De Valera advocated forcefully moving one million Protestants

THE re-partition plan presented to Ted Heath in July 1972 attracted more attention than any of the other documents released this week.

The proposal amounted to ethnic cleansing, in which Catholics would be moved from Protestant areas of Northern Ireland to Catholic areas that could be handed over to the Republic.

The author of this contingency plan suggested in the event of a doomsday scenario recognised from the outset that trying to move half a million people would be highly dangerous. If people thought that was crazy, how would they characterise Eamon de Valera's plan to move four times as many people?