Mr. Jonathan Powell:

As Ms Gildernew has said, it is paradoxical that two people who were formed by and helped form the Troubles were able to work together more smoothly than people from successive generations. To be honest, that is pretty worrying but that may again be about personalities. I personally think that Jeffrey Donaldson is in a difficult position politically but when he was a deputy to Ian Paisley Snr., he was able to work very well across the aisle. Consequently, it is possible that Jeffrey, in different political circumstances, could work perfectly well across the political aisle on these things.

It did worry me that when we lost Ian Paisley and Martin McGuinness, things got worse. Frankly, there was something pretty disturbing about that. Ms Gildernew is right that we need a broader discussion and I would take it further than what she said. She is right that civic unionism needs to be involved but I also think, she may not agree not agree with me on this point, that the rise of the Alliance Party and the middle ground, which will be very apparent in the census, is interesting and provides ballast for making cross-community things work in a different way. I mean that it does not have to be about identity and could be about issues such as the National Health Service, NHS, which was mentioned. It is paradoxical that there is a hospital in Derry that provides healthcare to people from Donegal with heart and other medical issues. One would have thought that practical co-operation things would be something that everyone could work on from both communities or neither community. That probably is the future, and I hope that is the future in Northern Ireland. The way forward is to get teeth into practical issues like that while involving unionists, nationalists, republicans and those who are neither. That can happen, and I hope I see it beginning to happen. Ms Gildernew is right that one talks to what one might call civic unionism. If one talks to middle-class unionist people in golf clubs and rugby clubs, they are going to take a much more nuanced view of the economy and the future of Ireland as a whole. That is where I see the hope.