Professor Colin Harvey:

To respond to Senator Craughwell's question about the common travel area, the widespread view is that it needs to be properly legally underpinned. There has been a call for an international treaty to underpin it. We await the details of the memorandum of understanding, but there is a real sense, linked with the issue of formalisation, that the common travel area needs to be underpinned properly in law.

If the United Kingdom ever does get around to leaving the European Union, one of conversations will be on the political declaration. I realise, given the current shambolic mess that is British politics, some of this is not that straightforward. If there is a conversation on the political declaration, it might include the issues about which we are talking. In my paper I propose an amendment to the birthright provisions. There may be other proposals that would copperfasten some of the rights issues in the context of a conversation on the future relationship.

On the Good Friday Agreement question, the Committee on the Administration of Justice has used language reflecting a renaissance of the peace process. There is a sense that we need to renew the agreement. There was talk this afternoon of reading it afresh. There is a lot within it that needs to be renewed and implemented. Perhaps that is where the focus needs to be placed, rather than on opening it up for conversation. On the European Court of Justice, in the context of debates on rights and equality and the social protections provided for, EU law does things in the United Kingdom that no other area of law does, particularly when it comes to enforcement and enforceability. We need to bear in mind that its loss will be keenly felt post Brexit.

To respond to Senator Black's question about voting rights which is linked with the conversation on paragraph 52, there is a sense there are things the Irish Government could do in the area of voting rights for Irish citizens in the North.

The message coming from the EU seems to be that this is a matter for the Irish Government. It crystalises a real test for the Government to match some of the language around abandonment and not leaving people behind with doing it in practice. The issue of going forward with voting rights is a challenge for the Government, for example. We will see it later in the year on the matter of presidential voting rights. To be clear, Ireland is an outlier in voting rights for those who reside outside the State. It would be very much in tune with European and international developments for Ireland to take a much more generous approach on voting rights in this and other areas. There needs to be follow through on this.

Senator Conway-Walsh referred to the Good Friday Agreement. It is an issue where lessons have been learned in the context of the Brexit discussion. We have all been involved in conversations where we have discussed the agreement as an internationally legally binding document. Some 21 years after the agreement we can see how it is not being implemented in practice, and we have raised that point, but there is nothing one can do about it. One interesting thing around the Brexit conversation has been the emphasis in the withdrawal agreement and its protocol to issues of enforceablility and what will people be able to do on this in the future. The agreement remains there, it is an internationally binding obligation and that is why I have put such an emphasis on domestic implementation. It is important that the British and Irish Governments and the State ensure that the Good Friday Agreement is fully and effectively implemented in domestic law and that needs to be pursued urgently. Lessons have clearly been learned in terms of the Brexit conversation. We are now talking about the withdrawal agreement and the implementation of that but this is just the start of the discussion and the future relationship discussion is to come. We must ensure that some of the rights that we have discussed today are enforceable in coming years and that we do not spend the next 20 or 30 years discussing words which exist on a page which no individual on this island can do anything about. That must radically change in the next 20 years.

I refer to the Human Rights Act. When the current government in London gets the small matter of Brexit out of the way, the next thing on its list is the Human Rights Act which it plans to repeal and replace with something called the British bill of rights. This is deeply and profoundly concerning. Brexit represents part of a larger agenda, which is an attack on concept of the practice of human rights. That needs to be faced, confronted and addressed. The Human Rights Act has been fundamentally important to upholding people's rights in the North. It needs to be defended and the Irish Government must confront the British Government on that.

On capacity and resources, many of us have been involved in discussions and negotiations, such as those relating to programmes for Government, where people use the language of co-design. Everyone loves to talk about participation and everyone is involved in a conclusive conversation and civic society also being engaged in that. Civic society on this island has played a heroic role but that can take money and resources. When we consider issues of co-design and participation and when we are trying to ensure that civic society engages, there must be the capacity to engage and the resources to underpin that. If we are moving into a phase where we are discussing a more all-island civic engagement and conversations, we need to pay attention to capacity-building resources. Many individuals who are working heroically in civil society and in NGOs do so on temporary contracts in highly insecure employment conditions and they go the extra mile to make the argument on some of these issues. If we are going to have conversations about participation, we must also have a conversation about money, funding and resources.