Niall Ó Donnghaile (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I will of course.

One of the key issues for us is absorbing Mr. O’Connor’s contributions today, as well as hopefully the contributions of others who will come back before the committee to give us that retrospective view. As a committee, we review and we research. We are certainly not the committee on changing the Good Friday Agreement. We are the committee on implementing the Good Friday Agreement. The information that we absorb over the course of this exercise has to be through the prism of how we move forward with implementation.

I agree with Mr. O’Connor that the architecture and the solutions are there. The obligation that is on us all who are lifting up the mantle in terms of political work across this island is to realise the full promise of the Good Friday Agreement.

Mr. O’Connor made fair comments about political decisions that have to be made, that are currently being made and that are currently not being made in relation to implementing the agreement. We can see that in the continued opposition to the Good Friday Agreement from elements of political unionism. We can also see the jeopardy that the Good Friday Agreement has been put in as a result of Brexit and as a result of the legacy proposals to which Senator Currie referred. Also, crucially, aspects of the Nationality and Borders Act will impact on life here in Ireland.

While Mr. O’Connor has made fair comments on political choice, how important does he consider the loss of institutional memory at official level to be? How that has impacted on the implementation of the agreement? If there had been officials working on the British side, for example, during the Brexit process and during the moving of the legacy proposals around the Nationality and Borders Act, would there have been the same acute form of impact on the agreement, as we have seen? How important is that? I may not be using the right term but what is the impact of that loss of institutional memory at an official level, which is separate and distinct from the regressive political approaches that are being taken?