Ms Bronagh Hinds:

I thank Deputy Brendan Smith for his continuing interest. Let me stress that I agree with him. Paramilitaries are a small number but it is amazing how a small number of people can have a stranglehold and we have to actually break that stranglehold. In a piece of work to which I contributed that was run by the Community Foundation for Northern Ireland, with the Women's Resource and Development Agency and the National Women's Council of Ireland and that reached out to more than 1,000 women across Northern Ireland and in the southern Border counties, one of the issues they looked at was that issue. Women reported all of the problems they had with paramilitaries and what happened to them when they stood up. They were really afraid for their young people, the girls being groomed, and boys being groomed into paramilitarism, and the intimidation. Another women's organisation, the Women's Support Network, finished a recent piece of research on loan sharks and that whole element of paramilitarism. It has a devastating impact and I pick out women because as the Opsahl Commission said, it is women who have often been holding families and communities together and are actually picking up all of the impacts of that.

I thank the Deputy for his kind comments about the Northern Ireland Women’s Coalition. When an agreement is made, and it is the same in this current issue faced by the Democratic Unionist Party, there is a time to be pragmatic and to step up, take the risk, and be courageous. All parties have to do that and compromise. We have to move from the position where we have no compromise to being willing to have a compromise. I remember when we were doing things like democratic dialogue and setting up and bringing forward the work of the Opsahl Commission, we had long debates on what word we could actually coin for compromise because "compromise" was such a dirty word, accommodation, compromise, or whatever. We all have to compromise and I believe, for example, at that time Mr. David Trimble and the Ulster Unionist Party took that courageous step. I think other parties did. I know at the very end, we in the coalition and Sinn Féin still had some issues sitting on the table that had not been totally satisfied. I remember one of them was that we wanted to get quotas for women. There were certain things we did not get done and for which we were later criticised. As we walked down on that day Ms. Monica McWilliams asked me whether we should sign or not because we had not had all these issues satisfied. You have to say, how can you not sign a peace agreement for your country and you have to keep your eye on that big picture. All people have had to compromise and step up and be courageous and again, I thank the Deputy for his kind words about the coalition.

I mentioned the bill of rights and the single equality Act. When we had the Good Friday Agreement and the Northern Ireland Act, I can safely say that Northern Ireland, having had a very poor record in human rights and equality, was at the leading edge internationally on our section 75 legislation. Since then Northern Ireland has been leapfrogged because we do not have a single equality Act. Even in Britain, which moved on with a single equality Act there is higher legislation in England, Scotland and Wales than there is in Northern Ireland but at one time we were, for that moment, at the leading edge. We absolutely need a single equality Act and I know the Equality Commission for Northern Ireland and the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission are still trying to get those issues steered through and all politicians should step up and agree it.

In terms of the Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Bill, it states it will end all further civil actions related to the Troubles. It is a travesty that individuals are forbidden from taking civil actions and that there will be no further inquests. It is absolutely tragic. Another thing I find difficult is related to the point about reconciliation, because I was thinking about this when I looked back. We had our shared future document in 2006, which was about reconciliation and communities getting on with that etc. As for putting the name in that Bill, that is, the Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Bill, it is itself a travesty to pretend that is the answer to reconciliation and to use the reconciliation. It is an abuse of the word, "reconciliation", in my view and is unacceptable.

I agree in terms of the partnerships. Those partnerships were absolutely essential because prior to that, if you will forgive me, the British Government in a sense was backing the unionists and the Irish Government was backing the nationalists. In some sense, governments have to stand aside. There is no point in saying that governments are not players in this. Too often they have thought they were neutral brokers but they are not at all in my view. Still, they must have a different role and it was essential when they stepped up to do that. I am utterly of the opinion that what enabled that was them both joining the European Union in 1973. Acting as governments in collaboration helped to set the framework for those collaborations. Of course there is personal chemistry. John Major talked about his close link with Albert Reynolds and I believe Tim O'Connor talked about the close relationship between Tony Blair and Bertie Ahern. Consequently, the chemistry was there as well. However there was a framework for that and standing up and giving some leadership was absolutely essential.

As for the election, yes there was an election. It was on that basis. Remember I said in my talk that we were looking to bring forward another electoral mechanism. It was something around that similar kind of electoral mechanism. There are certain electoral mechanisms that can create space for smaller entities. The question Deputy Brendan Smith asked about the civic forum reminded me because it is related to this as well. The reason it was not well received in political parties is because some parties think civil society stole their clothes in all of the years politicians were outside the tent, politically. Civil society was just going about its business working for the social development and social support of people, bringing to and negotiating with government on policies. At one time, Dr. Paisley took a swipe at civil society for engaging with the British Government while representing their communities, when they were boycotting the British Government or something like that. Civil society has always had an independent role so it might have been a bit of that. Civil society is not there to take the place of political representatives. Political representatives have to move away, in my view, from clientelism and must step up to do the strategic leadership we need them to do in our Assembly and in our local councils. We need them to do that, so that was one thing.

Let me exclude Mark Durkan from that because he was the one person who saw the issue. We completely challenged the SDLP on the issue of a civic forum because they supported the idea of a consultative civic forum North-South but we asked how can they not buy into a civic forum.

In terms of the electoral mechanism to bring forward more people, a concern was articulated by a politician whom I will not name because he has contributed a lot to the peace process. He was concerned about bringing too many voices into a process because it is harder to manage. Now you have a view about managing and helping to resolve conflict and this was one of the differences between the Northern Ireland Women's Coalition and some of the existing traditional parties. For the original power-sharing Executive, in the 1970s, someone decided that the Ulster Unionist Party, the Alliance Party and the SDLP would do because they could manage it but that is not an inclusive process. Some people thought that the Northern Ireland Women's Coalition was the same as the Alliance Party but it was not. We were absolutely for an inclusive process so we argued for Sinn Féin and representatives of loyalism to be in the room. We argued for those excluded groups to be in the room.

An aspect that dogs peace negotiations and peace processes globally is where people decide that you can only get a few actors into the room and that will help you to solve the matter. Our view was that by making it inclusive of all the different interests, you have a lot of diversity. Yes, it can be difficult to manage complexity but get over it. If you learn how to manage complexity and make sure you have all the stakeholders who are going to have things satisfied and to learn to make compromises, you can make an inclusive agreement. One of the successes that has been shown in our process is that it has been a much more inclusive process than many negotiation processes in other conflicts, and the agenda was inclusive, which is really important. We wanted to push that forward but there was still a resistance, even from people who had experience in the negotiations, that it would be a bit destablising to manage that amount of diversity but that is not my view.