Ms Patricia McKeown:

I do not share Deputy Crowe's surprise that there are people in our society who are not signed up to a fair, just and equal society. The society I come from was constructed on the basis of discrimination and prejudice and out there is a world where there are those who deny women's rights, still practise religious and political discrimination and engage in all the other forms of discrimination that the Good Friday Agreement was designed to encapsulate as needing to change. They are still there. They are not always in government but they are in positions of power in our society and that is why strong enforcement of our equality laws and a justiciable bill of rights is so important.

Engaging on a regular basis with the political parties that oppose the suite of proposals over the years on a bill of rights is something we do as a matter of course. Of course we engage with them. We represent the people who elect them, our members, on a regular basis on the importance of human rights. When we gave evidence as ICTU to the British commission when it visited about a year ago, we were in the company of some tough loyalist working class communities who were giving evidence on why we should have a strong, justiciable bill of rights. They got it. They got it because they were engaging in a process of understanding what happens to people in an unfair, discriminatory society and they were identifying that as happening to their community as well as to "the others over there". We still live in a society where some people want to hold political power by saying people will lose something if they do not vote for a particular party and that "they" will get it all. It is as crude as that. We are a divided, riven society where sectarianism is alive and well and 15 years after the Good Friday Agreement, it is incumbent on all of us to something about that.

I can understand Mark Durkan shares our frustration that 15 years have passed and what do we do? That charter of rights, however, is supposed to be based on the existence of a strong justiciable bill or rights for Northern Ireland. I would not be opposed to a twin track process but we will not move away from the need for a strong, inclusive bill or rights because the absence of movement on that has delayed the charter of rights for those 15 years. We have years' experience of intensively working on a cross-party basis, with civil society and us on one side and the politicians on the other. It is not as simple as saying there are two, possibly three, political parties that would just vote against a bill of rights. Every political party in the North has a policy in favour of a bill of rights in some form, and has had for years. It is this bill of rights for Northern Ireland, that is part of the Good Friday Agreement, that is in dispute. I have seen resistance to it for many reasons. There is no dismissing the fact that some people are resisting it because it is a constitutional issue in their view. We are part of the United Kingdom, so why would we want a bill of rights for Northern Ireland? That was articulated many times. There are others who see it as an attack on the power of elected politicians. If there was a bill of rights, particularly social and economic rights, part of the power of elected representatives to make decisions on resource allocation is being taken away. As we got into the process of how bills of rights work, and the evidence came out that it would support the power of a politician to be part of the resource allocation process. Rather than distracting, it strengthens their role.

There was not, however, enough time. In these 15 years, we spent a year in a room, civil society and the political parties. Maybe much more time in the room would have changed people's attitudes and there would have been more learning. That must happen. We are saying it must happen again. Major work remains.

For those who would argue that 15 years have passed and we have managed without a bill of rights, I point to the fact that our people are dying faster than they were when that agreement was signed. It is working class people who are dying, it is the disadvantaged, it is the people who still suffer from traditional patterns of discrimination who are dying. They are not dying in a conflict, they are dying in a peace process, which is even more shocking.