Ms Susan McCrory:

As regards the bill of rights, I can remember writing the very first response to the consultation, which I still have on my pen drive, and I can remember writing the second response. The bill of rights is in the ether. No one speaks about it. I suppose we have had Stormont go down so many times too that it has allowed the bill of rights to fall right into the background. When we look at a bill of rights, we look at it with a woman's perspective. In section 75 of the Northern Ireland Act, men and women are put together. There is a lot lost in terms of equality and gender inequality in just referring to men and women. For us, the bill of rights was about being specific to women. CEDAW Resolution 1325 is now Ireland-based but we do not hear anything about it. We do not know what it actually does. We have not heard anything, really, that comes out of it for us. Again, when we look at a bill of rights, so much has changed in 25 years in terms of population, culture and even, maybe, being disinterested in the politics and looking at our politics now in a totally different light from the way we looked at it 25 years ago. You had the energy, but now sometimes you look at them thinking, it is the same old, same old. It is, however, important that we begin a movement of understanding as to what a bill of rights would look at for us.

While a North of Ireland bill of rights would be big, because this relates to cross-Border areas such as health and education, there would have to be a cross-Border element in the bill of rights that would allow us access to better services.