The debate that didn't happen
- Garbhan Downey
- Oct 3
- 3 min read
Earlier this year, Colmcille Press published Paul Gosling’s A New Ireland: A Five-Year Review, which highlights that - regardless of how you might vote - we, as a society, need to be making practical preparations for the ramifications of a referendum on Irish unity.
In the book, Paul argues three things with which many of us in the North West, the most marginalised region on the island, would agree:
The administrations with influence here - London, Dublin and Belfast - have not done nearly enough groundwork;
This island cannot afford to suffer another Brexit referendum debacle because of a lack of readiness; and
Stormont is now verging on fully dysfunctional.
One of the big areas we need to prepare for is elections. For decades, Irish citizens in the North have argued that they should, by right, be included in the selection process for the Irish head of state.
People in Donegal, of course, already have a vote. But their friends, neighbours and co-workers in Derry - which for centuries has been Donegal’s traditional county town and which, since the border has become fully porous, is the de facto regional capital - are excluded.
Twenty-seven years on from the Good Friday Agreement, which consolidated our right to citizenship, Irish passport holders and Irish speakers, living on this island, are refused a role in electing their leader.
So, to raise this and other issues, we invited the three presidential candidates to Derry.
In part, were asserting our right to hear from them directly how they propose to lead and represent us.
And in part, were asserting our right to hear from them how they will oversee the constitutional changes that will emerge over the duration of their presidential term and which will directly impact on our lives.
But most of all, we wanted them to come to acknowledge – and support – our right to participate in the process.
To this end, we booked St Columb’s Hall one of the North West’s oldest and renowned civic forums, which has previously played host to suffragette leaders such as Emmeline Pankhurst, political leaders such as Éamon de Valera, trade union leaders like Eleanor Marx and civil rights giants such as John Hume. It is, and has long been, a crucible for discussion and for change.
We then engaged an Irish-speaking moderator and a panel of experts - unpaid volunteers from both sides of the border and both sections of the Northern community, who brought expertise in many fields from constitutional law to education and human rights, to ask questions of the candidates on our behalf. We also organised a production team and a sound engineer to allow us to live-broadcast the event.
On September 9, as soon as we had our ducks in a row, we sent invitations to the three candidates asking them to take part in a hustings at the hall on October 8. We gave them a deadline of September 30 to respond, and we waited.
We followed up again through personal connections. And we waited.
We followed up on social media, repeatedly. And we waited.
Local and national media chipped in with news reports and OpEds on the event. And we waited.
Meanwhile, all the candidates appeared on RTÉ explaining how they supported a united Ireland. Surely, we thought, this would be a perfect opportunity to come to Derry and elaborate? So we reminded them of our offer. And we waited.
In fairness, Catherine Connolly’s campaign did get back to apologise that their candidate had a Dáil vote on the Budget the night of the debate and needed to be in Dublin.
But we heard nothing at all from the other two candidates. Not a word, not a line, not an email. It was as if we didn’t exist.
We had decided not to release tickets for the event until October 1, but in the interim hundreds of people from all over the island had got in touch with us to say they wanted to come. This had actually alarmed us a little in that we wanted to make sure that priority would be given to people from Donegal and Derry.
But, the deadline slipped away and, in the end, we couldn’t make it happen.
Until the next time.
