Lord Alderdice:

I will pick up on one or two of the important things the Deputy said. It is important to realise, as far as engagement with institutions in the United Kingdom, particularly at Westminster, goes, that it is a deeply divided country and it is deeply divided on the issue of Europe. It has been for years. When you are engaging with those parliamentarians who wish to engage on this question - there were quite a lot who did not want to engage - you probably find yourself engaging with people who are of a relatively similar disposition. One of the problems in Northern Ireland over many years is a deeply divided community and getting everybody to engage is really quite challenging and difficult. In Ireland, as a whole, an overwhelming majority of people want to remain within the EU. That was not the case in England or Wales. That was the case in Northern Ireland and Scotland. The divisions this has opened up are deep, profound, historical, cultural and political. What has happened is tragic, but it is important to understand that you are dealing with a different thing when you are dealing with the United Kingdom, which is so divided on the issue, than dealing with it in Ireland, where there is, if not unanimity, then overwhelming support for the particular issue the Deputy is describing.

Finding ways of engaging is difficult.

On the question of the importance of socioeconomic benefits and development and so on, of course there is a moral imperative to do this as well as a general socioeconomic and political imperative to do it. However, that will not solve the problem. People have deep senses of identity and allegiance that are not resolved or dealt with. I remember we did some work, for example, with people in the Palestinian authority. We told them they would not get the right of return but they would get money and asked how they felt about that. They were very angry. Then we told them they would not get the right of return but they would get a shedload of money and asked them what they thought. They expressed even greater anger. This is because the suggestion is that people's principles, their fundamental identity, allegiance and convictions, are purchasable, and that does not win people around. It only makes them angry. The issue was not just to pile loads of money into west Belfast. That was done by the Thatcher Government. It did not make any positive difference to the politics at all, nor could it have been expected to because people there had some fundamental identifications and allegiances which they were not going to allow to be bought off. Sometimes the things that would potentially work in a peaceful, stable society where it was largely based on socioeconomic issues may not necessarily bring the results we want to see on the politically divisive issues of identity and allegiance. We have to work in other ways to try to achieve this. Can it be done? Yes, of course it can be done. Is it easy? No, it is not easy at all.

When we come to the question of whether the British Government is more to blame than the Irish Government, there is a danger we get into the sort of blame game I remember listening to in Northern Ireland for a long time and it did not get us terribly far. We have to say the relationship is not very good, whoever is making whatever contribution to it, and let us find a way of getting beyond that. I am not too pessimistic about that in the medium term. We are going through difficult stages but I can begin to see we are moving to a potentially better place. On whether the new British Prime Minister will achieve that, she has a peace process to engage in within the Conservative Party before she engages in one with everybody else, but that may not be a long-term issue.