Professor Monica McWilliams:

I understand perfectly. The Deputy is quite correct. Many people would ask, "What bill of rights? What was that? Where is it?", particularly in light of all their engagement only for the process to have gone nowhere. A number of organisations in Northern Ireland are still working on it. These include the Human Rights Consortium, the Committee on the Administration of Justice and a number of others. By the way, their funding is running out because Atlantic Philanthropies is winding down its spending. They are facing a crisis. I mention this because as organisations become part of civic society, they have been left to do a lot of the heavy lifting but they do not have the necessary resources. A Northern Ireland human rights fund was established to enable them to do so. In our report we stated that if we feltthe civic forum, or a North-South civic forum, was the place to put this and try to raise awareness, so we would have done so.

Our concern is that this is a responsibility of political parties and Governments. Civic forums have been consulted. The advice of my commission and the previous one was drafted and is currently still agreed by the current commission. That is the input from the civic forum. I do not think it can do any more. It is now over to the political process to lift this and take it forward.