A veteran broadcaster, who is to retire from RTÉ after four decades, has said he believes a border poll is "inevitable".
Tommie Gorman, who has been RTÉ northern editor since 2001, said it had been a "pleasure" to see how Northern Ireland had progressed with the peace process, adding that it "can never ever take that for granted".
A native of Sligo, Mr Gorman started his journalistic career with the Western People in the late 1970s, moving to RTÉ as its northwest correspondent in 1980.
He subsequently was its Europe editor before moving to Belfast as northern editor in 2001.
Speaking on RTÉ's Late, Late Show on Friday about his retirement, the well-known journalist said time had "gone by too fast".
Asked about politics in the north, the Sligo man said he believed a border poll is "inevitable".
"That debate is going to take place but if we are to be any way true to what everyone has bought into in the peace process, we just have to make sure that when we are planning this debate that we don’t create a generation or a group of political homeless people and that could be unionists," he said.
"You can't have any sort of a youthful Ireland, shared island, if you have up to one million people feeling they have been left behind."
Mr Gorman said he was "excited" about where Northern Ireland is.
"When you live in Northern Ireland and when you realise there was a long time when people went to bed dreaming of how they were going to kill others," he said.
"The blood lust is gone and it's been a pleasure to be around to see that happen and I think we can never, ever take that for granted."
Former BBC NI reporter Vincent Kearney, who is currently RTÉ's northern correspondent, has been appointed to the role which he will take up in the Spring.
