Mr. Speaker, on good Friday, May 22 of this year, the people of both Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland voted overwhelmingly in support of a peace accord.
We in this House should salute this spirit of compromise. It clearly prevailed in the hearts and minds of the people of Northern Ireland, be they Protestant or Catholic. They managed to set aside centuries of bloody conflict and endeavoured to reconcile their differences through the fine art of compromise.
Once referred to as a “terrible beauty”, Northern Ireland is now well poised to take its rightful place in the international community, free from the sectarian hatred and division that has so pervaded the past 30 years of trouble.
We in this House, regardless of political affiliation, should follow this lesson of historic agreement: that the politics of division and exclusion is destructive and that the politics of reconciliation is the most effective means to building bridges across divided communities.
Indeed, examples of what the Irish poet Yeats termed the “indomitable Irishry” can be found in the contributions of Irish immigrants to Canada like Samuel McFall of Carrickfergus and Damian Curley of Galway.
Let us hope and pray that the honourable compromise reached in Northern Ireland holds true and that peace “comes dropping” quickly and remains victorious.