Rose Conway-Walsh (Mayo, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I thank Professor Harvey and Mr. Bassett for this paper. It is enormously important and I refute some of the comments that have been made about it. There is real value in it because it raises key questions I have not seen raised anywhere else. In any papers that are written there are observations and certain editorial stuff, but there is real factual stuff here, for instance, around who has the right to vote and other things. There are also questions about engagement with others and so on. I have yet to meet anybody who does not want to prepare or does not recognise the need for preparation. This question keeps being raised all the time, as if there is a cohort of people who do not see a need to prepare. We in my party see the need to prepare and understand what needs to be done, whether that be a constitutional assembly, a White Paper, an Oireachtas committee or a combination of all those things. To move the conversation on, we need to take that question off the table.

I hear what the witnesses are saying about the responsibility of this committee regarding how we are going to carry this forward. I am glad to have the opportunity to hear their input again today. Arising from the discussion and recommendations the last time we met - the Chairman will confirm this - we agreed to write to the Secretary of State to ask him to bring some clarity to the matrix and the criteria he was going to use, just as Professor Harvey had written to him in December. My first question relates to the follow-up letter he sent to the Secretary of State on 19 January. Has he had any response to that letter?

I am interested in point No. 40 in the professor's paper that reunification should be presented as a vindication of the Constitution rather than an unacceptable risk to its stability. Will Professor Harvey speak further to that? Nobody has the monopoly on this, which Deputy McDonald made clear last night.Nobody owns the questions or the conversation around the constitutional future. We will all have input.

With regard to the third-level sector, I was very interested some weeks ago to see an article by Fionnán Uibh Eochach in the University Timeson the role that universities and the third-level sector would play in all of this. Does Professor Harvey have any suggestions around that?

Reference was made to other platforms. There is a new online platform that hosts the debate around the constitutional future debate that was prepared by Professor Peter Shirlow from the University of Liverpool, and a group working with him. Again, I believe this is really informed. Nobody has a monopoly on the conversation.

Perhaps Professor Harvey could comment on the Secretary of State, on the vindication of the Constitution, and on the third-level sector.