Ms Michelle Gildernew:

It is great to see Mr. Ahern. I also want to acknowledge his role in the peace process and the commitment he had to it. We were lucky with the work Albert Reynolds did before Mr. Ahern and the work Tony Blair did. We had an alignment of the right conditions to make the Good Friday Agreement work. Unfortunately, what George Mitchell said at the time was right - that the easy bit was over, and the hard bit starts now. Twenty-five years on, as Mr. Ahern knows, we still do not have full implementation of the Good Friday Agreement.

There are certain positives. I shared a platform on Monday night with Ben Collins, who has written a book, Irish Unity: Time to Prepare, and young Peter Adair, who is at Oxford University. Ben was educated in Dundee and Peter is in Oxford. Both of them left this country for an education and realised their Irishness. They are now part of a growing voice of civic people from within the unionist community who want to engage and have dialogue. Glenn Bradley is one of those people who has just been confirmed for the Ireland's Future event in November. He referred to some of the abuse he is already getting on Twitter. He said: "They truly fear confident, free thinking minds capable of [their] own assessment and debate." There are confident, free-thinking minds on this island - people who come from a unionist tradition who want to be part of the planning. They want to be as much part of the birth of a new nation as we do. Unfortunately, political unionism is holding them back in many senses. We have some brilliant people coming forward and engaging in those debates.

Ms Begley asked a question about northern representation. Sometimes the hardest conversations we have are down here with people from other political parties who have nearly as big a mindset against unification as what we deal with in the North. The more work that we do down here, the more we get to know one another.

Mr. Ahern spoke a great deal today about dialogue. More dialogue would be very useful in this building among us all, and in bringing people in from the unionist tradition. I was very disappointed that Ian Marshall is no longer here as he did great work in the Seanad and I would love to have seen more of that. We need to find a way to open up those lines of communication and keep the dialogue going in order that we can move forward. If people want to make the case for the status quo, I would appreciate and look forward to that debate too. The problem is that once people start writing their list of pros and cons, that list is very one-sided. It is hard to argue the merits when we see what is happening in London today. By way of a wee bit of information, the bookies have reduced the odds on Boris Johnson coming back into No. 10. It is not getting any better. When we look at what is happening and the turbulence we have had in Britain in recent days, it is very hard to make a strong case against unity. Those are my thoughts. If Mr. Ahern would like to comment on any of the, I would appreciate it.