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Sportscaster and political analyst Joe Brolly was offline from last night, after a series of comments he made about the DUP.
Brolly was one of the few guests on the show who gave their thoughts on what a United Ireland would look like and how it would work.
In his opening remarks, Brolly described Northern Ireland as “a dysfunctional entity”.
However, he said that the country had become a “new” place due to the transformations it had undergone since the signing of the Good Friday Agreement.
Brolly said that England and its people had “zero kinship” with the Unionists of Northern Ireland.
Referring to previous comments made by DUP MLA Gregory Campbell, Mr. Brolly said that Mr. Campbell was living in “a fantasy land.”
“One of the big problems in the North has been the very, very poor leadership of the DUP, which has been interested in triumphalism and short-termism,” he said.
Speaking via video chat, Brolly said that he himself did not care if a united Ireland was achieved, but wanted “a sensible long-term solution” to the problems facing Northern Ireland and Ireland.
He then pointed to DUP leaders who, he said, often appeared to be publicly “laughing and giggling when people are trying to have a serious discussion.”
He accused the DUP of “laughing at the Irish language, laughing at Gaelic sports” and claimed that the party had made homophobic and racist statements.
At this point, host Claire Byrne said that Campbell, who was no longer on the show, would likely deny some of the charges made by Brolly.
Given Mr. Campbell’s absence and thus her inability to defend herself against Mr. Brolly’s comments, Ms. Byrne walked away from Mr. Brolly and returned to the guests in the studio.
The link to Mr. Brolly’s video chat was removed from the RTÉ studio screen.
After the show, Brolly tweeted that he was “taken off the air” due to his comments, and shared news screenshots that he claimed supported his points.
At the beginning of the program, Campbell said that a United Ireland “was not going to happen.”
“We’re not going to agree with that, so let’s move on in the real world,” he said.
“On the island of Ireland we have people who want to be and identify as British, and we have people who want to be and identify as Irish.
“Where are those groups – and a third group that may not feel comfortable identifying as none of them – in what jurisdiction are those identifications most clearly delineated and most comfortable with each other at the moment?
“The answer is in Northern Ireland. People can be Irish, they can be British or they can be neither. You can’t say that about the Irish republic.”
Campbell said that people in Northern Ireland would be better served by politicians working within the concept of what is going on at the moment, rather than going to “the land of the clouds to devise mechanisms that will not be agreed upon” .
A host of contributors spoke on last night’s show, including Sinn Féin frontman Mary Lou McDonald, Tánaiste Leo Varadkar, Taoiseach Micheál Martin, former Taoiseach John Bruton, former Irish rugby international Andrew Trimble, loyal activist Jamie Bryson and Northern Ireland Alliance Party Leader Naomi Long.
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