Ms Eilish Rooney:

Professor Ashe and myself are here today because hundreds of women across the island are interested in having their say in this conversation. All they wanted was the opportunity. With a fairly small resource, we provided the opportunity for them not only to have their say but to do what we are doing today, and listen to other people have their say too and to learn more about what constitutional change might mean and what specifically it might mean for women. We were interested in hearing their voices. I feel that we are here today because they gave their voices and did so freely.

There was even a pleasure and enjoyment in the conversation between people, especially between those who had very different experiences of living in Northern Ireland and the North and those who had very different experiences of being in the Republic of Ireland. We brought women together throughout the island to listen to each other and continue the conversation. We were asked about how we promote the conversation. One of our findings was that the conversation is there waiting to be had; what is needed is a mechanism. The mechanism we devised, using community education methods, was a very usable and well-known mechanism within the women's sector, for instance, that can be used and employed - with the encouragement of the Seanad for sure - in working class communities and in hard-to-reach communities with hard-to-reach people, such as the people we talked to. Those people want to have their voices heard. Today's meeting has already continued the work we started because Senators are listening to those voices. They have got our report, heard our recommendations and, in a way, we can say to the women we have worked with that the Seanad heard them.

That is not the same as a citizens' assembly, which is work at another political level that will be very welcome whenever the day comes, but people are already having their own assemblies. At Féile an Phobail earlier this year, we had a people's self-selected assembly. That does not meet the standards of a citizens' assembly but it was a fun way for people to have their say and to feel themselves included, most especially when what they had to say was not what other people wanted to hear. Voices that are excluded have to be heard and we have to find mechanisms to enable those voices to be heard.

The last point I will address was one reported on by Professor Ashe, namely, a tension within some working class communities, especially loyalist working class communities, where some women registered concerns about their own security in even articulating publicly a view about the conversation. Those things happen on some occasions and, listening to the presentations we heard today, there is a mood change. Certainly, within the women's groups and the women's sector in working class loyalist areas in the North, people want to have their say, they want their voices to be heard, and to reinforce some of the points made by colleagues today. I do not see that sense of insecurity as a weakness. I see people articulating that sense of insecurity as a strength. We need to hear those people. They need to be heard within their own communities and encouraged to have their say.