At the risk of engaging in overstatement, Fine Gael’s latest intervention in the Irish unity conversation may well turn out to be a game changer.

On paper, it’s arguably the most significant step towards ending partition that a ruling party in the Republic has made for decades, even though it has yet to receive official government backing.

The Anglo-Irish Agreement was an important and necessary development that reset relations between neighbours, while the Good Friday Agreement ensured politics replaced violence as the theatre for constitutional debate.

More recently, the Shared Island initiative, driven by Taoiseach Micheál Martin, has been an important development with tangible outcomes, but what Simon Harris is proposing differs, because it’s an overt effort to advance the cause of reunification rather than simply improve cross-border relations.

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