Mr. Niall Murphy:

I may well be, and I appreciate that time has been limited to answer the generality of what has been put. As for my position on the UCL, I wholly respect Mr. Farry's observations. It is a valid perspective. We have had constructive engagement with the wider Alliance Party, and we have learned from that and hope to continue to do so. Nevertheless, I am cognisant of recent opinion polls that have examined the constitutional preference of those parties that are constitutionally neutral. The Sunday Timesexamined the issue on 23 January 2021 and found that 38% of Alliance voters it surveyed leaned towards a united Ireland dispensation, while 26% were of a United Kingdom perspective. I accept that we cannot repose too much faith in opinion polls, but LucidTalk on behalf of "BBC Spotlight" concluded in April that 77% of Alliance voters incline towards a united Ireland.

There are ever-evolving shifts and they are all responsive to the position in which we find ourselves. We are in a post-Brexit constitutional era. Insofar as constitutional change is already upon us, Brexit changed our constitutional status. I am no longer able to avail of the mechanisms of the EU to express a mandate within it. Unionism reposes a deeply held objection to the Northern Ireland protocol, concerned that it represents constitutional change. Constitutional change is here already, therefore, and our mission is that we manage it in as responsible and as detailed a manner as possible, and to do so in a form that provides for all perspectives genuinely to contribute and to feel that their constitutional sensibilities are being respected, independent of the outcome. I do not propose there is a preordained outcome. The outcome will happen only through the exercise of the franchise and that is what democracy is all about.