Shared Island Unit
Dail Éireann — 2021-04-21
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Mick Barry (PBP), Cork North-Central

I will oppose any measure which would increase sectarian division among ordinary people. That includes any hardening of the Border North-South and any hardening of the border between east and west. Hardening of the east-west border would serve to increase the insecurity of ordinary Protestants about the future and generate a sense of their being coerced into an economic united Ireland. I am not sure whether I am the only Dáil Deputy who issued such a warning in the Brexit debate in this House. Does the Taoiseach not accept that a peace process controlled by establishment parties and sectarian politicians has failed to deliver either a peace dividend or overturn sectarian division? Finally, I salute the actions of the Belfast bus workers against sectarian violence. The half a dozen actions such as the ones they carried out are what we need for a real peace process uniting Catholic and Protestant working-class communities.

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Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted.

Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2021-04-21/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:49:11+00:00
Sitting date: 2021-04-21