Mr. Rory Montgomery:

By the time the DUP came on board, the prisoner issue had effectively faded, decommissioning had been sorted out with the act of putting weapons beyond use by the IRA in 2005 and various other things had changed as well, not least that Mr. Paisley was now top dog, which, I think, was always one of his principal objectives. It is also important, and not to be underestimated, that even though they were not numerically very significant, the presence of the two loyalist parties, the PUP and the UDP, which stayed in with the UUP when Sinn Féin came in and the DUP walked out, was quite important politically and symbolically, although, as I said, the other small unionist party walked out at the same time.

On the second question about the referendum, one can read in exhaustive detail in this article I wrote, which is published by Irish Studies in International Affairs, many of the origins of the different bits of the constitutional parts of the agreement, where they come from and how they were negotiated. As I think I said, the funny thing is that the two governments had reached this broad consensus on the basic principles of self-determination and consent and the concept of British or Irish, or both, etc. This was not challenged by any of the parties in particular. The UUP's focus was very heavily on the changes to Articles 2 and 3, but one of the odd things is, as I said earlier, because of the way things were organised or not organised in the last week or so, and because there was a sense that the constitutional issues parts had been dealt with, no real scrutiny was given to the finer points, in particular, of the British legislation. I know for a fact that a middle ranking official - my opposite number - drafted the legislation. He expected it would be the subject of much discussion with his colleagues and with us and it basically went through on the nod. For example, there had been provision for a referendum previously. The 1973 Northern Ireland Constitution Act required a minimum ten year gap between referendums. This was changed to seven, for example. I am not entirely clear how or why.

On the 50% plus one criterion, to be very clear, I still remember vividly on the last night of the negotiations being asked by Sinn Féin representatives why was the language in the agreement simply a majority and did it actually mean 50% plus one, and I said that that is what a majority means. If it is not qualified in any way, that is it. At the time, I do not remember anybody in the negotiations challenging the idea or raising the question of 50% plus one being an adequate majority or not. A majority is a majority. On the whole question of what would be the politically wisest way to proceed, that is another debate. The law is absolutely clear, including in the British legislation on this.

On the question of criteria, first of all, these things were not discussed in detail. If one looks back at it, if we had tried to go into every detail we would never have finished. It is interesting this question of criteria. The Tánaiste and Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment, Deputy Varadkar, said something to the same effect recently. On the other hand, there was a comprehensive study by University College London - a group of eminent British and Irish academics looking at all of the technical issues around referendums. Their view was in the end that it did not make sense to be too prescriptive about precisely what criteria should be met. That was also the view taken by the High Court in Northern Ireland when a case was taken by a loyalist paramilitary victim's father. It is a fine balance.

If you look back, it is almost 25 years since the agreement was reached. Nobody at that time would have thought that these would become live questions any time soon and of course, they did not. It was not necessary, maybe, to go into the kind of detail that ideally one might have wished people to go into. The Chairman is correct that these questions are more pressing now and probably must be addressed in this new era. That is kind of what I meant at the end when I stated that it is for present and future generations to build on and develop the agreement.