Big Mick, your hope that the "brutality of Omagh won't have to be repeated" could imply that Omagh was necessary first time round. But maybe you didn't mean it that way.

As I think most of us here realise, "Ulster" has become (erroneous) shorthand for the six counties. Much as this usage annoys me, it is no basis for including three counties of the Republic in the referendum as McG proposed (with tongue firmly in his cheek I think). But the 26 counties (a sovereign state) get a direct say, and on that basis there's a case for a parallel UK-wide vote too. However that's rendered pointless by the Belfast (Good Friday) agreement's acceptance that NI will stay in the UK until its own electorate says otherwise.

Paddy: for "Dev's gobbledegook" you might have said "Archbishop McQuaid's goobledegook." More fool Dev for letting a cleric tell him what to put in the constitution, as diclosed in John Cooney's recent biography: "John Charles McQuaid, Ruler of Catholic Ireland." (see here.)