Lord Alderdice:

I want to pick up on the way Ms Gildernew spoke about that, which was very important. Regarding the terminology she used - shared island and sometimes North-South - people from a unionist perspective do not come out in goose bumps when they hear that terminology. Whenever people talk about all-Ireland bodies, it immediately makes unionists bristle. Language is important. If you want to wind people up, it is not hard to do so in any direction. If on the other hand, you want to take things forward, the careful use of language is really important. I know Ms Gildernew knows that because I listened to what she is saying and she is quite careful about the way she speaks about it because she lives there and works with people and so on. John Hume and colleagues developed a particular language for the Good Friday Agreement process where we spoke about things in a particular way. It was not just playing with words. David Trimble famously said that because people have a past we do not like does not mean there cannot be a different future. There are ways of speaking about things that can be helpful and ways that can be unhelpful. I would flag that when we talk about all-Ireland bodies, that has a particular resonance for many people in the unionist community that North-South bodies or even shared island bodies does not have. The language we use is an important dimension to think about.