Reverend Karen Sethuraman:

I thank the committee regarding our guise as Sinn Féin and for their welcome and I again thank the Chairman for handling the situation with grace. We wholly accept that, in terms of comments that were made.

I know that someone mentioned that people are moving away from the DUP. I do not want to get into politics in that sense but I mentioned earlier that in my heart, I regard myself as being in the middle ground and that I would classify myself as a "neither". A lot of people are moving away from the two-community distinction because we are more than two communities. We need to lead outside of that box.

I am interested in the unheard, the silent majority, the "neithers", those in the middle ground and the ones who want to bring change and who dare to dream of something different. A lot of us have shifted into that place. I said the last time that it is a bit sad that the media only portray certain voices. That is why opportunities such as this are key and critical. One gets to hear other people and one gets to hear the voices of children that I shared earlier. Those are the sorts of voices around which we need to build the vision of a better future together. That is important. If we focus on the minority, then the alternative is that we remain where we are. I do not want to remain where we are; I want to move forward and I long to bring people with us. As Mr. Murphy has said, we will engage with everybody and anybody. I will seek and endeavour to continue to hold those kitchen-table conversations and at every opportunity feed back to the committee, like I did for those 100 young people from all backgrounds, in order that we can hear that there are other voices that deserve to be heard.

This is our home and that is our starting place. I have said this many times. The starting place is not to set out what we would like it to be and that we would like to include people in that. The starting place is that this is already our home. Nobody is an addition and we are more than two communities. We owe it to those children and the generations that come behind us to pass something better on. One of those young kids said that she did not want to grow up in what her parents had to go through. She is the voice of the majority and of everybody who is present here. Therefore, I plead that the committee does not focus in on what we must have but that members understand that there is a majority of people who are open to this and that these conversations are already taking place.

That takes me to my request, which Mr. Murphy addressed, and that is that we get to the next step. Conversations have been happening for quite some time and the next step is the support of the committee to set up the citizens' assembly that provides structure for these conversations. Let us remember that there are other organisations such as the SDLP's new Ireland commission, the shared island unit or Think32, which has been holding podcasts with our unionist friends. There are other people besides us and we are all doing this together. I do not join things but I signed up to this because I believe in passing on a better future and a home for all of us. Opportunities like this are brilliant, therefore. Having the place to be able to hear the groups we mentioned that are championing the UK, to hear their voices and to hear their vision for being part of a United Kingdom is important. Our role as Ireland's Future is to continually reach out the hand of friendship. We would want to reassure everyone that this is what we are doing. We are working in the background and meetings have been organised throughout the year, beginning in the autumn, in places across this island. I would encourage people to come along, pull up a chair and listen.

We are better when we work towards holding on to everything we have for a peaceful and better future.