Ms Bronagh Hinds:

I have just been thinking about the issue of designation since, because it was a big issue for the coalition, who were not hung up on it and actually tried to use it in a way that might help whatever needed to be helped at the time. It does become an issue now if we are looking at the assembly seats, for example. Sinn Féin has 27 seats, the DUP has 25, the Alliance Party is now up to 17 and its percentage vote share in the last polls has been going up. To be fair, so have those of some of the other parties as well. It is something that we need to think about, but without losing track of the fundamentals and protections in the agreement. I am not really sure how we would do it, expect with maybe some kind of higher threshold voting. I am sure we could put our heads together on it. Ms Hanna has given me a challenge that I will take up and think about more, because it deserves more thinking. I want to link the idea of having different positions on the constitution, and that being protected, back to the new constitutional arrangement, because that has actually been misrepresented over the past while with all of these issues around the EU, Brexit and the protocol, and the bandying about in incorrect ways of what consent is about, and a kind of an illusion of power-sharing with the cross-community vote with consent and it all being mixed up. It is very clear that the constitutional position of Northern Ireland has changed, that it works on the basis of the wishes and decisions of people in Northern Ireland and it is based on consent. That is what the position is.

The issue of being designated unionist or nationalist in terms of that is, therefore, not perhaps being teased out sufficiently. We can go into what is meant by consent, what the proportion is and everything else. Seamus Mallon was wrong when he said a 50% plus one majority would not work, in that it has been 50% plus one up until this point. However, I think 50% plus one would be mad to run on. That is my view. We have to talk about the future in Northern Ireland. We have to stabilise things and we have to stabilise our relationships. The women's sector has fantastic relationships with gender budgeting groups in Scotland, England and Wales, as well as working with the South. We need to be thinking about that. There is a particularly close relationship between Scotland and Northern Ireland, as well as with the South. We need to be thinking about all of those issues. It is a bigger debate about teasing that out and making sure that some of the fundamentals are protected. As I said, just like the agreement was endorsed by a large number of people, we want to get a large number of people talking about this, and thinking about what they actually want from their society. We also have to think about what we need in Northern Ireland.

In terms of strands two and three, I read all the submissions that came before me before coming to the committee, because I wanted to see them. I happened to quote Tim O'Connor and Mark Durkan. I had not thought about it in that way. I had actually thought about it, but I had not thought about it within the context of placing it within strands two and three. We know that there are provisions within the protocol for the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission and the Equality Commission for Northern Ireland, and for the Irish Equality and Human Rights Commission in the South, on rights and safeguards. We need to build on that. We need to build something more around some of those strand two relationships relating to human rights, equality and safeguards. I say that because in all of the conflict situations on which I have contributed and have lived through, people think the hard issues are those around the political debate and the paramilitary and security debate. They are extremely important, but they take up an awful lot of the oxygen. The real lingering hard issue in moving forward is being at ease with ourselves. I do not mean being at ease with ourselves in the sense of just kind of glossing over it; I mean having the hard conversations, dealing with the legacy of the past, being compassionate and sharing with victims and dealing with respect. Equal citizenship, equality and human rights are all part of that. I see, in so many other conflicts, that people think that to maintain power they should knock the rights of everyone else so that they hold onto the power. Of course, that erupts in another conflict later on. We know that equality and human rights have been a fault line in our conflict. Those are the hard issues that we have to deal with to build citizenship and citizenship of the world. For me, that was a critical and heart-rending point about Brexit, and I am nearly going to cry here. We were able to elevate the human rights and equality agenda beyond the confines of the conflict in Northern Ireland, which was particularly focused on orange and green, into culture, identity, women's rights, race and all of those rights within a European and international context. It broadened our horizons and began to change that debate within a global framework.

I said earlier that I am glad that younger women are coming along now to carry on this debate - not that I am going to let go. The very last thing I want to do is to come to the end of my time is to go back to a small insular looking place again because we have come out of the EU, when we actually managed to magnify it and internationalise it and to see it as something that was not threatening and for everyone. We need to find a way of keeping those connections. I was commissioned to review the national actions plans on women, peace and security for the Department of Foreign Affairs for several of those and I made critiques. The Irish Government was ahead of the world in applying that - on women, peace and security - domestically and not just in the international context, beyond changes in its military forces and everything else.

You might say it is natural you would apply it here because we have a conflict in this island, but also to refugees and asylum seekers. I remember critiquing very strongly that this is a good signal but it is not being moved ahead with. There were statements about refugees and asylum seekers and there were statements about the Northern Ireland conflict and women in Northern Ireland. It is not just about funding from the reconciliation fund; it is about what is being done strategically and what more is being done. This cannot just be talked about at the international level without doing it at home. I am please to say that has been moving on. It has been a great disappointment to women in Northern Ireland, though I am hearing that it might change. I have had several discussions in Britain, including with the Foreign Office, on why Northern Ireland is not included in the UK's women, peace and security national action plan. However, it is great and it is in that context that there must be answers around strand two in particular, but also strand three and that we can be working on both of these.