A quarter of a century from the Good Friday Agreement, Northern Ireland, and the whole island of Ireland, has been described as being in “a time between times”. The pace of change in recent years has at times been bewildering. The extraordinary tumult of Brexit has fundamentally altered the UK state, with the impacts of steady economic decline and impoverished public services becoming ever more depressingly clear by the day.

These phenomena are even starker in a Northern Ireland marked by chronic political dysfunction and tribal stalemate. It is in this context, and with the hopeful prospect of re-joining the European Union as much as on the reunification of territory, that the debate on a different constitutional future, in a New Ireland, is finding new resonance. South of the border, the extraordinary economic success story that the Good Friday Agreement helped to catalyse continues, but with questions about the distribution of wealth and provision of healthcare and housing. Though the debate on constitutional futures is distinct across the island, there is growing interest in the potential of a New Ireland.

The New Ireland Commission aims for radical new approach to our politics: one that is about engaging citizens, innovative policymaking and setting out an inclusive and ambitious blueprint for a New Ireland. This document sets out six core principles for our movement to build an inclusive, hopeful, reconciled New Ireland