Joe McHugh (Donegal, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Coming back to Professor Phinnemore's statistic - and I hope I am quoting him correctly - about the 70% reliance on political parties for reliable information, if one couples that or measures that against Professor Shirlow's study, which says civic society is out of sync with the political process, invariably this happens in most societies whereby in civic society the people are ahead of the political process with regard to their thought processes, which I have always believed.

I will just throw this out to the witnesses. We are here today discussing the problem with the protocol and trade, an issue that exercises a lot of business people, North and South. Is now the time to have a formal mechanism in place to enable or assist that conversation to bring the citizens' voice to the fore? This could be through a formal mechanism. By "formal mechanism" I mean what was done down here with some difficult issues through deliberative participation and through citizens' assemblies. Is there a need for formal mechanism or is it to be a rolling up the sleeves exercise where people just need to be with each other and talk to each other, be that politicians down South heading up North? I recall when I chaired the Joint Committee on the Implementation of the Good Friday Agreement, one of the asks - especially in Newtownards and the east Belfast area - was for a visible presence of politicians from Dublin to be there to listen, hear, find out, learn and understand. Is an informal requirement needed or a more formal mechanism around this? I do not throw out the citizens' assembly dialogue as a red rag to the bull on the constitutional question but just specifically on the trade issue.