Dr. Alasdair McDonnell:

It would be remiss of me to start posing questions to my colleagues. However, I wish to make a background point. While I do not want to bash anybody here today, unionism is reneging on many of the things agreed in the Good Friday Agreement. The DUP Members will individually and collectively tell us that they never signed up to the Good Friday Agreement. Many of us are suspicious that they would like to dismantle as much of it as possible. The rest of us believe the Good Friday Agreement is the only compass we have to try to sort out our society in the North. There is a need for openness and we need to allow people in to participate. The civic forum allowed the churches, business community, trade unions and some representation from each of the political parties and various others to have a status and an input. It was not nearly as powerful as the distinguished Seanad, but it was a sort of senate behind the Assembly in a greatly diluted form that allowed issues to be raised.

That is the point I make to colleagues around the table. That wheel - it was not just a cog - was taken out of the system and there is deep frustration among civic unionism that those who wish to be progressive do not have the space or opportunity to create and influence potential progress. There is deep frustration among civic unionism that the Unionist political parties did not support Dr. Haass's effort because many of the people - both individuals and groups - want to see progress and stability and a degree of prosperity emerging.

That is the nub of this. The Chairman asked for proposals. This committee is the Joint Committee on the Implementation of the Good Friday Agreement. The civic forum was a core wheel in the machinery of the Good Friday Agreement. The Good Friday Agreement will not function to completion and to its ultimate potential without a civic forum in some shape or form. While I would like to see it in the shape and form that existed ten or 12 years ago, even a civic forum - dare I tempt fate - in slimmed-down form would allow people to give an input.

The disillusion that is setting in because of the dysfunction around some of the politics in the North will ultimately create space, as Mr. Dallat, MLA, has rightly said for the loyalist paramilitaries who are rummaging around Coleraine. It will gradually go to the point where it could blow up again and none of us want to see that.