Ms Claire Hanna:

I thank the witnesses for the engagement. I appreciate it. The danger of coming in last in a general discussion is that many of the topics have already been addressed. I wish to pick up on the issues of legacy and engaging on broadly shifting constitutional issues. How much opportunity have the witnesses had to work with what might be called middle unionism? Obviously, we are trying to get beyond the positioning and narrative that is going on at the moment. Within political unionism in particular, there are some big voices at the moment. I am trying not to use pejorative words such as "grandstanding" but some of what is being said and done around the protocol is being used as signalling for what might be down the line in the next couple of decades. What the SDLP is finding through our new Ireland commission is that it is not that unionism is not engaging. The issue of whether we will set a date and change alienates people a little; they engage far more with the issue of how this place is changing and what the different phases and stages might be in the coming decades. This comes back to a point we have been making in recent years. In the same way that within nationalism there has been a moderate centre that does not love the constitutional arrangement we currently have but which works within the principle of consent and does what it can within that window, are there organisations or individuals within unionism with whom the witnesses have the opportunity to engage? Is there any pattern emerging in the context of people who may not be curious about or interested in unity but who are open to the discussion?

On the legacy Bill, all that has been said about it is true, unfortunately. We had a meeting with the Northern Ireland Office this morning and there is no comfort coming in terms of the signalled changes to the Bill, which do not fundamentally change the flaws within it and will not trouble the elites in terms of those organisations that created victims. They will not have anything to worry about in the context of the Bill. I know the Glencree Centre for Peace and Reconciliation engages with former combatants, for want of a better term. Given that, in essence, the Bill will let those in paramilitary and state organisations who created victims off the hook, is there any hope of leadership coming from within those groups to offer truth and clarity to families that they will not get through a formal process?