Mary Lou McDonald
speaker
367 appearances
3 recordings
3 series
first heard May 2026
last heard 7 Jul
Mary Lou McDonald’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 3 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 2.
Appearances
that if there were to be a preemptive move by a government in London to call the referendums, and you could not rule that out, what then for all of us?
There isn't now a world in which the lack of preparation, the refusal to have the conversations
to invite all of the perspectives to roll up her sleeves together and get the work done.
There isn't an excuse now for government not to do that.
So that's the sum total of the legislation.
It is novel in that legislation is never of this nature, has never come before the Dáil, but I'm absolutely convinced that the time is right.
I think, in fact, there's now
something of an urgency for government here in Dublin to actually get the ball rolling.
And I also want to say this to your listeners, being fully prepared does not preempt the outcome or the democratic verdict of the Irish people when referendums come to pass.
But I think we have to be sure that we have an informed process and that when the question is put
that people have their eyes wide open, that we've had the discussions, that we have the spade work done, that we've listened to all perspectives, that we've had the agreements, the disagreements,
and the democratic space, north, south, east and west, to actually talk those things out as a society and as an island nation.
Well, it would be, of course, by definition, it would have to be a 32-county assembly.
You do it in the same way, Matt, as occurred when Brexit came to pass and when we were all united in common purposes to protect the interests of Ireland, to make sure that our peace deal wasn't undermined, that there was no hardening of the border.
I'm sure you remember all of that passage of play and I remember
At that time, the then Taoiseach of Fine Gael, Taoiseach Enda Kenny, was bringing together a forum on Brexit and his initial instinct that it would only be a 26 county forum.
We pressed upon him the need for it to be an all island entity.
In fairness, he eventually saw the logic of that.
And when that forum was up and running,
Plenty of unionist people came to, I mean, the Alliance Party as a political party came and the other political parties didn't engage.
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