Ms Adrienne Reilly:

Deputy Crowe and Mr. Mark Durkan made reference to the all-Ireland charter of rights and the bill of rights, to their complementarity and to the question of which should come first. In the Good Friday Agreement, the strongest and most cohesive message was that a bill of rights, based on protecting human rights and supporting what is contained in the European Convention on Human Rights, was necessary. Before the last Human Rights Commission in Northern Ireland broke up and new commissioners were appointed, it put together a template involving a joint committee comprising members of the two human rights commissions in the North and the South. It was like a tracking device of existing complimentary human rights mechanisms. However, the bill of rights process has been much longer and much more robust. It has come from the bottom up. We have heard the suggestion today that perhaps we should start bottom-up engagement but we have had that for nearly 12 years. It has come from the bottom up, from communities and the member organisations and has come with real examples of human rights issues and the need for a framework for them. The bill of rights process is the best one, supported by a charter of all-Ireland rights. We need parity of esteem and equality of human rights treatment. That is why, from a consortium perspective, we strongly advocate that the bill of rights process is the one to provide the over-arching framework on which to move, either singularly or in a parallel process, so we do have equivalency of rights.