Ms Michelle Gildernew:

They are likely to be equally as troublesome as the generations previous. It is great to see Lord Alderdice again. I thought he did very well to be so succinct. I know him well enough to say being succinct would not be his strong point, but he got a lot in within five minutes.

At the beginning of his comments, Lord Alderdice mentioned conversations he had with Jim Molyneaux, John Hume and others. Around that time, Jim Molyneaux described the Good Friday Agreement as the most destabilising thing that had happened in the North. Lord Alderdice also spoke about cross-community engagement and constantly nourishing those relationships. I think that is why, some 25 years on from the Good Friday Agreement, there are still big chunks that have not been implemented. We still do not have a bill of rights, the civic forum or the all-Ireland civic assembly that was discussed. The brakes have been on all-Ireland co-operation for decades. Strand one, as Lord Alderdice is aware, is not operating at the moment but strand two has been non-operational for a lot longer, starting when unionists walked away from those arrangements. To be honest, the only thing that there is any kind of life left in now is strand three.

I would like to ask about that destabilisation Jim Molyneaux talked about. Lord Alderdice spoke about looking for cross-community engagement and the 70%-odd. We have put that to bed; it is 50% plus one. Does Lord Alderdice recognise now why that is so important? There has been, to use Lord Alderdice's term, a lack of constant nourishment from unionism. I have come through this. I grew up throughout this process. I sometimes feel despair. I know we do excellent work and there are many people within civic unionism who are very pragmatic, who understand what it is like to live beside the Border and were not in favour of Brexit and of us coming out of the EU. Those people recognise the difficulties and challenges around us sharing a landmass with 26 counties that are within the EU and us being outside of that.

Political unionism has failed in that constant nourishment role. I would like to get Lord Alderdice's thoughts on that. I presume that, 25 years ago, he would have thought, like we did, that we would have had a border poll, that we would have been further down the list of all-Ireland co-operation and we would have been able to engage at a level where it became easier and more natural. The polarisation that he spoke about seems to have been fed to a certain extent by political unionism. Brexit has been very damaging for everybody on the island of Ireland, whatever your background is or wherever you come from. How does Lord Alderdice see the past 25 years? How have they shaped up? Would he share the assessment that there could have been a little more generosity of spirit and more working together, had we been able to do with political unionism what we have been able to do with civic unionism? I have been there. I have worked on committees. I have been on the Executive. I have worked really well with people across the political spectrum but that lack of generosity or willingness to discuss the future seems to be why we are stuck in this particular situation now, where strands one and two are de facto parked. I hope they are only parked. How long can we keep breathing life into those institutions?