A meeting is taking place in Cardiff on Monday between representatives from Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland. Scottish Deputy First Minister John Swinney is set to meet with Rhun ap Iorwerth, the leader of the Welsh political party Plaid Cymru, and Michelle O’Neill, a vice president of Sinn Féin, a political party in Northern Ireland. The meeting comes at a time when discussions about a potential new Scottish independence referendum are ongoing. This would be a vote in which the people of Scotland would decide whether to leave the United Kingdom and become an independent country. Scottish Education Secretary Mairi McAllan told the BBC’s Sunday Show that the idea of an independence referendum is still "not off the table." She argued that holding such a vote would allow Scotland to "stand on its own two feet in the world" and "fulsomely pursue the better that we want." McAllan also said that the current situation within the UK is "unsustainable," citing support from the first ministers of both Northern Ireland and Wales for leaving the UK. She noted that the UK Government had not previously recognized this stance, but the Prime Minister recently told Parliament that Scotland should have a way to decide its own future. In a letter to Swinney, the Prime Minister argued that there is "no consensus for an independence referendum in Scotland." He claimed that focusing on independence and a referendum would take attention away from key issues like economic growth and the cost of living for families. The Prime Minister had previously told Swinney in a meeting in Glasgow that independence and a referendum are "off limits" because they would distract from these priorities. Former Conservative minister Lord Michael Gove, who appeared on the same BBC programme as McAllan, supported the Prime Minister's position. He said that discussions about independence are a deliberate strategy to shift focus away from the performance of the Scottish Government. Gove argued that efforts should instead be directed toward improving the Scottish economy, schools, the National Health Service (NHS), transport, and ferry services to remote islands.