Vincent P Martin (Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I thank our expert guests. This has been a worthwhile exchange. However, I have a feeling politics as we know it is broken. We will continue to step up but there is huge weight on the shoulders of those in the academic world and civic society to help us fix this most serious moment since the Good Friday Agreement.

It is not a high-level academic proposition, but there is a lack of trust. I am safe in my own comfort zone of coming from a school of republican nationalism. I believe the unionists' concerns are genuine. We all know the scars have not healed but I am worried they are not healing. We have an august gathering of expert guests today that is led proudly by a strong contingent from QUB, which is a wonderful place. I read a piece by Sam McBride recently. He relived the horror on the QUB campus in 1983 when a university lecturer was shot in the head. Standing beside him was another lecturer, Dermot Nesbitt, who is a voice for moderate unionism and a reasonable man. He continued to teach while fearing for his life and that someone was going to jump at him in the lecture hall. The Dermot Nesbitts of this world have problems with the protocol. I do not have such problems but those who do need assurance. They do not trust people and do not think there is adequate insurance, so we must feed into the process. I have written pieces on this and so have many others. We say Northern Ireland has the best of both worlds, we ask how could people turn this down and we ask modern unionism to step forward. Unionists do not get that and they do not appreciate that at the moment. This is not a belligerent standoff where they are being awkward for the sake of it. We must reach out to the other side. It is broken at the moment.

This is less about the highbrow points of academia our guests are so brilliant at. I ask them to translate their emotional intelligence and humanity into breaking the logjam because at the moment there is a deep lack of trust. There has been a fundamental breakdown in trust among unionists. They think they are under siege and that their proud tradition will be impacted by this. If they could only hear the objectivity of the experts today. Alas, that is not feeding into their school of thought. Edgar Graham was a rising star. He was a barrister, academic and a potential future leader of the UUP. I do not want to look at the past because we are not going to get answers there. The past is stymying the future and those scars have not healed. I hate singling out an atrocity but do so because we have a number of speakers from the university. It is just one of the many horrific examples of how broken the system is. We have a peace but it is not an authentic peace. People are not embracing the peace in my experience. A lecturer should have been out of bounds, like a peacekeeper or religious minister. An academic walking the campus is like the women and children who are innocent victims. Even in the worst war in the world none should have lost their life. People are old enough to remember that. I must always say there is equal hurt in the republican nationalist community. However, it so happens the obstacle at the moment is a genuinely-held fear of unionists, who will not accept the best of both worlds. The fear is groundless and I hope unionists do not feel insulted by my saying so. Indeed, they could save the union just as Trimble did 25 years ago. He was such a man of vision. He was recorded talking to some of his unionist colleagues convincing them to vote for the Good Friday Agreement. He told them we know what is coming down the tracks, that this is good and saves our union. He faced down a few people who were saying, "No surrender", and engaging in that kind of cul-de-sac politics.

I would love to hear from our guests on this. It is not going to be an award-winning academic paper but it makes use of their immense experience and brainpower. How can we fulfil something even greater and reach out to a community that feels under siege and under threat at the moment? They do not buy into what so many of us are saying about how this is good for them. It is the fundamental challenge for us all. It is a big question to ask. Have our guests any suggestions? The Northern Ireland Women's Coalition was a catalyst of hope at the time. Sometimes it takes something special outside politics. I am a believer in bottom-up politics. Maybe we should all go home and talk to our neighbours, reach out to people who are perhaps of a different persuasion and hope that will feed up into the crucial decision-making process. I thank all our guests for sharing their enlightening papers with us.