Ms Claire Hanna:

I thank Mr. Ahern for his participation and, as others have said, for his years of positive input in this area. It is really useful in this project to have someone who was there for the negotiation and the implementation. I apologise that I have missed parts of the meeting and that I am not there in person. Unfortunately, it is all moving very fast here today. It would be nice to be in a parliament that does not use physical coercion, as has happened in the one I am sitting in today.

I want to pick up on some of the questions I heard from others. There was a point that nobody has really come up with a better solution to the challenges in Northern Ireland than partnership and compromise and the architecture to deal with those. Some of the change and evolution that has happened to the institutions has been for good and for ill, and while the St. Andrews Agreement has not necessarily all been positive, the creation of an opposition is one of several things that can lead us to move to a more constructive politics. How does Mr. Ahern believe it would be best to manage some of that review? We have not had a structured strategic review built in. There are mechanisms within the agreement but there has not been a timetabled way that we collectively look back at what can be improved. Generally, it has happened on the basis of crisis and perhaps has been done as a kind of side deal and over the heads of the people rather than taking a more co-ordinated look, including some of the things that could improve operation and could remove the veto culture. What is Mr. Ahern's view on how we could best approach the reviews that might happen if, for example, we find ourselves unable to form an Executive in another few months?

Did we miss in the early years of the agreement the structures as a way to address legacy of the Troubles and as a way to put in place mechanisms for justice and for support for those people?

This committee is seeking ways to engage constructively in the conversation around constitutional change, and genuinely to curate that, as envisaged in strand three, as a contest of ideas of two legitimate constitutional aspirations rather than potentially as a committee diving towards one outcome and maybe undermining the intent in that. What does Mr. Ahern believe would be a useful way for this committee to progress the conversation about constitutional change in a way that brings in different voices and which does not give the impression we are only interested in that part of the agreement, which is the part that would result in constitutional change?