Stormont’s Parliament Buildings could host sittings of the Dáil in the event of a united Ireland, Leo Varadkar has said.
The proposal is among a number being tabled by the former taoiseach in an address he’s scheduled to give in Derry on Thursday.
Mr Varadkar is speaking at an event organised by the SDLP’s New Ireland Commission which will explore “youth perspectives on the constitutional future of our island”.
He will speak alongside SDLP leader Colum Eastwood, with both setting out their ambitions for the constitutional future.
It has been reported that the former Fine Gael leader, who stepped down as taoiseach in April, will call urge each party running in the Republic’s forthcoming election to pledge that Irish unity “is an objective, not an aspiration”.
“For a lot of people unification is an aspiration, it’s an idea. Whereas I think it needs to become an objective for the next government in Ireland, no matter who’s in that government,” he said.
He said Irish unity was “not inevitable” but that “all trends point towards unification in the next few decades”.
Mr Varadkar said he could not put a timeline on when unification would happen but said there were “lots of different things in its favour”.
“There are demographics, the fact that the Republic is much more prosperous now than the north and also that Brexit has changed the UK’s relationship with Europe and the rest of the world,” he said.
The former Dublin TD said that having stepped back from frontline politics he was no longer concerned about “tiptoeing around that kind of stuff any more”
“There are many in Fine Gael who see us as ‘the united Ireland party’ and want us to be the party that plays a role, who see the work of the party’s founding fathers like Collins and Cosgrove incomplete and would like to see it completed,” he said.
In an interview with the Irish Times, he also addressed the common assumption that he is a hate figure among northern unionists due to his approach to the Brexit negotiations.
“While that may be true of some people, a lot of other people have favourable perception of me, notwithstanding that hardliners were targetting me,” he said.
In regards to the unity debate, Mr Varadkar said there was “almost too much concentration on the flags and symbols element”.
“But I think it’s the more practical implications we need to tease through,” he said.
Notably, the former Fine Gael leader said he is not an advocate of establishing a citizens’ assembly on Irish unity – a call often made by Sinn Féin – but instead supports a ‘New Ireland Forum Mark II’ approach.
“This isn’t a 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 the Protestant/unionist/loyalist background,” he said.
“I think they would feel crowded out.”
