Senator George Mitchell:

I think I did meet Dr. Farry at the time. I certainly dealt extensively with John Alderdice and others in the Alliance Party leadership. As with many of the other parties, the Alliance Party made and continues to make a valuable contribution in Northern Ireland.

Dr. Farry has identified one of the dilemmas delegates face, but he also re-emphasised the point I made earlier about how no resolution of an issue can be deemed permanent and unchanging. One of the essential requirements and challenges delegates faced in 1998 was to achieve a power-sharing government. To do that, you had to identify the powers and that is what it did, particularly through the mechanism of sufficient consensus, which, as Dr. Farry will recall, we adopted during the talks themselves in terms of how to proceed in writing the rules under which the negotiations occurred. Subsequently, that was put in variant form into the agreement. That really was the point I made when I said on that evening that there would be challenges for future leaders because I do not think anyone intended the mechanisms used in the agreement to be fixed for all time in Northern Ireland. There would come a time when it would be decided by the people of Northern Ireland and their political representatives how they would move on to other forms for achieving political consensus than those confronted by the delegates in 1998.

No one can say with absolute assurance how or when that will occur but it is inevitable to occur. The political structure in Northern Ireland is unique because the situation the delegates confronted was unique. A solution had to be devised that dealt with those problems and would get through them, it was hoped, and, over a period, adjustments would be made, as needed, to meet the then current challenges of the society.

Dr. Farry pointed out an obvious problem to which I think the answer is obvious, namely, that this is what had to be done at the time to meet the problems the delegates faced when, at some point, there was going to be some change and adjustment in that mechanism. Some time ago, before an American audience, I was asked the same question, in essence, in a different form. I said that we have an American constitution of which we are very proud but that, in retrospect, we know has contained many things that may have been appropriate for that time but are not appropriate for this time. We established a mechanism to amend the constitution and it has been amended dozens of times since then to reflect changing circumstances. I think the same thing will happen over time in Northern Ireland.