Professor Colin Harvey:

Obviously, I cannot address all of the detailed questions raised by committee members but I very much appreciate the comments, reflections and feedback. We will take them on board in our work. We are happy to engage further with the committee. I will start by saying we have underlined in our work that we need to stick to the Good Friday Agreement parameters and framework. Nobody here wants to rewrite the Good Friday Agreement, and this is our starting point. The rules are reasonably clear already.

When we speak about sharing the island now and in the future, the Irish State and civil society have the capacity to do two things at once. In other words, we must think about how we share this island better in the here and now. Nothing we are saying is contrary to this. In fact, we think this work needs to be stepped up and the work of the shared island unit on this is very welcome and is to be encouraged and supported. We also need to think about how we plan and prepare for how we will share the island in future. This is in the Good Friday Agreement. We are speaking about the implementation of the Good Friday Agreement today. What we are speaking about is a normal everyday part of the constitutional framework in the agreement about how we might share the island in future. We need to address it in this framework and tone and we need to do the preparatory work on this. The worry, and what inspires a lot of our work, is that there is a bit too much complacency. There is a bit too much that sounds like prevarication on not wanting to do the difficult homework. There is a sense of doing it tomorrow or putting it off until next week. Some of the motivation for the timeframe is slight frustration that while many people do not want to face difficult homework nobody is doing anybody any favours, on the committee or elsewhere, by avoiding the hard work on preparing and planning.

There is another point on civic engagement. At the centre of many proposals at present is the idea of an all-island citizens' assembly on Ireland's future. Although a variety of other models have been pointed out, including involving politicians, we are particularly aware that citizens and civic engagement North and South have to be central to shaping this discussion. It cannot be an elite-led discussion in which, in a sense, professors such as me in a university dictate the models for the future. I would much rather that these proposals and options are discussed and debated among people and they emerge from the conversation, shaped by the evidence, expertise and comparative experience.

The Oireachtas, as the Legislature, has a vital role. Nothing is either-or. We can have a citizens' assembly and we can also have Oireachtas committees working away and doing vital work. Too many of these discussions are dominated by governments. We need legislatures to step up here and elsewhere to help in the preparatory task. The work cannot be taken on alone even by a citizens' assembly. It has to be done by others.

Deputy Brendan Smith made a comment on the agreement. What we are speaking about is central to the agreement. This is about the implementation of the agreement. Although we are focusing on the referendums we also need to underline, and I agree, that other parts of the agreement have not been implemented. I have spent many years of my life working on equality and human rights. For example, Northern Ireland, the North, this region needs a bill of rights. This is still not implemented. It is not either-or. We can do more than one thing at once. This is about implementing the agreement in the longer term. Ultimately, for those on the side of constitutional change it is about ensuring the constitutional arrangements that emerge are successful and work and that everybody is better off at the far end of all of this. I thank the committee.