Rose Conway-Walsh (Mayo, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I thank the witnesses for their presentations and the papers they submitted beforehand. They were interesting. Often when we talk in the Oireachtas about the bill of rights, it is an abstract thing but in the CAJ submission, they made it real. I ask them to tease it out a bit more in order that people realise what is denied to people because the bill of rights is not implemented. How important is a bill of rights in a society coming out of conflict?

Mr. Holder referred to the "opponents of equality". It is staggering that anybody would oppose an anti-poverty strategy. We got rid of the Combat Poverty Agency here, which was a disastrous mistake, if it was a mistake. An anti-poverty strategy is so important for the people that the political parties across the board propose to represent. It is important to see who the opponents are. Are they just one political party or are there more opponents than that?

Mr. Holder also said the anti-poverty strategy was reneged on by the UK Government. What about the Irish Government as co-guarantors of the Good Friday Agreement and subsequent agreements? He made valuable suggestions about what the committee can do and I would like to give him an opportunity to give us more concrete guidance on that. He rightly outlined what the bill of rights could have prevented but will he give us a picture of that in terms of housing and other everyday issues that confront people in the North? Who appoints the panel of experts that needs to be appointed? Why can it not be appointed? These are probably obvious questions to my colleagues in the North but for people listening here it is worthwhile teasing them out.