Ms Tara Farrell:

I will not take up too much time. I thank Deputy Conway-Walsh for her kind remarks about Longford Women's Link. She has been a great supporter of our work over the years, particularly on women in political life. Her question is quite timely because we recently contributed to a piece of work with Dr. Joanna McMinn from Ulster University, funded through the reconciliation fund, around women's views on the constitutional future of Northern Ireland and Ireland. We have had some very interesting conversations. I brought together two groups of women from Longford and Roscommon and the conversations we wish to have are on the things that matter to all of us, namely, health, housing, education and well-being, and the future for our young people on these islands. That is what took up the main conversation. We have seen some very good outcomes from the citizens' assemblies here regarding a number of different issues. It would be a fantastic start to have those structures, in order to have somewhere to feed these reports into. There are a lot of conversations happening in women's groups around, for example, the impact of Covid, the impact of Brexit, the protocol and people looking for clear and accurate information but the communication flows are not always great.

The media has its own angle on various aspects of this. We have seen Covid be predominant in the headlines over the last 18 months, with not as much about the impact of Brexit, protocol implementation and so on. A citizens' assembly would be helpful. The conversations that we are hearing are about the issues that are impacting women and their families across communities. These include health, education and domestic violence, which has exploded in the last 18 months and is a real concern for many families and communities. Having a platform or forum where those issues could be brought to the fore, North and South, with the mechanisms to be fed into future policy and future discussions, would be helpful.