Ms Alison Grundle:

I will start with Senator Black's general question about how we engage people in this debate, especially young people. We do it by talking about the shared future for everyone on this island and how we can create prosperity for everyone. I will reiterate the point I made at the start which is that lumping constitutional change into that is divisive. This will sound extremely trite, but if we build an island on which there is prosperity for all, the constitutional situation will take care of itself. People will determine, based on fact and lived experience, where they want to be constitutionally.

Another point I wish to engage in the conversation is that people said Brexit changed everything. Brexit changed everything for me because it made me realise that £350 million on the side of a bus is purely promissory. I am sorry but everything I have heard put forward since Brexit and the constitutional change debate came back to the fore is the equivalent of £350 million on the side of a bus. We are being promised the land of milk and honey and if one read Sinn Féin's last election manifesto, one would see that this is far from the land of milk and honey.

We need to build this together. Brexit is my greatest fear and that is why I am very strong on the point of engaging the stakeholders. We can have all the conversations we want but all we will get is one vote each. The decision-makers and the implementers need to be involved in this because, without engagement, it will be a repeat of Brexit.

I will make another point to reinforce the success of the Good Friday Agreement. A great deal has changed in Northern Ireland. I will say something which may be controversial: what has happened since the Good Friday Agreement is that the economy has succeeded and the politics has failed. We have the situation with our public services because the composition of Stormont and the way it functions is preventing progress on public services.

I cannot stress enough how important the Good Friday Agreement is to me and to most people I know. I grew up during the conflict. I never want us to go back to anything like that ever again. I never want anyone to live through that again. The shared island initiative is a brilliant one with which I am proud to be engaged. That is the way we change society. Ms Sugden made the point about the potential of an all-island economy. I believe that is where we should be focusing our efforts. I am often reminded of the last words Martin McGuinness said to me just an hour before he resigned. I was Ms Sugden's special adviser at the time. Mr. McGuinness gave me a last hug and said: "Look after the peace process, Alison. Protect the Good Friday Agreement; it is the only thing we have." I think about that comment very often.

I will make a practical point regarding Senator Ó Donnghaile's question about BT. Has it said it will not engage. Has anybody asked BT? I worked there for 15 years. It is a profit-driven organisation. All it is interested in is driving stakeholder value and its stock price. What would we be asking BT to do? Would we be asking it to sell or adjust its network? What is the question? The ability to answer that question would take huge resources on BT's part. There are all kinds of issues. There is the North Atlantic interconnector that connects North America with Britain and Europe and lands on the north coast of Ireland. There are so many issues around that. BT simply would not engage in something that would cost it that amount of money and that will not in any way fulfil its business strategy or represent any value to its stakeholders. However, the committee should ask it by all means.

I really enjoyed Senator Clonan's question. As I said at the start, half of my family come from Dublin. I initiate every conversation I have with my Dublin family about the North and they indulge me politely. They do not want to know. The comment I got from my cousin last night was that they have enough problems trying to organise the 26 countries without bringing us lot in. I live on our beautiful north coast, however, and practically every other car on the road these days has a Southern registration. People are visiting. I would have had a statistic about the number of overnight stays spent in Northern Ireland now by people coming from the South. It is a huge tourism drive for us. The Senator is very welcome to come up and visit us. He is right; we need to get to know each other much better to have conversations about how we live on this island together.