Ms Sophie Nelson:

Those are brilliant questions. I will begin with the difference in the approach of University College Cork and the University of Ulster. It was very much a shared joint project, led by Fidelma Ashe, who I know has appeared before this committee, and Nuala Finnegan. That specific project engaged with women with a range of cross-cutting identities in discussions on a shared island. The approach was very much a collaborative one. They shared a similar pedagogy of discussions about key socioeconomic rights within the Good Friday Agreement in respect of education, healthcare and housing. It challenged degendered approaches to the ideal of a shared island. That was a joint project.

On funding from Departments, our organisation does not receive funding from any Departments or from the Departments of Communities, Health or Justice. We are a small organisation, but that is no excuse. Other sectoral organisations do get such funding. Past projects have been funded but, when the funding ran out, it stopped. My director will be able to speak to the issue of applications for PEACEPLUS funding in more detail. The question of funding for these projects is significant. The critical epistemologies across borders project is running out. The evidence tells us that, to be successful in these engagement processes, engagement needs to be sustained and cannot just be a one-off forum. The women need to know that their recommendations and voices are going somewhere. That needs to be valued. To create that value, you must invest and value these projects through sustained engagement.

The civic initiative is a new participatory structure set up in partnership with a wide range of civic society organisations. It was really set up to fill the vacuum that was created and to strengthen the civic voice when we do not have a formal civic forum following the dissolution of the one the Deputy mentioned. It is actioning a people-led examination of the key socioeconomic rights under the Good Friday Agreement, specifically in the areas of housing, healthcare, education, human rights for all, access to political institutions, poverty and cultural issues. We have finished stage 1 of that process. That was a series of regional forums. The most popular topics to come out of those regional forums were housing, healthcare and education. The next stage of the process is to gather submissions from experts and wider society. The lead on the project, Emma DeSouza, is going to engage with the political parties on this civic initiative because we have identified that as a gap.

With regard to political parties taking an active part in and working on civic forums, I am not aware of any that are doing so at the minute. However, as I said before, the civic initiative is an opportunity to engage political parties and bring them along in the context of that process. I talked a bit about the example of the constitutional convention in Chile. Ultimately, there was a disconnect between the people involved in that constitutional convention and the political parties. The two did not really join up together. We need to bring political parties along with us in the process and they also need to be invested and engaged in strengthening the civic voice.

Do I believe there would be value in the creation of a civic forum? Yes but we need to be careful about the wording. One of the things we noticed when working on the regional forums of the civic initiative is that there were some questions about the motivation behind the project. Particularly within PUL communities, there was suspicion that the project aspired to lead to Irish unity, which was never outlined or expressed and which is not the purpose of the project. The purpose of the project is to strengthen the civic voice. In order to move forward, we need the establishment of a citizens' assembly on Irish unity that would engage with the voices of all citizens.