Alison O'Connor

speaker

355 appearances 2 recordings 1 series first heard May 2026 last heard 30 Aug

Alison O'Connor’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

Trend

recordings per month · last 12 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 2 in all, peaking in Aug 2026 with 1.

Appearances

newest first · ▶ plays the moment

Brendan O'Connor · The Newspaper Panel · 30 Aug 2026 podcast

Yes, this came up as a result of what was Andy Burnham's visit to the North, where he basically said that it was off the table.

Now, there was a big furore after that, and there was clarification downing street following that, saying that his commitment to every part of the Good Friday Agreement, which of course does have a commitment to a referendum, if the circumstances are correct.

And yesterday, just to update people, Gordon Brown, the former British Prime Minister, said,

said in an interview with The Guardian that it would be inevitable Ireland will become united at some point in the future.

Personally speaking, I think that what Andy Burnham said was right.

I think that that's not to say that you don't work towards it.

But I think by being seen to make it seem like something's going to happen by the end of the decade or putting a timeline on it,

is sending totally the wrong signal.

Micheál Martin has been criticised for moving too slowly on it, not injecting enough sort of urgency into it.

And maybe that's correct.

Maybe more could be done.

But I think that it's not the way to win hearts and minds on whatever side of the fence by making people feel that they're forced into it.

And I can never get over the amount of virtue signalling that goes on in opinion polls

When people are asked down south, would you like a united Ireland?

And they will automatically say yes.

Yet, when was any of them ever over the border?

The number of people I know who have never crossed the border and have no intention of doing so, who wouldn't have a notion of changing the flag, changing the national anthem,

any of those things, let alone, I mean, I think if you were to say, take the Iraq war and all of that out of it, if you were to turn around and the government turned around and set a proposal and say, listen, we have all this corporation tax at the moment rolling in, billions and billions.

Now is a really good time.

It's the best time for the South to afford the North.

Showing 121–140 of 355 · page 7 of 18