Professor Colin Harvey:

The North has felt the absence of a comprehensive rights framework as anticipated in the Good Friday Agreement. Although we have the Human Rights Act, the agreement anticipated something more. The Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission provided advice in that regard. The answer is really very simple. It is often a source of frustration working in the area of human rights law. The clue to human rights is in the title. They are not rights that attach to a citizenship or an identity; they are rights that belong to everyone in society. The comprehensive human rights framework envisaged by the bill of rights proposals do not belong to any one community or political party; they belong to everyone.

As the Chairman rightly said, there is often a challenge in that message being heard. Our society has felt the loss of that comprehensive human rights framework. It would have made a difference and solved some, but not all, of our challenges. I would like to highlight one at the moment. I am very concerned about the social and economic impact of Brexit in the region where I live. It will have a devastating effect on some of the most marginalised and vulnerable communities in our society. Communities that have not really felt any peace dividend will suffer even more as a result of all of this. The proposals on a bill of rights included provision for social and economic rights. I am concerned that social and economic rights, the bread-and-butter rights issues that people can relate to, are still second-class human rights and that needs to be addressed. That is why we need to get back to thinking about the comprehensive human rights framework the agreement anticipated.

If we get a date for a referendum and if that referendum is lost, the impact on Irish citizens who do not live in the State will be devastating. It is the least that could be done for Irish citizens living in the North of this island or elsewhere and would recognise that citizenship has some tangible meaning. It is a rather modest specific reform in one particular election - the election for President. If that referendum was lost, it would have a very damaging impact on how this State interacts with Irish citizens in the North and elsewhere in the future. It would have a personal impact.

I have tried to emphasise today that this is about the human stories, the historical experience, the complex history of this island, of families, relations and friends elsewhere. The rejection of that would send a signal and would be potentially devastating to Irish citizens who live elsewhere. The electorate in this part of the island is more generous than that. I would put my faith in our ability to work through some of the concerns and anxieties people have, deal with some of the myths and provide the evidence, and underline that this is a rather reasonable, justifiable and proportionate change. Many other states around the world do this successfully and this State also has the capacity to do that.