ULSTER Unionist leader Mike Nesbitt has told students in West Belfast that if nationalists want a referendum on Irish unity then it’s not in their interest to describe Northern Ireland as a failed state.
Mr Nesbitt was speaking at St Mary’s University College on the Falls Road as part of an event organised by the John and Pat Hume Foundation. The Stormont Health Minister spoke about his own upbringing and working as a television broadcast journalist at the time of the signing of the Good Friday Agreement. Looking back at the formation of the northern state over 100 years ago, he said he can understand how “creating a country with a built-in majority of unionists was deeply frustrating to nationalists”.
“You could have a Stormont election every month – Unionists were always going to win,” he said. “And the fact is, nationalists by and large decided they were not going to play that game. And by and large unionists could have done more to reach out to their nationalist neighbours. That does not justify a single death. Nobody needed to die for us to get where we are today.”
Mr Nesbitt said majoritarianism does not work in the north and power-sharing is the only way forward.
“Unionists – or most of us – realise we cannot govern this place without the active support of nationalists and republicans. Nationalists and republicans – or most of them – realise they can no longer describe this place as a failed, ungovernable statelet," he said.
“For the first time, everyone – unionists, nationalists and republicans – sense the need to make Northern Ireland work. Our motivations may be different, but that’s no obstacle to make this place function for the benefit of all.”
He said unionists have always wanted to make Northern Ireland work "to justify partition".
“Nationalists haven’t," he added. "But when was the last time you heard a senior nationalist politician describe this place as a ‘failed, ungovernable statelet’? If you are the lead party of government, it’s not a sentiment you are likely to endorse. Especially if you are looking forward to a border poll and the potential for constitutional change.
St Mary's University College Principal, Professor Peter Finn, with Ulster Unionist leader Mike Nesbitt
“If you are voting in Dublin, or Galway, or Wexford or Limerick, what’s attractive about voting to adopt a failed, ungovernable statelet of 1.9 million people, people you don’t know or particularly like – and who will require thousands of your tax Euro to survive?”
Speaking about his two sons who were three and ten-months-old when the Good Friday Agreement was signed in 1998, he said they are both now living in England.
“My measure of success is creating the circumstances where young people like yourselves leave here only because they want to – not because they feel they have to,” he said.
“I am tired of hearing about the potential of this place. I want to turn potential to reality – for you, for your peers and for everyone.”
