Professor Jonathan Tonge:

I will be as brief as I can and take the questions in the order they were posed. As to whether the citizens' assembly would be strand 1, in an ideal world it would be strand 2 and could be an all-island citizens' assembly. One can see the obvious political difficulties with that, however. One would want buy-in support for it from the unionist parties to create an all-island citizens' assembly, but that would be the optimum solution. It would very much depend upon the topic that was chosen by the First Minister and deputy First Minister. As Ms Mercer corrected me, one can have up to two citizens' assemblies per year. I hope they go ahead. I suspect the first will certainly be strand 1 and will only be for people in the North. It would be necessary to get a representative sample of those people, but it is perfectly doable as can be seen in this jurisdiction. There is no reason that it cannot take on very contentious issues such as marriage equality and abortion were, although they might seem entirely uncontentious now. There is no reason that it could not be replicated in the North.

In terms of the review mechanisms, a review mechanism for the Good Friday Agreement is long overdue. We need a formal review of the Good Friday Agreement every five years. As to whether it would get rid of the spirit of the Good Friday Agreement, not necessarily. The Good Friday Agreement was a fantastic political document and a conceptual framework for the future when it emerged, but not every clause of the agreement has to remain in stone in perpetuity. It can be adjusted and adapted. It was adapted, somewhat controversially, in 2006 with the St. Andrews Agreement, but that was an update that was very necessary to restore devolved power sharing. There is no reason that one cannot adjust aspects of the Good Friday.

As regards decisions taken behind closed doors and alienating young people, one of the biggest problems we have is that only one third of 18-year-olds to 24-year-olds voted at the last Westminster election. I strongly suspect the figure is very similar for the last Assembly election, although I have not checked it. People aged between 18 and 24 are less likely to vote in an election on my side of the Irish Sea, full stop, but that is particularly acute in respect of elections in Northern Ireland. That is a problem. Young people appear to be disaffected by the type of politics taking place.

In terms of the Good Friday Agreement and the reinforcement of constitutional politics, the constitutional question is dealt with by the agreement. Consent, North and South, will be required for constitutional change. I do not see changes to the Good Friday Agreement affecting that. I would argue that there are aspects of the Good Friday Agreement that are unsatisfactory in terms of the way it deals with constitutional politics, for example, the criteria by which the Secretary of State shall call a Border poll in the North. We might want to look at whether they should be clearer. It seems to be based on whatever the Secretary of State's criteria appear to be on a given day, but the constitutional issue is dealt with in the Good Friday Agreement.

On the question of why people vote for parties that threaten its collapse, the obvious, if unsatisfactory, answer is that the voters for those parties would not see their parties as being responsible for those collapses. It should be said that the collapses of the institutions have been for very different reasons. The post-conflict reasons for instability between 2002 and 2006 when we had the assembly hiatus are very different from the issues that collapsed the assembly in more recent times.

As for Brexit, even if there had been an Executive in place, I do not believe it could have dealt with Brexit. There were the initial encouraging noises after the Brexit vote when Martin McGuinness and Arlene Foster issued the joint statement talking about the special circumstances in the North that had to be dealt with and addressed in the fallout from Brexit, but soon afterwards the assembly collapsed anyway so there was nothing that could be done in terms of assembly and Executive management of Brexit.

In terms of the question the Senator raised about petitions of concern, I dealt with that in the statement. I do not believe petitions of concern are the big problem now. There is an argument for saying that petitions of concern should only be lodged where there is not just two parties but that those parties should be from different designations. That way one can argue that one is not playing the communal veto game. However, I do not believe petitions of concern will be a major issue. I do not see parties adopting petitions of concern as the major veto tactic over the next life of the assembly.