Mr. John McCallister:

Even 20 years after the agreement that might be a bit much.

I will make a number of points but following on from the Chairman’s own comments as committee foreman and those of Deputy Conway-Walsh. Looking at the citizens’ assembly, I probably would not start off with a discussion of Irish unity or the merits of staying in the union like Professor Tonge. There is a very significant swathe of issues that we need to look at and address. We need to make Northern Ireland work, no matter whether one wants to stay in the union as I do, or leave the union as Ms Gildernew would like us to. The Assembly does not debate very often the merits of staying within the union or of a united Ireland. The vast majority of the Assembly’s time as a legislative institution has been spent putting through legislation and it is one thing that it has been actually quite good at. Professor Tonge mentioned the figures of how much legislation it covered in the 2007 to 2016 period.

Even when I was sitting on the health committee with Ms Gildernew we would have been talking about issues such as services in South Tyrone Hospital, Daisy Hill Hospital or Craigavon Hospital that affected all of our constituents. In respect of under-achievement in education, I always knew that there would be much support from members of Sinn Féin in tackling under-achievement in places like the Shankill Road and the Falls Road and in Protestant working class areas. There was a real hunger to actually address those issues way up-stream with early intervention. We have talked a great deal about this in the Assembly but have never really started to deliver on it. There will be a plethora of issues that any citizens’ assembly could really start to unpick and help that policy development that Ms Mercer has talked about right through this morning’s presentation. All of those things are worth doing.

Where does Deputy Conway-Walsh want me to begin on the merits of the union? It is a very good product and well worth selling. From being part of one of the world’s largest economies, and need I say more than the National Health Service, which did a fantastic job in looking after the level of the vaccine roll-out in Northern Ireland and across the UK, which has been phenomenally successful. That is one of the big advantages of having a dedicated public health system. I will not overdo it too much but it is all of those things.

On issues like a bill of rights, it is probably getting at the times when there is the political will to do this. Sometimes, when the pressure is on we can get agreement but then we can quickly move away. Without naming parties or anybody there was probably enough guilt on all sides of things with this not being totally backed by all or where people moved slightly away from different positions when we got going. It is almost like keeping the train on the track and hoping that none of these things come and derail it.

There is a great appetite over some of those policy matters and the bread-and-butter issues. On some of those issues, there is a much greater unity of purpose between the parties than sometimes the opening labels, the party websites or the party mantra might suggest.