Ireland’s Future 3 Arena Dublin: Former Irish and Ulster rugby player Trevor Ringland queries thinking behind rally

While the event will champion a united Ireland, the Belfast solicitor pointed out that the NI Life and Times Survey of 2021 highlighted that “70% of people who live in Northern Ireland are happy enough to do so with only 4% not”.

He added: “The arrangements endorsed by the people of the whole island in 1998 are working, albeit there are some challenges ahead; look at how much better things are now compared to 25 years ago.

“So we need to keep working those arrangements, creating a Northern Ireland for everyone - great relations across these islands and great relations across this island we share.”

This will result in what he termed his interpretation of Seamus Mallon’s description of NI as “a shared home place”. But for Trevor this meant a shared home place of “Northern Ireland, this island and these islands”.

“So steady as she goes, we are doing well and it could be even better. And as we look around it is a beautiful place with great people and we are succeeding in a whole lot of ways in the world economy.

“Socially our young people are creating the sort of future that those of us who took difficult decisions in 1998 hoped would emerge. “Those who promote change based on simple demographics have been exposed by the census as showing the limitations in their own thinking; a future based on hatred is no future for anyone.”

The census showed that while 42.3% of NI people are Catholic, only 29.1% identify as exclusively Irish (as opposed to Irish and British, or Irish and Northern Irish).