Ms Sara Boyce:

Ms Gildernew said we need real examples and both I and the consortium agree. This is what the consortium has been working towards for many years. Given our broad membership, with over 200 organisations, the real concrete issues are our starting point. Many of these are social and economic issues, but there are also civil and political rights issues where breaches of rights are happening. We take these issues and consider how looking at these issues through a rights-lens or framework would change things. That is how we can convince people of the difference the protections in a bill of rights would make.

Linking this to the example given by Ms Gildernew in terms of young people with disabilities, I know from our organisations - we work with many young 16 to 21 year olds - that some of them have learning disabilities and there is an issue with regard to the lack of continuation of services once they hit 18 and move into adulthood. I am conscious that I am here as part of the consortium rather than in terms of a young people's organisation, but I would like to comment on where I see a bill of rights making a difference. The consortium has been arguing that it does not look at the content of the bill of rights per se, because it is up to individual member organisations to argue for the content. However, one of the bottom lines we have as a consortium is that it should build on international human rights standards, which are only minimum.

Two obvious standards in this regard are the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and the more recent UN Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities. In terms of the rights of children, article 23 would shift the debate and discussion and the parameters around which some of the decisions are being made or are not being made. Currently, the only recourse desperate parents have - parents of children with additional needs are desperate - is a judicial review. This should not be their only recourse, but should be an option of last resort. This is not where we want things to be. We want to have a framework that informs how policy decisions are being made. As Mr. Durkan said, these decisions are often made by civil servants. Such a framework must become part of the norm of how things are done and how decisions are made.

I am sure Ms Flynn and Ms Reilly will also want to pick up on the issue raised by Mr. Durkan of where resistance comes from. He said that resistance often comes from the permanent government and its mandarins, the civil servants. In the North, our experience comes from the experience of the Human Rights Act and here in the South the experience comes from the constitutional referendum on the rights of children. There will always be some opposition to these moves until they are in place and up and running. Recently, I attended the launch by the Northern Ireland Policing Board of its annual human rights report and it was very encouraging to hear such a robust defence of the Human Rights Act by one of the assistant chief constables. This Act is part of how the board makes its decisions and it sees the Act as a useful and helpful tool in terms of day to day decisions. That is where we want to get to with the bill of rights.