McDonald: I want new Ireland unionists can live in

MARY Lou McDonald has said that she wants to build a united Ireland that DUP leader Arlene Foster could live in.

Writing in today’s Belfast Telegraph, the Sinn Fein president said she wanted “an Ireland in which you can comfortably be Irish or British, or both or neither”.

The Dublin TD was speaking after Mrs Foster told a documentary that she might leave in the event of a border poll delivering reunification.

“If it were to happen, I’m not sure that I would be able to continue to live here, I would feel so strongly about it,” Mrs Foster said.

“I would probably have to move.”

Ms McDonald said “privately many unionists acknowledge that change is coming”.

She added: “I am an Irish republican, a United Irelander. The united Ireland I seek is not simply adding the north on to the south. It is about a new and agreed Ireland.

“An Ireland in which you can comfortably be Irish or British, or both or neither.

“The united Ireland I want to build has to be home for my family and for Arlene Foster and her family.

“We will not repeat the mistakes of the past.

“We cannot countenance the exclusion or discrimination of any section of our people in a new Ireland.”

She also said that “the unionist veto is gone”.

“The notion of a perpetual unionist majority is gone, lost in the last two elections,” she said.

“I write these things not to be triumphant or provocative, but because they are signposts of change.

“Nothing stands still. Change is coming.”