Ms Claire Hanna:

I thank the Chairman and the witnesses. It has been a really interesting session and really encouraging as well. We heard some surprisingly positive statistics there about people's attachment to devolution. To paraphrase what Mr. McCallister said, nobody has come up with a better idea than an architecture to facilitate power-sharing. I know where Senator Blaney was coming from in terms of the Good Friday Agreement having been endorsed by the people and we must be sensitive about potentially changing it. There have been some problematic divergences, like the fact the petition of concern has never really been used in the way envisaged in the Good Friday Agreement. It has never or rarely had the ad hoccommittees that were supposed to look at the reasoning. Also, some of the more problematic changes like the privatisation of the election of First Ministers happened at St. Andrews over the heads of people. Thus while things like reviewing designation should absolutely go back to the people for endorsement some of the changes have already happened and were done by politicians, for politicians. Notwithstanding Professor Tonge's point that no amount or rules and regulations can counteract the will not being there it is important we see the Good Friday Agreement not as a family heirloom or some relic one just looks at but rather as a living, breathing toolkit to facilitate this stuff.

I have loads of questions and I am interested in the Chairman's suggestion we might be able to get the witnesses back. I have a brief question for each witness.

Ms Mercer suggested well-being concepts could be legislatively embedded both as a way of getting better outcomes and going around those who set their faces against a rights-based approach. Are those Bills working in Scotland and Wales given they have some of the same strictures on their finances as we would, in other words, the lack of the full tax toolkit?

Mr. McCallister spoke about the mandatory coalition aspect and the fact there is not really an incentive to compromise. The parties know that so long as they get their mandate and their voters out for their position there is not really a need to appeal to anybody else. He is right to say that the five parties in government are a fairly unnatural set of partnerings. Will he briefly touch on some of the other mechanisms that could give protections short of mandatory coalition, and maybe if designation changed, things like qualified majority voting? I believe he touched on the latter in his bill, though it did not pass on that day.

Turning to Professor Tonge, how would a review of this stuff optimally happen? I was interested in, and did not know about, Ms Mercer's point about how citizens' assemblies can come from the First Ministers regularly. Some things, like formally equalising the First Ministers, the SDLP tried to do by amending the New Decade, New Approach Bill. In theory, if the will and legislative time were there could these changes be done in the Assembly or are they reserved?