Rose Conway-Walsh (Mayo, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Thank you, Chair. Unfortunately, I have a meeting as well, with the Department of public expenditure. We are delighted to have the witnesses here, and I thank Ms Weir and Ms McCrory for the effort in coming down. I am more familiar with the Falls Road than I am with the Shankill but I have been to both and I see a real opportunity here in the work we are doing because it is quite similar to the things we are looking at. We have just completed a section on the economy. I remember several years ago doing work on the economy through the eyes of a woman. That was in Belmullet. I come from Mayo. It is so important to have women's voices heard, and I do not just mean women who are heard anyway. What we are trying to do on this committee and on this piece of work we are doing, women and the Constitution, is to get to the hard-to-reach voices. I really see it as an opportunity. It is like the gap. Like Ms Weir, I am very concerned about the gap. If we continue in the same vein, that gap is going to continue to widen, and the consequences of that gap widening in terms of people being left behind is just not where anybody wants to be. I look forward to having a fuller conversation with the witnesses when we visit them, if that is okay.

My first question is for both witnesses. We have talked a lot here about a bill of rights and the need for one. What is hard for us to understand here is why anybody would not want a bill of rights. What threat is it to anybody to have such a bill in place? How do the witnesses see within a bill of rights the challenging conversations Ms McCrory identifies under "identity, allegiances and nationality"? How do they see that sitting within the bill of rights, and how can we progress the bill of rights, from their point of view?