Mr. Wally Kirwan:

There is a lot to be said on that. A lot has been achieved but we are still faced with very considerable difficulties. We do not have an Executive and the Assembly is not sitting. The degree of trust that was involved in concluding the agreement was slender enough. One of our colleagues David Donoghue brought out a book entitled One Good Day: My Journey to the Good Friday Agreement. He referred to a remark by Senator George Mitchell that we had 700 bad days and one good day. It was touch and go. At midday on Good Friday, we did not know whether or not we had an agreement. It was only by a whisker that we got that agreement.

Picking up on what Dr. Mansergh said earlier, in terms of where we go with citizens' assemblies with the possibility of a referendum, the one thing we do not want is a referendum on a united Ireland in the South that is lost. The most recent evidence would suggest that this is a far from unlikely prospect. You could by no means take it for granted that a referendum in the South would be passed. Data is coming out in the Ireland North-South Project relating to opinion in the South. The evidence from those polls suggests that a majority in the North would still not vote in favour of a united Ireland so we must be very careful about that. It will be a fine balance because you cannot be sure events might not move faster than you expect. I am thinking in particular about the situation in Scotland. Scotland is at an impasse because it has the court decision against insisting on a second referendum if the British Government does not agree to a second referendum in Scotland. What remains there remains to be seen but if Scotland does eventually become independent, it will have profound implications for the North.

The unionist population in the North are not great lovers of the people in England; their affiliation is more with Scotland. That is from where their ancestors came. A lot will depend on that. We need to do the homework and move forward at a pace that will keep in step with events but-----