that they were pretty much left behind,” he said.
However, Varadkar warned pro-unification campaigners that a unity referendum should not be rushed because it could set the process back by 30 years if it were held too quickly and defeated.
Saying he was “reluctant” to set a date, he added: “I don’t think we’re ready. Not at the moment, anyway. I would have a concern that if we go into a Border poll too quickly, that it would not just be divisive, but be defeated.”
Pointing to the defeat of the 1999 referendum about making Australia a republic, he said the issue there had been rushed: “Everyone thought Australia would be a republic by now. It’s not happening anytime soon. If you get it wrong, you lose it.”
[ When is the time to trigger a Border poll?Opens in new window ]
A strong majority of people in the Republic have voiced support for Garvaghy Road residents facing an Orange Order march, but “there’s always two sides to that story”, he told his Dungannon audience.
“A lot of people south of the Border don’t really understand Northern Ireland, don’t come here often enough. What they see on display kind of makes them afraid and makes them worried,” he said.
“It makes them wonder about whether we’re ready for a united Ireland,” Varadkar said, adding that should be borne in mind “when it comes to a resolution to this”.
The South “didn’t have a choice” about partition, and it could not have been avoided, he said: “But [for the Republic] to actually make a decision to reject a united Ireland when there would be a majority for it in the North would be a very different thing.”
Drumcree “isn’t reflective of Northern Ireland”, where “hundreds of marches, orange, black, and green, happen without too much trouble”, he said, adding it must not damage the legacy left by this year’s Belfast Fleadh.
[ The Irish Times view on the Fleadh in Belfast: the unifying power of musicOpens in new window ]
Taoiseach Micheál Martin’s call for clearer rules on calling a Border poll did “not get enough attention”, he said, adding that the Belfast Agreement was understandably “vague because it had to be”.
Many questions need answers, he said, including whether it would be called on the back of election results, opinion polls or a mix of both, or whether long-term residents who were not Irish or British citizens could vote.
Supporting a trigger mechanism, Varadkar said the Irish Government should be able formally to urge London to call a Border poll if it “felt they were dragging their heels” on calling one that would pass.
