The momentum towards Irish Unity is gathering at a pace – Pat Cullen, Sinn Fein
Sinn Féin MP for Fermanagh and South Tyrone Pat Cullen addressed the How do we chart a path to a Border Poll and win it? event hosted in Westminster by the Irish Border Poll campaign on 20th May 2025- you can read her remarks below.
My friends,
It’s great to join you for tonight’s discussion. This is an important and necessary discussion to be having. Critically, it’s an important discussion to be having with you: the Irish community and supporters of Irish unity here in Britain.
It is a discussion that ought to be heard within these so-called “corridors of power” here in Westminster. Because no matter how much its opponents might wish it to go away, the political momentum towards Irish Unity is not stalling. In fact, it is only gathering at a pace.
Since October 2022, my party, Sinn Féin, has instituted a Commission on the Future of Ireland to facilitate and platform such conversations. Since its induction, the work of the Commission has only expanded.
In the last two months the Commission has held a Mid Ulster Peoples Assembly in the Seamus Heaney Homeplace in Bellaghy; an Irish language themed discussion in Bhaile Ghib in County Meath; a climate crisis conference ‘One Island, One Environment’ hosted in Dublin; and an EU & Irish Unity meeting inside the European Parliament in Brussels.
In addition, events have also been held in Washington and New York in the United States and in Montreal in Canada. Just last week, at the Balmoral Show, the Commission hosted a Rural Communities in a New Ireland discussion.
I am very excited that next week I will be out in the United States myself to address Commission meetings in Nashville, Cincinnati, and Chicago. And in early June, we will see a Health and Care in a New Ireland themed event in St Comgall’s Belfast. So, there’s plenty of work being done.
Together we must take the skills, the creativity, the sense of community and solidarity that we enjoy in Ireland, to steadily build the unity campaign. It will not happen overnight, but we must all pull in the same direction.
Let me be clear, the desire for Irish unity is bigger than Sinn Féin. We welcome that it is. Because it has to be. We can’t do it all on our own.
That is why we welcome the work of the SDLP’s New Ireland Commission. That is why we welcome Irish Border Poll, Trade Unionists for a New and United Ireland, and Labour for Irish Unity. It is heartening to see independent civic organisations like Ireland’s Future – the Constitutional Conversations Group – and the Women’s Assemblies – bringing people together to discuss the future.
It is welcome to see a variety of organisations and groups setting out their stall for the unity debate that is to come. Because we know that it is coming. With each passing week, we see detailed scholarly studies and footnote-laden academic papers, all exploring the question of potential constitutional change in Ireland.
Over the past year, the Implementation of the Good Friday Agreement Committee which I sit on as a Northern MP, has published two detailed reports on constitutional change. In its July 2024 report, it concluded:
“there are no insurmountable economic or financial barriers to unification. That the economic success of a new Ireland is in our own hands. What is needed now is detailed and ambitious preparations.”
So, with all this positivity and forward momentum, it is unfortunate that we have a government in Dublin that is, with some honourable exceptions, dragging its feet on the question of Irish unity.
As has been mentioned, we have a Taoiseach who tells us that ‘now is not the time’ to discuss Unity. That we must achieve reconciliation, something that would be hard to quantify or measure by any metric, before we can even begin to discuss constitutional change! Essentially, we’re being told that the North must wait.
Well, I’m here to stay that we will not be deterred, and we will not be delayed. No Taoiseach has the right to set the pace of our journey. No Taoiseach has the right to silence our demand for Irish unity.
I would encourage the Taoiseach to come north and talk to ordinary people. This is a time of incredibly hope and optimism. A time of opportunity and possibility in the North.
Now is not the time to waiver. Not only is the Taoiseach wrong, he will be proven wrong. We will have a referendum on Irish Unity. And, most importantly, we will win that referendum on Irish Unity. To begin such a discussion on any other basis would be a disservice to the Irish people.
As they say, the first rule in politics is to learn how to count! And we have seen repeated opinion polls show us that the gap is narrowing between supporters and opponents of Irish Unity. In the North, one of the most interesting poll findings of recent times was that a significant growth in the number ‘Northern Ireland Protestants’ hold the opinion that, in the event of Irish Unity, they would either “happily accept it” (at 29%) or while not being entirely happy, they would nonetheless, ‘live with it’ (48%).
Meanwhile, across the border in the south, we regularly see both a clear majority in favour of unity. Plus, a clear majority recognising the need to prepare and plan for it in the time ahead.
So, my friends, with the need for preparation now broadly accepted, there is an even greater appreciation that a referendum is only a matter of time. I might say, it is now question of when and not if.
Therefore, we must now begin to move the discussion beyond the realm of aspiration and into the space of a tangible, strategic project. While the debate has never been so well-platformed and aired as it currently is; we now need to begin the work of translating that high-level debate onto the ground-level.
We need to communicate the need for unity far more clearly than we have so far. Beyond rhetoric and emotion. Because real political transformation is never produced by feelings alone, it is produced by material interests.
We have to acknowledge that, for ordinary people going about their daily lives, a united Ireland might not seem relevant to their immediate needs and wants. Yes, they might support Irish unity, it might seem like the common-sense approach, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they believe it’s a realistic or affordable proposal.
And it is on that ground that we now have to turn our attention. We need to speak a language that people understand, with a message that reaches them where they are today. We have to re-evaluate what we’re doing and respond to people’s needs.
We have to accept that Ireland today is not the Ireland of the 1950s, 60s, 70s, and so on. Imaginative and deliverable proposals must be put forward. With an acceptance that Ireland will continue to evolve long after reunification. With this in mind, the diligent work of civic and political coalition-building must intensify and focus its efforts.
Because while it can sometimes be hard to communicate the benefits of a hypothetical unified nation, there is little challenge in highlighting today the material costs of a partitioned island.
So, in conclusion, all of this will all require a mature and responsible response from the British Government. And that is why British politicians in Westminster need to know that these discussions, these conversations, are happening. Whether they like it or not.
- Pat Cullen is the MP for Fermanagh & South Tyrone and former General Secretary of the Royal College of Nursing- you can follow her on Facebook, Twitter/X and Instagram.
- You can follow the Irish Border Poll campaign on Twitter/X.
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