Mr. Paul Maskey:

The committee has been up on several occasions speaking to members of the loyalist community. To me, the stumbling block is with mainstream Unionism, it is not with loyalism because loyalists will tell me every day of the week, no matter how often I meet them whether in constituency offices or at different fora, that they have no representation. They have cried out in recent years for some sort of representation. I believe a civic forum would be a good way of going about that. The question is who to put the pressure on to ensure a civic forum comes to fruition. That is one of the main challenges faced by all of us in society, including this committee. I agree with the approach and we need to ensure that the Governments put as much pressure on Unionism to do that.

We should possibly write to Office of the First Minister and the Office of the Deputy First Minister as well to ask for their views and thoughts because the decision has been passed by the assembly. We should ask when the decision will be implemented and what the views are. It may come back that there is no agreement or we might not get a letter back. It might be blocked because of the veto from the DUP. I believe we need to put pressure on to see if we can get some sort of feedback and establish what that is. Then, let us take it from there. It is clear to me that when the audit is done on the Good Friday Agreement this area will definitely show up as one of the elements missing. We need to clearly decide how to get the pressure on people. It may be that we should ask the people we have engaged with from the loyalist community for their views on whether they want a civic forum. I believe that some of the people who we have met in the past from the loyalist community may want to accept that as well.