Lord Alderdice:

I think that is absolutely right. In the talks process, one of the challenges I faced was to find a way of talking about North-South collaboration that did not make unionists immediately antagonistic. It struck me that the Foyle Fisheries Commission was a very interesting model. It was a very small model but very interesting. The fish in the Foyle did not respect the Border; they just swam about the place. That is why, North and South, an executive body had to be established which reported to the Governments North and South. It went on for a long time. Because that collaboration happened and because it worked, it was possible to say to unionists that having a North-South body is not a betrayal of your history or your background because previous unionists did that when they had Stormont. If you couch North-South collaboration in terms of being a way to seduce unionists away from their adherence to Britain, I think you will get a kickback.

However, if you say we are about building good relationships and collaborating together on things that make social and economic sense, there is a much better possibility of collaboration and the future will take care of itself. If people feel they are being engineered into something, there is a bit of a Protestant northern culture that tends to dig its heels in and be a bit stubborn about things.