Mr. Michael D'Arcy:

The call for more social dialogue on all all-island basis was made most recently by Danny McCoy at the Centre for Cross Border Studies' George Quigley memorial lecture in Belfast earlier this year. He specifically referenced section 19 of the agreement in strand two which calls for the setting up of a civic forum.

History hat back on, I attended the sessions organised by the Government here to kick-start that in the absence of co-operation from certain parties in Northern Ireland. There was a little too much of aspiration about it and a little confusion about why it was there. It should not be difficult to figure out why there should be a social dialogue now. We have serious social problems to be dialogued about.

One we have not mentioned this morning is integration. If we were innovative about the application of the spirit of the Good Friday Agreement and the time and effort put into reconciliation, that is a short step from integration. It is pretty much the same principles being applied in a different context. If we had an all-island social dialogue, perhaps we could broaden our understanding of the scope of the application of the agreement to the peacefulness and coexistence of different ethnic groups and people in society. This is important here but is also important in Northern Ireland because that plays right into the development of economic activity in the North in the absence of population growth. You need people to fill in the jobs that will be brought by new investment. We know here, having been that story, that it is about bringing new people in. It is not always as welcoming because of traditionally embedded problems in the North, but there are also issues around welcoming in the South. That is a concrete shared issue that politics and civil society have to grapple with. Should they be grappling with it separately? Should they not talk about it in a joined-up social dialogue? Should that joined-up social dialogue be on an all-island basis? That was one of the important things Danny McCoy was pointing to. Do we need a formal calling of a civic forum to do that under strand two or can we apply the principle and processes to convene such a conversation at some place in some way?

That is worth considering.

To return to sustainability and bring it back to something I have mentioned a few times on underpinning governance, many of the climate organisations rightly call for sustainability but optimum climate action on the island is all-island action. How is that going to be delivered, other than by effectively joined-up governance? We need to look at enforcement, investment and all the other issues that follow from that when it comes to operational facts on the ground, and how we actually make it work.

Coming back to Mr. Farry's point about the schematic, we need that broader schematic in some way, even for business to plug into and to help deliver a better outcome of that wider dimension and picture. Mr. Hazzard has raised an important point, but I think that perhaps we can push the conversation into a more dynamic phase and get it going.