Joe McHugh (Donegal North East, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

There were a few invaluable proposals made today. The one that stands out is for us to spend time with the groups and if we can do that, we will. We are always delighted to go up North. Indeed, we just decided in private session today that we will go up North again shortly. We would be willing to do that and meet groups from within loyalism and nationalism. We are trying to be the honest broker here and to facilitate the debate. If there are divergent views, we need to hear them all and hopefully we can do that.

Regarding where we are at, we are 15 years into the Good Friday Agreement and we are still asking the question as to how to move the process forward. We must start by finding out where we are at now. The UK Government, as recently as this year, said that it cannot achieve consensus on a pan-UK basis. We must find out where we are at now. The UK Government recognises the distinctive role for the Northern Ireland Government in looking at this issue in a distinctive fashion. We need to open the channels of conversation between Westminster and Dublin. As I said earlier, the Irish Government is committed to a Northern Ireland bill of rights and this committee can use its influence to help that conversation to progress. Deputy Crowe mentioned that we do not know if it will be on the agenda for the meeting between the Taoiseach and the Prime Minister but we can certainly request that it would be. Indeed, we would be delighted to do that.

We wish the witnesses well with their work. We will seek their counsel and advice on reaching out to different groups, given that they represent an umbrella group for more than 200 organisations. They have met them all and have worked tirelessly at a grassroots level and maybe the political needs to mix with the civil level more in Northern Ireland.