Niall Ó Donnghaile (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I thank everyone for their contributions. It is important, as the Cathaoirleach has said, that we listen and there is a lot to absorb today.

I ask the Rev. Dr. Hamilton how important the more recent reconciliation gestures are. I refer to things like Martin McGuinness and Queen Elizabeth's engagement and that being followed up more recently after the death of Queen Elizabeth with Michelle O'Neill and King Charles. How can we build on that? How significant is that going forward?

I ask everyone how damaging to the process of reconciliation is the British Government's proposed legacy Bill? We have spoken about victims of the conflict and we have never seen those victims united in such a way as they are in opposition to that Bill.

Respectfully - and this is why dialogue is important - I do not recognise the Rev. Dr. Hamilton's assertion that there are tensions everywhere. I accept that there are tensions in the North at the moment. I do not diminish them but I do not think they prevail throughout our society. How do we ensure tensions, fears and concerns, perceived or otherwise, do not hinder an organic dialogue and conversation around something that is agreed in the Good Friday Agreement, namely, the potential for constitutional change?

A sentence Ms Jardine uttered that struck me was to the effect that there is a model here in what we are doing today. She said the conversation might turn to what a new Ireland could look like. For many people, the conversation has turned to what a new Ireland is going to look like. How can the committee engage in missionary work of our own to ensure we can build on this morning? I want an honest assessment of that and know the witnesses will give me one.

The witnesses' churches are organised across the entirety of the country and that gives them a unique perspective. I seek their view on the issue of reconciliation in its broadest possible context. How damaging has it been for society, North and South, that post partition, neither State has engaged in a process of reconciliation after a horrific conflict where horrible things were done? The transgenerational trauma, as Senator Black outlined, does not just pertain to the recent conflict in the North, but goes back much further, whether to the Civil War or partition, and a feeling of abandonment among nationalists, Catholics and republicans in the North and among Protestants, unionists and people of British identity in the South.

How do we ensure that going forward, reconciliation is not just seen through the prism of green and orange in the North after 30 years but is considered in its broadest possible context throughout society?