Ms Collette O'Regan:

What I mean by polling is that often the focus of the issue is on the minority community itself, when in fact we all have identities. Everyone has a sexual orientation, for example. The biggest sexual orientation in Ireland is heterosexuality, but heterosexuals never have to speak about their perspective because it is just taken as so normal. It is the minority people who must speak about their identity. In the same way, everybody in Ireland has an ethnicity. White, Irish and settled is the biggest ethnicity here, but we never have to talk about that identity because it is just so normal and such a given in that regard. That is the powershift that must happen, and we can begin to make that happen.

It will create a great deal of awareness and privilege checking. It will make invisible privilege very visible, and that will help to make minority people at the table feel a bit more relaxed, because there will be an awareness then that at least the other people there have an understanding that not everyone is the same and that all opinions will be taken into account. The people in the minority may be able to trust that the attitudes of the other people present will not be hostile. I say that because that is the fear. We are always struggling with how we can try to achieve that aim. One of the easiest and most universal ways of doing this is to ask everybody the same questions. It may seem uncomfortable to do that, but it will get more comfortable and the majority group must feel a little bit uncomfortable, because they are privileged. That is where I am going with what I was suggesting.