00:00 The Common Travel Area is incredibly helpful, incredibly useful.
00:05 Certainly someone like myself who lives half a mile from the actual border itself,
00:10 it's a fundamental part of my life.
00:15 But it was designed in the 1920s for an Ireland and indeed a UK that doesn't exist today.
00:22 We're incredibly diverse countries.
00:24 We've welcomed people who've enriched us with their own culture as well as their labour.
00:29 Over the last number of decades.
00:32 And those people don't share in the same benefits that I do as someone born here
00:39 in terms of the rights under the Common Travel Area.
00:42 It may scare the life out of the Department for Foreign Affairs or others in the government,
00:47 but is it time to review the Common Travel Area that's more reflective of actually
00:52 the island of Ireland as it is today and indeed these two islands as we find them today?
00:58 Because it seemed ridiculous to me.
01:02 My wife's a daily communicant.
01:03 She goes to mass every morning.
01:05 There's a Filipino priest who's serving in the local chapel in Derry.
01:11 And they were doing a bus trip into Donegal and the priest couldn't go.
01:16 And I just thought, why?
01:17 What's going on there?
01:18 But it's because of the migration issues post-Brexit and he doesn't have the rights to actually go.
01:23 So he didn't take the risk.
01:24 Same thing's happening on both sides of the border around school children on school trips.
01:29 I know it sounds nonsense and ridiculous and it's not the biggest economic issue in the world.
01:36 But it's a really important issue for people and individuals.
01:39 And what it says about this is an open, welcoming place for people to come and make a contribution
01:45 to civic and economic life.
01:47 So maybe there is a time to try to find the original document,
01:51 dust it off and make it fit for purpose for the Ireland that we have now,
01:55 north and south and for the UK as it stands.
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