Niall Blaney (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I welcome our guests and thank them for the presentation. I was between meetings so I heard some of it, but not all. However, I read it beforehand. I tried to get in from my office and I did not manage that so I came back down again.

I am very much aware of the work the centre has done over the years before and after the Good Friday Agreement. I spent a weekend in Glencree Centre for Peace and Reconciliation quite a number of years ago in the 2000s and I am aware of the vital work it does. For the purposes of the committee and the witnesses' presence here, would it be possible for them to give a view as to their input into the lead-up to the Good Friday Agreement? How vital was the work the organisation did in shaping the ground, let us say, in the lead-up to the Good Friday Agreement and after the agreement?

Following on from that, there is a narrative that with any future border poll some will call for it sooner and others will call for it later. I understand the witnesses cannot take a side, and I am not asking them to do so, but there is a narrative that a citizens' assembly would have to be held in the lead-up to that to deal with issues. Do they have an opinion in that regard? From my perspective, the difficulties and the divergences of opinion are so great that it will take something much greater than a citizens' assembly to get everybody to the one space. We have a great deal of work to do. In my view, a citizens' assembly could not take on the disparity and the amount of work involved, considering the amount of work that was done behind the scenes before the Good Friday Agreement to get the agreement across the lines. There was a massive amount of work, in addition to the back-channelling. Could our guests give us a flavour of some of that? Not to do down a citizens' assembly, but could they give us a taste of what is involved? How many more organisations like the centre are out there behind the scenes doing this back-channel work, if I can call it that? What is their general view?