Mr. John McCallister:

I thank Ms Hanna both for arranging this and for her question. There are a few things. Around the removal of designation, we can easily move to weighted majority voting, like our councils do.

This is even though some of our councils are quite heavily skewed towards one community or another, such as Derry City and Strabane District Council versus the area of Armagh City, Banbridge and Craigavon Borough Council I live in, which is quite heavily unionist. As was stated earlier, they still function. One could move to that designation but it is something that belongs to the late 1990s and early 2000s more so than today.

I would certainly move a petition of concern. If there is a move away from designation, at least three parties should have to sign a petition of concern so broad support is built up in order to really challenge something. I recall someone, who is now First Minister, wanted to bring in a Bill on some issue and Sinn Féin, the SDLP, the Green Party and the Alliance Party were all willing to sign a petition of concern to stop it. That type of broad coalition is needed.

There are other issues we need to look at. We are nowhere near talking about the D'hondt formula, which is the mathematical calculation that populates the Executive. It goes back to Deputy Mac Lochlainn's point that in no other place would there be parties as diverse as that. One could look at other mechanisms and the D'hondt formula as a default if a Government cannot be formed, considering how long it took to negotiate and form a Government in the Republic.

It should also be asked if one party, of any persuasion, should be allowed to collapse the Assembly. The lesson learned from the 2017 collapse was that it is easy to collapse the Assembly but be warned about how long it takes to get it back. The reasons for the collapse included the renewable heat incentive, RHI, scheme, the Irish language issue and, more recently, the problems when the DUP changed leader, wanted to nominate a First Minister and the problems around that. Mechanisms to have a vote in the Assembly whereby not only First Ministers but the entire Executive are approved could be looked at. The issue of the First Minister and Deputy First Minister is key. I pushed for it in my Bill but did not get support, even from people I thought would have been more supportive of it. We could well hit next year when suddenly this becomes an issue and we are trying to solve something that need not, and should not, be a problem, that is, to do that.

Those areas are on whether one party should have the monopoly on collapsing the Executive. If one party wants to sit out of the Executive there is space now for opposition, but should it have that monopoly of nobody else being allowed to go in? There is a challenge to all parties in this. For example, would members of the Ulster Unionist Party want to go into an Executive if the Democratic Unionist Party was not in it, or would the SDLP want to go into an Executive if Sinn Féin was not there? There is almost this fig leaf or cover of respectability in having the other party in there. We might not like or agree with a party but it gives an element of political cover for worries about who will move or do what at the next election and jog in for position. All of those issues play a part in how we build up. If we can get over the hurdle of another election, get into a period of more stable Government and get the Assembly working, we can start to do this and, as was stated at the very start, not deal with this in a time of crisis but in a time of stability.

Professor Tonge mentioned the Irish language issue. The time to have dealt with that would have been after the 2016 election, when unionism was in a very strong, confident position and was being generous about doing something about the Irish language. If I had been re-elected then, I wanted to do something on the Irish language and on the armed forces covenant. I would have got something done as long as I could have avoided the petition of concern. That would have been an interesting way to do it.