The hon. and gallant Gentleman seems to have overlooked the fact that what he does not think is likely to happen now in Ireland, or what is not necessary, has now happened in relation to this country and the other members of the European Communities simply because of our membership of the Communities. The position now is quite different, not merely with regard to Northern Ireland but in our relationship with other nations. There is also the impending exploration of the Celtic Sea and the Continental Shelf around Ireland. I hope that there will be discoveries, North and South. I am sure that there will be discoveries in the South and that this will interest people in the North. I hope that it will ultimately beckon them. It is these positively helpful conditions that I recognise as making for a hopeful development. Therefore, I do not regard the council, as does the hon. and gallant Gentleman, as a sentence of death for any of the people of Northern Ireland.

The people will judge the council by results. That is more important than any of the hon. and gallant Gentleman's abstractions about sovereignty. It will have ample opportunities to prove itself by these results within the context of the EEC. As it evolves, this Parliament will be very glad increasingly to delegate the practical exercise of its sovereignty to an all-Ireland institution. The Council of Ireland's foundations have been well laid. It is now up to the ordinary people, of Ireland, North and South.

I am sorry that the hon. Member for Antrim, North (Rev. Ian Paisley) is not in the Chamber at present. I wanted to address myself, in conclusion, to him. I wanted to remind him that it now remains for the people of Ireland, North and South, for the people who work—not the people who rant and divide neighbour from neighbour, but the ordinary people who are in the enormous Majority in Northern Ireland as well as in the South—to explore the possibilities of this new instrument, to lend themselves to its development and thus to endow it with their moral authority. It will then acquire a strength that will be proof against all the works of the wreckers, the destroyers, the Paisleyites and the Craigites.