Professor Monica McWilliams:

At some stage it would be good if civic society and political parties could sit down around the table, as they once did following the St. Andrew's Agreement, in a forum to discuss a bill of rights. That is an uneasy place for both to be in Northern Ireland because they are not accustomed to sitting around a table as they are in the Republic of Ireland, where there are social and economic partnerships and many European partnership models. We do not have any such examples in Northern Ireland at present.

What came out of that forum was that perhaps it did not stay together long enough to reach an agreement on certain rights but that a couple of options on how to move the process forward did emerge. We lifted them into the Human Rights Commission and did our best with them. We are not saying that civic society should be left out of the discussion because it has a lot to add in Northern Ireland in terms of peace building, human rights and transitional justice. All I am saying is that we would like to hear from the political parties and Government on this issue. That is the current situation, which brings me to my response to the second question.

I would simply ask whether Sinn Féin or any other party put the issue of the introduction of a bill of rights down for discussion at any of the recent rounds of talks and, if so, what priority it was given. In the course of our interviews for the report, we put this question to a number of people in both Governments and in the United States and the answer was that the issue is no longer really a priority for any of the parties and does not receive the priority it once did.

Deputy Crowe raised the issue of a potential undermining of sovereignty. If one listens to what the Judiciary in the United Kingdom is saying - in the Supreme Court and in the High Courts of Northern Ireland and other courts in the North - one will hear that this has never been the case. The UK has only ever lost 2% of all its cases at the Strasbourg court. Moreover, a new protocol is being introduced which Ireland, too, will probably have to sign up to. Protocol 15 allows for a large margin of appreciation for domestic jurisdictions in terms of how they apply the European Convention on Human Rights in the context of the principle of subsidiarity. That is about to be introduced and is something the Prime Minister will take into account for the future.

Members may be aware that Baroness Hale has argued it would be a huge step backwards if the convention rights were to be scrapped. It seems clear there is no issue of sovereignty. The person with perhaps the greatest expertise on this subject is Dominic Grieve, the Conservative Party's former Attorney General, who makes a plea for everybody to stop talking about sovereignty. If anything, he has said, sovereignty needs human rights. If there is a view that parliament should be able to do whatever it likes, he argues, then that is not what sovereignty was ever about. Mr. Grieve has written extensively on the issue in recent months and it is important he should so as a former Attorney General appointed by the Conservative Government. He makes a very important point. I hope I have answered all the questions.