Fergus O'Dowd (Louth, Fine Gael)
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We have received apologies from Senator Mullen, Mr. Mickey Brady MP and Mr. Stephen Farry MP.

Today we continue our meetings on our Architects of the Good Friday Agreement project. We have met, and will continue to meet, a range of people involved in the peace process negotiations, both politicians and officials and other persons. On behalf of the committee, I welcome Ms Bronagh Hinds, who co-founded the Northern Ireland Women's Coalition. She is very welcome indeed. Her participation highlights the huge importance of the role of women in the Northern Ireland peace process ahead of the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement.

Before we begin, I will explain some limitations to parliamentary privilege and the practices of the Houses regarding references witnesses may make to other persons in their evidence. The evidence of witnesses physically present or who give evidence from within the parliamentary precincts is protected pursuant to both the Constitution and statute by absolute privilege. However, witnesses and participants who are to give evidence from locations outside the parliamentary precincts are asked to note that they may not benefit from the same level of immunity from legal proceedings as witnesses giving evidence from within the parliamentary precincts, and may consider it appropriate to take legal advice on this matter. Witnesses are also asked to note that only evidence connected with the subject matter should be given, and they should respect directions given by the Chair and the parliamentary practice to the effect that, where possible, they should neither criticise nor make charges against any person, persons or entity by name or in such a way as to make him, her or it identifiable, or otherwise engage in speech that might be regarded as damaging to that person or entity's good name.

Members are reminded of the long-standing parliamentary practice to the effect that they should not comment on, criticise or make charges against a person outside the Houses or an official either by name or in such a way as to make him, her or it identifiable.

I now call Ms Hinds to make her opening statement.

Ms Bronagh Hinds:

A Chathaoirligh and members, I very much appreciate being invited to appear before this committee as part of its hearings in preparation of a report to mark the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement. I begin by expressing outrage at the attempted murder of Detective Chief Inspector John Caldwell last week. I am assuming this is the committee's first sitting since then. There can be no tolerance of such attacks or of the continuing presence of paramilitarism of any colour in Northern Ireland. My thoughts are with DCI Caldwell and his family. I think of his son and the other children who were bystanders to this horrific act, the new generation for whom we negotiated a peaceful and promising future in 1998.

For Omagh, it is devastating. We all remember the heartbreak of the Omagh bomb cutting through the sense of security and peace engendered by the Belfast Good Friday Agreement, an agreement welcomed by citizens across Ireland, North and South. Omagh has had enough, a Chathaoirligh. We have all had enough. More than 1,000 people marched in Omagh last weekend under the banners "No going back" and "Unite against paramilitary violence". It is safe to say we all stand with them.

I participated in the two years of multi-party talks that led to the Good Friday Agreement on behalf of the Northern Ireland Women's Coalition. As the Chairman said, I co-founded the coalition. I managed our election to the talks and was the strategic adviser throughout to our elected representatives, Ms Monica McWilliams and Ms Pearl Sagar. Prior to that, I had been working on the ground as a director of an Ulster People's College, the programmes for which we developed specifically to deal with the context of working and living in Northern Ireland and building the capacity for community leadership and peace with communities at the hard edge of the conflict.

The 1996 election to the talks saw ten parties, big and small, participate with relatively equal representation, which was designed to enable representatives of loyalist paramilitaries to be included with a legitimate electoral mandate. Sinn Féin had already demonstrated its mandate. We seized the opportunity to address the deficit of women witnessed in previous negotiations. Indeed, in 1996, I can say that in City Hall in Cork, I was speaking about this very gap, never realising that within one month we would be founding a party, running in elections and succeeding in winning places at the talks.

Senator George Mitchell reflected that "The cause of women in Northern Ireland is essential to the cause of peace." Our conflict has shown us and the world that including women and civil society has a positive impact on the capacity to make and sustain peace. Research now absolutely demonstrates that. Northern Ireland is included in Ireland's national action plan on women, peace and security, and Ireland is providing international leadership on these lessons at the UN in support of efforts to resolve other conflicts. I know this from first-hand experience because I have been able to contribute to some of those.

The Northern Ireland Women's Coalition brought skills to the negotiations such as leadership, strategy, managing complexity, policy, drafting, active listening, which is a very underrated skill, relationship building, dialogue facilitation, negotiation and managing competing interests. We were engaged in all of that work. Our links into the hearts of communities gave us the confidence to represent grassroots concerns and aspirations. We were used to working across conflict divides and finding ways to manage our differences that seemed for others to be intractable conflicts.

Throughout the negotiations, we remained focused on our twin goals of ensuring women's equal and meaningful participation and achieving agreement on a durable settlement that would win people's consent. We had an eye to making the negotiating process work through building trust and relationships, challenging those throwing obstacles in the works, clearing up miscommunications, spotting difficulties in advance and offering alternatives. Truth be told, we were actually process-oriented as well as content-oriented in those negotiations.

One strategy was to challenge language and behaviour such as antagonism, bullying, sectarianism, sexism, misogyny and demonising and threatening behaviour, all of which were deeply corrosive of the process. For example, militaristic language such as "battle", "enemy", "smashing", "eyeballing", "destroying" was used quite liberally. Calling those who were prepared to engage in dialogue and compromise "traitors" was intended to intimidate and was, indeed, life-threatening. We were called naive when we challenged hateful rhetoric, but we were far from naive. We realised exactly what we were doing. Abuse was being used to derail negotiation and thwart political progress. Therefore, we continued to stand our ground and the strong public reaction to the offending parties forced them to moderate their behaviour.

Our approach was different from that of other parties. We worked from principles, namely, inclusion, equity and human rights, to guide our position and decisions on others' positions. Those who joined the coalition signed up to being willing to reach an accommodation.

Efforts to pigeonhole us into one or other side of the divide or drive a wedge between women from different political or religious traditions met with failure. We refused to take a position on the constitution at the outset, on the basis that in negotiation we would reframe Northern Ireland's constitutional arrangement, and that is what has happened. We preferred to put our energy into finding a new solution rather than defending traditional positions. We were prepared to live with ambiguity and experiment with various configurations until we reached consensus. We sought to be creative and innovative, explore all ideas and options, offer solutions and reframe issues to assist agreement.

In his statement, Tim O'Connor set out the key strands and issues in the negotiations. We contributed to all of that, from constitutional arrangements to the relationship between different jurisdictions, policing and decommissioning. We did not win the support of other parties, however, for a new electoral system we proposed. We believed it would deliver a more diverse representation. Instead, parties settled on widening participation, with six-seat rather than five-seat constituencies. It was, therefore, disappointing to see the Assembly resile from this later and reduce the number of MLAs by 18. This has an impact on smaller parties and diversity in an assembly.

Not all elements of the agreement have been given the same attention. Alert to governing challenges after protracted conflicts, we proposed the civic form. We wanted to harness the expertise of social and economic actors to assist the Executive, Assembly and people to focus on and drive forward economic prosperity and social cohesion. Although the Assembly has been resurrected many times, the forum was abandoned with the first Assembly suspension despite being legislated for in the Northern Ireland Act 1998. The economic bounce we expected, and should have had, after the peace agreement was lost.

We were strong advocates for the provisions on human rights, equality and reconciliation, adding substantially to these sections. We championed the right of women to full and equal political participation, integrated education and mixed housing and, most important and alone among the parties, recognition and provision for the victims of violence. We also inserted references to community development, social inclusion and other issues.

In his statement, Mark Durkan called for honesty about divergences and deficits in implementation. The civic forum is one such example, but there are others. Despite work by the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission, there is still no bill of rights in Northern Ireland. When I was deputy chief commissioner of the Equality Commission for Northern Ireland leading the implementation of the agreement's equality aspects, we were in discussion with the Office of the First and Deputy First Ministers on a promised single equality Act. It was promised within the year, but has yet to appear 25 years later.

It is essential that we have no diminution of rights, safeguards or equality due to Brexit and have sufficient resourcing of the equality and human rights commissions, North and South, to monitor and protect these rights. There is concern that victims' rights may be diminished under the Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Bill. The Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission views it as failing to comply with the standards set in the victims' directive.

Brexit has utterly changed the context. Civil society was instrumental in developing pathways to peace, facilitating back channels, resolving peace-line conflicts, building cross-community relations and maintaining the social and economic fabric. It helped to establish the conditions for negotiations and the referendums. It significantly contributed to Jacques Delors's vision of a Europe of citizens playing lead roles in establishing and leading pan-European networks and developing the EU's social dimension.

The EU invested in our social and economic reconstruction, as well as in peace and reconciliation. Therefore, reducing EU relations to the equivalent of a lesser version of the old European Economic Community is insufficient. Let me say clearly that I am very much backing the proposals to get us back on track, but it is not the same as being in the whole of the EU with its social dimension. I am, therefore, drawn to Mark Durkan's suggestion of creatively exploring how strands two and three could answer some of the problems created by Brexit.

As a living document, the Good Friday Agreement should continue to evolve, progress and be enhanced. We should, and indeed did, expect the number of North-South bodies to increase from the initial six and the Government's shared island initiative is a very welcome underpinning of relationships and joint projects.

What else should we see moving forward? We should take account of changing demographics and the impact on patterns of representation. Should we revisit the Assembly's voting mechanisms to ensure they properly take account of increases in those designated as "other"?

Paramilitaries exploit children and young people, oppress women, deal drugs, act as loan sharks, intimidate and, as reported only last week, threaten to burn Northern Ireland down if they do not get their way. Enough has been spent on their transition. We must have an end to paramilitary control and criminality. We must ensure no public funds find their way into their hands and instead invest significantly more in women and young people.

The Executive should lead a comprehensive reconciliation strategy with an effective implementation plan and monitoring. Politicians must set an example of reconciliation in their leadership, language and behaviour. It is about time that priority is given to the victims and survivors of conflict and an appropriate approach is taken to the legacy of the past.

I extend my thanks to those who helped us to reach the Good Friday Agreement. They include Senator George Mitchell, the co-chairs John de Chastelain and Harri Holkeri, and their teams;the Irish, Northern Irish and British officials who worked unfailingly to support the parties in the process; the wonderful Mo Mowlam, Secretary of State for Northern Ireland; and all of the Irish and British Ministers. The committee will forgive me if I pick out the female Ministers, that is, Nora Owen and Liz O’Donnell, in the Irish delegation. I want to thank in particular the United States. President Clinton consistently encouraged parties to go the extra mile, in person and by phone, ringing at the most tense moments and putting the most delicate pressure on people to move forward. He, true to his word, has led investment delegations to Northern Ireland since the agreement.

I commend Hillary Clinton who gave visibility to women and led delegations of women from the US to develop partnerships with women in Northern Ireland and invest in their projects. I will give the committee a key example.

When I founded DemocraShe, I had two partners in the United States through Hillary Clinton's Vital Voices initiative. My colleague across the way here will remember it very well because she received capacity building funding in one of those programs. After the agreement, I set about negotiating with every single party in Northern Ireland: nationalists, unionists, pro-agreement, and believe it or not, anti-agreement parties at that time, and was able to run a programme that ran over many years of training women in all of those parties and engaging in strategic discussions with some of the party leaders about how to select more women and get more women into politics. The second was aimed at building the capacity of the vast number of women in civic leadership into actually leading the organisations they were working in. The approach has proved successful. I also am thankful for the EU's extensive financial support, which has funded economic development and Northern Ireland's community infrastructure, enabling it to survive and thrive. These have been important to sustaining the peace.

Brexit shredded the British-Irish partnership as much by the way the UK Government conducted the process as by the act itself. I highlight the Johnson-Frost administration in particular in this. Indeed, the partisan manner in which the administration dealt with Northern Ireland parties also alienated people. In evidence to this committee, John Major and Tim O'Connor testified to the converse example; the respect and partnership between two sets of British prime ministers and taoisigh who stepped back from their traditional sides and worked together for the singular purpose of delivering peace. This was essential to enabling an effective process and reaching agreement. The signs are - and we hope they come true - that the current UK Prime Minister has discarded that approach of his predecessors for one that is more conducive to making progress.

My critique of the implementation of the agreement is in the spirit of review and renewal after 25 years; a quarter of a century. We should and must mark the agreement's success. It stopped decades of violence and saved countless lives and despite the challenges, peace will endure. Young people are growing up to a better future with new expectations and aspirations. We have seen an exponential growth in female politicians and party leaders and this has been terrific. It has shown us opposing politicians working together, at least part of the time, and the agreement created the framework within which peace, reconciliation and prosperity are possible. It is still a work in progress. However imperfect, as all peace processes and agreements are, ours is recognised as a success globally and one which has lessons to share. We are also pioneers in women's engagement in negotiating peace and security. It was not until two years after the agreement that the UN Security Council passed its seminal Resolution 1325 on women, peace and security. Many Northern Ireland women have assisted peace building and negotiation in conflicts across the world. For several years, I have been able to contribute in the negotiations in Geneva on the Syrian conflict, on building a strategy for Afghani leaders who are women, and had the privilege of travelling across Ukraine while working with women in some of the areas that are now occupied.

I trust the political parties have now exhausted their use of the revolving door at Stormont and now with the Brexit impasse resolved, they will speedily return to the Assembly. We simply cannot afford the instability that serves only to squander the benefits. In the final days of the talks, the Northern Ireland Women's Coalition put a proposal on the table seeking collective responsibility and collaboration in selling the agreement for the referendums. We failed because parties were not ready for that step then. A quarter of a century later, it is time for parties to step up to cabinet government, to leave hurts and old enmities outside the door, to stop working in silos and to govern collaboratively for the good of all. I thank members again for this opportunity to contribute evidence and views to the committee's exploration of the Good Friday Agreement. There had been a feeling abroad that the Irish and British Governments disengaged for a period and I think that leaves the situation in Northern Ireland in a very perilous state. I thank members particularly for their continuing interest and for continuing to monitor what is going on. I am glad to see the governments have been re-engaging. It is incredibly important.

I am happy to answer any questions.

Fergus O'Dowd (Louth, Fine Gael)
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I thank Ms Hinds for her clear, concise, well-researched and informative address to us. I might use the word dynamic or forward-focused to describe it. Indeed, in supporting the call she made to condemn the attempted murder of Detective Chief Inspector John Caldwell, Ms Hinds rightly and appropriately pointed out how awful and how evil that act was and the wishes of this committee will clearly go out to his family.

To explain to the witnesses what will happen now, we have a number of different parties here and will rotate the speaking time between them. I would not have the temerity to decide as to whether a male or female participant would come first so I will leave it up to the parties.

Emer Currie (Fine Gael)
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I will be going to the Chamber for about ten minutes but will be back.

Fergus O'Dowd (Louth, Fine Gael)
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We will keep the Senator's space for her.

Ms Michelle Gildernew:

Cuirim fáilte roimh Ms Hinds and it is great to see her again. It is important that I first of all acknowledge what she has said about the attempted murder of John Caldwell. I also extend our sympathies and support to his family and friends. I think Michelle O'Neill spoke for all of us when she said that this attack was an attack on all of us and on our community. I agree with Ms Hinds on that point. I read her words with interest. It was a pretty comprehensive overview of the time. I was a green as grass youngster in the party 25 years ago and was very lucky to have really inspirational women around me from whom I learned so much. She will kill me for saying this but I am thinking of Lucilita Bhreatnach, who Ms Hinds would have known from that time and who is still working with our team now on this committee and working on the Good Friday Agreement 25 years on. I want to also pay tribute to Bairbre de Brún and Dodie McGuinness.

Ms Bronagh Hinds:

Absolutely, yes.

Ms Michelle Gildernew:

We were so lucky to have very strong women as integral parts of our delegation through those negotiations. I was there at the beginning of the Assembly and am familiar with the abuse that was hurled at the Northern Ireland Women's Coalition and at all the women during the negotiations. It is my understanding that Senator Mitchell had to have a word particularly with the unionist parties about their treatment of women. When we were in the chamber and were heckled and abused from the unionist benches, I was very disappointed to see the unionist women including themselves in that. I thought the sisterhood was universal but clearly in that instance it certainly was not. I refer to the treatment of Ms Hinds and Ms McWilliams especially. The misogyny that was on display was palpable and very disturbing indeed. I also make the point that there was a steady presence of women MLAs across all the parties at the negotiating table. I am thinking about people like Eileen Bell, Bríd Rogers, Patricia Lewsley and others.

The women worked well together even if the unionist women kept themselves out of that. The high profile interest from the media in the negotiations and the regular presence of women set a precedent. Girls now might think that women have had that level of presence forever but a precedent was set 25 years ago that has been carried on since. This has empowered me and other women to come forward and put our names forward for elected roles. It is great to see women leaders and leaders of political parties inspiring women and girls. There is now a firm gender footprint in the political life of the entire nation as a result. We know it not easy but all women in public or private life have made a valuable contribution to that gender footprint.

Regarding the cross-community voting mechanism, the equality and human rights provisions in the Good Friday Agreement have stood the test of time. It is worth revisiting the agreement. It was published and sent out to every home and people could read it in their own time at their leisure. I think there are people from newcomer communities who would be interested in reading the Good Friday Agreement, GFA, and the provisions within it. The provisions to protect minorities have been critical in helping us to forge a new society throughout the island. In the intervening years, the agreement has become an international template for countries and people emerging from conflict. Ms Hinds has mentioned her work and that of others as part of that as well. It has been a solid foundation on which many new societies have been built. It is best we uphold and maintain the fundamental elements of the GFA that have anchored the peace and political processes. They were hard fought and need to be protected.

I was very interested in the views of Ms Hinds on paramilitarism. I agree there is no room for paramilitarism in any form, anywhere in this country. It is a disgrace that some communities are still experiencing coercive control, intimidation and extortion. At an event in Belfast last night, I spoke about this with Ms Avila Kilmurray and Ms Dawn Purvis, formerly of the PUP. Where it exists, those communities should be supported by their political representatives to have paramilitaries removed. The PSNI has a job to do and should do it. A community that is experiencing the form of paramilitarism Ms Hinds described should be demanding that the PSNI uses all its formidable resources to remove this coercive control. We have also heard this in these committee rooms for women from the loyalist communities. It is still a scourge and we definitely need to tackle it, particularly in working-class communities.

Great progress has been made on reconciliation across society in the North, between the North and South and east-west between here and Britain. At the heart of this reconciliation, we have ordinary people from different backgrounds exploring the past and not being afraid of the future. No topic is taboo, including the country's constitutional future.

Ms Hinds talked about victims and survivors and the hurt and damage that the British Government's legacy proposals are having on those relatives who lost loved ones or had people injured during the conflict. Across this island, every party is against these legacy proposals. What impact does Ms Hinds think they are having on relatives and families and the promise within the GFA that the peace dividend would benefit them as well as everyone else? How are they feeling now as a result of all of that? I thank her for taking the time to be here today. I still keep in touch with Ms Jane Morrice, a member of the Women's Coalition. There is certainly room for more female voices, the female point of view and our lived experience and ensuring those are brought to the heart of government at every level of politics and at every level of society as well.

Ms Bronagh Hinds:

I pay tribute to women in all of the other parties as well. The first assembly comprised only 10% women. We have been able to raise that to 30%. We still have a way to go, another 20% to get to 50:50.

In her last comment, Ms Gildernew mentioned engagement at every level. It is, therefore, disappointing when that does not happen at every level. I am an independent assessor for the Commissioner for Public Appointments so I am very keen to see diversity in public appointments in Northern Ireland. When the Commission on Flags, Identity, Culture and Tradition was set up by politicians and there was one woman on it and that was unacceptable. In north Belfast, an economic working group composed entirely of men was set up. That is not acceptable. We can agree that we have way to go.

Let me also refer to the issue of the language and the bullying which came up. The Women's Coalition faced it very much in the forum for political dialogue that was running in parallel to the talks. When comments such as women should go back to the kitchen and stand behind the loyal men of Ulster were made, the great Pearl Sagar stood up and started singing the song "Stand by Your Man". She had humorous way of dealing with this kind of thing. Some 12 or 13 years later, I was sharing a platform in Carrickfergus with a member of the DUP. She asked if she could have a quiet word with me afterwards. She wanted to apologise that she had allowed herself to be encouraged to do that and she was very sorry. She could see what we were trying to do for all women. I was very appreciative of that. It was a very big gesture of her. I will not name her in case it is an issue for her. I was pleased. People move on and learn.

Ms Gildernew made reference to the GFA being sent to people's homes. Before that, these agreements were always banked on previous agreements and work that had been done. A frameworks document was circulated before the Belfast-Good Friday Agreement. There was outrage that it was being sent to people's homes. During that time, I was director of the Ulster People's College and we were one of the leading organisations in developing dialogues in local communities to understand the agreement. We ran major events with politicians, political journalists and civic society contributing. We also had a women's contribution to it looking at these issues and debating them. It is important that people understand these debates.

I am behind protecting the fundamentals of the Belfast-Good Friday Agreement. They must be protected. The Women's Coalition, as much as the Alliance Party, had difficulty with the issue of the cross-community designation and, indeed, used to re-designate themselves depending on what needed to be done until it was outlawed. People have criticised some of the fundamentals as being inappropriate and leading to division. That is not my view. It was essential that we had the cross-community protections in voting. We need to ensure we have cross-community protections but we need to rethink how we do so, whether it is with a higher threshold or some other proposal. We need to look at the changes in voting patterns, which are bringing forward more and more "other" voting, and see how we can be inclusive. We cannot throw these out but we have to have a debate about how we can build on those protections, extend them and make them as inclusive as possible.

Regarding paramilitarism, last month the Chief Constable of the PSNI reported to the Northern Ireland Policing Board that he has to make another 6% cut in expenditure. In 2020, the New Decade, New Approach Deal made a commitment on policing. Policing has been one of the significant good results of the Belfast-Good Friday Agreement.

I also pay tribute to the women and those in civil society who took leading roles in the first district policing partnerships, when not all parties were involved in that, and withstood some horrific intimidation. I remember a time in Derry when women had to stand up against people trying to storm them, and provide protection for others, because women were 50% of those panels at that time and were taking a hard edge. It is concerning that certain numbers for policing were promised in 2020 and what is now being reported is we will be down by 800 police officers. We need to see that in the context of tackling paramilitarism. I will also put on the table that we are about to see a significant Executive policy on violence against women and girls. Last year, the PSNI launched its strategy on violence against women and girls. How will we tackle those issues, which are deep in communities, along with paramilitarism, intimidation and criminality, with reduced numbers for policing?

We have made progress on reconciliation; that was talked about in the context of the community. Frankly, my problem is it is seen as a little thing for communities to do but it is a big job. We know it is a big job. What is left out of the debate is politicians' leadership responsibility for reconciliation. Communities and civil society have been building cross-community bridges. As a former director of the Ulster People's College, I come from the perspective of saying it is not just about mutual understanding but having those deep debates about the past, what we are looking for in the future, different cultures, different identities and rebuilding. We must have the hard discussions just as we had in the Ulster People's College, just as the Workers Educational Association did, and just as community dialogue tries to do. Those are the initiatives. We do not have the first two of those organisations now. Community dialogue and organisations like that are not sufficiently funded. We have deep dialogue to do but we expect leadership from our politicians, demonstrating reconciliation by their leadership, behaviour and language. It cannot only be left to communities.

On the legacy proposals, this committee has heard from Ms Sandra Peake of WAVE Trauma Centre. It could not have heard from a better person or organisation. These proposals are devastating for families. They have to believe, and their hearts are upheld by seeking a sense of justice. That cannot be closed to them. We all come to terms with what happened in our own way but we have no right to block out other people's access just because we think it is better to leave the past behind. We cannot put it in a box. It will resurrect at some other time. Parties, churches, victims commissioners and all these groups, are opposed to these proposals. It is very important that victims have their space, time and access to justice.

Brendan Smith (Cavan-Monaghan, Fianna Fail)
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Ms Hinds is very welcome. It is good to have an opportunity to exchange with her again. I very much welcome her opening comments with regard to the despicable, deplorable act and attack on the off-duty PSNI officer in Omagh last week. As she said, "There can be [absolutely] no tolerance of such attacks, or of the continuing presence of paramilitarism of any colour in Northern Ireland." We all wholeheartedly agree with that statement. It is sad that 25 years on from the signing of the Good Friday Agreement the word "paramilitarism" is still part of our everyday vocabulary. Hopefully, that will be consigned to history in the not-too-distant future. I fully realise this involves only a very small number of people but a small number of people can do awful damage. There can be no tolerance in society for their behaviour, thuggery and criminality.

Ms Hinds's entire contribution was very honest, forthright, heartfelt and given with great clarity. I concur with the Cathaoirleach in saying that. From my memory of watching the proceedings and negotiations at that time, I always regarded the Northern Ireland Women's Coalition as being very progressive and courageous in its work. That is underlined even more by Ms Hinds's comments on the unacceptable language its members were subjected to and the unacceptable behaviour of some of the participants. We often hear a person described as a trailblazer and that is the case when we look back and see the background to the work Ms Hinds did and what she did so well. I recall Ms Monica McWilliams, Ms Hinds and others always came across as being on top of their subject. They always gave the impression of being in no way intimidated, as no one should be in any negotiations. Ms Hinds did that work so well and in such a courageous way that benefited society. We need that continued work.

Ms Hinds mentioned that the civic forum was not enthusiastically received by the larger parties. She might elaborate on that later. My recollection is that civic forum only lasted a short time. One of the subsequent agreements - I think the St. Andrews Agreement - provided for another civic forum to be established but it did not ever get going, for any length of time anyway. That was very unfortunate because I knew some of the people who participated in the first civic forum, who always said it was very worthwhile to bring in the relevant stakeholders and partners. Nowadays, in this State, people call for a citizens' assembly, no matter what subject is discussed, without any preparatory work being done on different topics. It is a shame the civic forum did not continue to exist in order to have the views of people outside the political arena.

It is most disappointing that a bill of rights has not been established. Ms Hinds also mentioned the single equality Act she worked towards, along with the offices of the First and deputy First Ministers, which did not materialise either. The importance of the bill of rights and the single equality Act comes into focus when we think of Brexit and the damage it could do in the undermining and diminution of rights, as Ms Hinds referenced.

On the legacy Bill, it is absolutely reprehensible and deplorable that any government could bring forward such proposals. Ms Hinds quite rightly referred to the great work of Ms Sandra Peake and her colleagues in WAVE. The Government and all political parties in the Oireachtas have very clearly outlined that the British proposals are totally unacceptable. They give a licence to murderers to pardon themselves. That should not be acceptable in any democracy or society. It totally discards the work, pain and grief, and the efforts to which people have gone to try get the truth in regard to what happened to their loved ones, who may have lost their lives or been seriously injured through the activities of some members of state forces and some paramilitary organisations. It is utterly deplorable that any such suggestion could come from any government. For victims and survivors, that legislation is anything but victim centred. It is the very antithesis of what victim-centred supports should be. We need a particular emphasis on addressing the many outstanding issues pertaining to victims and the suffering and grief so many families still go through.

In all the contributions made to date as part of this particular work the committee is undertaking, there has been a clear emphasis on progress only being made when the two Governments worked closely together. As Ms Hinds remarked, the respective partnerships between prime ministers and taoisigh were an essential ingredient for talks to succeed. Over the past few years, the relationships between the British and Irish Governments have not been as cordial, positive or progressive as we would like them to be. We sincerely hope the new framework for the protocol under Mr. Sunak's government will improve matters.

It is not for the want of efforts on the part of Irish Governments that the relationship has deteriorated. It is essential that the outstanding aspects of the Good Friday Agreement are progressed as soon as possible. We can itemise the deficiencies in regard to the agreement and what has not happened but it is always important we remember what has been achieved and that the island we all live on today is transformed thanks to the Good Friday Agreement and it is not the island we experienced for decades up until 1998. To my recollection, there was not an election in 1996 to decide on the parties to the multi-party talks.

Ms Bronagh Hinds:

No.

Brendan Smith (Cavan-Monaghan, Fianna Fail)
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Ms Hinds said there were elections for parties. Were there actual elections in 1996?

Ms Bronagh Hinds:

Yes.

Ms Michelle Gildernew:

We stood five people in each constituency. We stood two men, two women and somebody from the Twenty-six Counties to reflect the all-Ireland nature of the party. I was one of the candidates for that and we won one seat in Fermanagh and south Tyrone. Mr. Gerry McHugh was our first candidate so there were actual elections.

Brendan Smith (Cavan-Monaghan, Fianna Fail)
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Right. Could Ms Hinds let the committee know who of themselves was successful?

Ms Bronagh Hinds:

I thank Deputy Brendan Smith for his continuing interest. Let me stress that I agree with him. Paramilitaries are a small number but it is amazing how a small number of people can have a stranglehold and we have to actually break that stranglehold. In a piece of work to which I contributed that was run by the Community Foundation for Northern Ireland, with the Women's Resource and Development Agency and the National Women's Council of Ireland and that reached out to more than 1,000 women across Northern Ireland and in the southern Border counties, one of the issues they looked at was that issue. Women reported all of the problems they had with paramilitaries and what happened to them when they stood up. They were really afraid for their young people, the girls being groomed, and boys being groomed into paramilitarism, and the intimidation. Another women's organisation, the Women's Support Network, finished a recent piece of research on loan sharks and that whole element of paramilitarism. It has a devastating impact and I pick out women because as the Opsahl Commission said, it is women who have often been holding families and communities together and are actually picking up all of the impacts of that.

I thank the Deputy for his kind comments about the Northern Ireland Women’s Coalition. When an agreement is made, and it is the same in this current issue faced by the Democratic Unionist Party, there is a time to be pragmatic and to step up, take the risk, and be courageous. All parties have to do that and compromise. We have to move from the position where we have no compromise to being willing to have a compromise. I remember when we were doing things like democratic dialogue and setting up and bringing forward the work of the Opsahl Commission, we had long debates on what word we could actually coin for compromise because "compromise" was such a dirty word, accommodation, compromise, or whatever. We all have to compromise and I believe, for example, at that time Mr. David Trimble and the Ulster Unionist Party took that courageous step. I think other parties did. I know at the very end, we in the coalition and Sinn Féin still had some issues sitting on the table that had not been totally satisfied. I remember one of them was that we wanted to get quotas for women. There were certain things we did not get done and for which we were later criticised. As we walked down on that day Ms. Monica McWilliams asked me whether we should sign or not because we had not had all these issues satisfied. You have to say, how can you not sign a peace agreement for your country and you have to keep your eye on that big picture. All people have had to compromise and step up and be courageous and again, I thank the Deputy for his kind words about the coalition.

I mentioned the bill of rights and the single equality Act. When we had the Good Friday Agreement and the Northern Ireland Act, I can safely say that Northern Ireland, having had a very poor record in human rights and equality, was at the leading edge internationally on our section 75 legislation. Since then Northern Ireland has been leapfrogged because we do not have a single equality Act. Even in Britain, which moved on with a single equality Act there is higher legislation in England, Scotland and Wales than there is in Northern Ireland but at one time we were, for that moment, at the leading edge. We absolutely need a single equality Act and I know the Equality Commission for Northern Ireland and the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission are still trying to get those issues steered through and all politicians should step up and agree it.

In terms of the Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Bill, it states it will end all further civil actions related to the Troubles. It is a travesty that individuals are forbidden from taking civil actions and that there will be no further inquests. It is absolutely tragic. Another thing I find difficult is related to the point about reconciliation, because I was thinking about this when I looked back. We had our shared future document in 2006, which was about reconciliation and communities getting on with that etc. As for putting the name in that Bill, that is, the Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Bill, it is itself a travesty to pretend that is the answer to reconciliation and to use the reconciliation. It is an abuse of the word, "reconciliation", in my view and is unacceptable.

I agree in terms of the partnerships. Those partnerships were absolutely essential because prior to that, if you will forgive me, the British Government in a sense was backing the unionists and the Irish Government was backing the nationalists. In some sense, governments have to stand aside. There is no point in saying that governments are not players in this. Too often they have thought they were neutral brokers but they are not at all in my view. Still, they must have a different role and it was essential when they stepped up to do that. I am utterly of the opinion that what enabled that was them both joining the European Union in 1973. Acting as governments in collaboration helped to set the framework for those collaborations. Of course there is personal chemistry. John Major talked about his close link with Albert Reynolds and I believe Tim O'Connor talked about the close relationship between Tony Blair and Bertie Ahern. Consequently, the chemistry was there as well. However there was a framework for that and standing up and giving some leadership was absolutely essential.

As for the election, yes there was an election. It was on that basis. Remember I said in my talk that we were looking to bring forward another electoral mechanism. It was something around that similar kind of electoral mechanism. There are certain electoral mechanisms that can create space for smaller entities. The question Deputy Brendan Smith asked about the civic forum reminded me because it is related to this as well. The reason it was not well received in political parties is because some parties think civil society stole their clothes in all of the years politicians were outside the tent, politically. Civil society was just going about its business working for the social development and social support of people, bringing to and negotiating with government on policies. At one time, Dr. Paisley took a swipe at civil society for engaging with the British Government while representing their communities, when they were boycotting the British Government or something like that. Civil society has always had an independent role so it might have been a bit of that. Civil society is not there to take the place of political representatives. Political representatives have to move away, in my view, from clientelism and must step up to do the strategic leadership we need them to do in our Assembly and in our local councils. We need them to do that, so that was one thing.

Let me exclude Mark Durkan from that because he was the one person who saw the issue. We completely challenged the SDLP on the issue of a civic forum because they supported the idea of a consultative civic forum North-South but we asked how can they not buy into a civic forum.

In terms of the electoral mechanism to bring forward more people, a concern was articulated by a politician whom I will not name because he has contributed a lot to the peace process. He was concerned about bringing too many voices into a process because it is harder to manage. Now you have a view about managing and helping to resolve conflict and this was one of the differences between the Northern Ireland Women's Coalition and some of the existing traditional parties. For the original power-sharing Executive, in the 1970s, someone decided that the Ulster Unionist Party, the Alliance Party and the SDLP would do because they could manage it but that is not an inclusive process. Some people thought that the Northern Ireland Women's Coalition was the same as the Alliance Party but it was not. We were absolutely for an inclusive process so we argued for Sinn Féin and representatives of loyalism to be in the room. We argued for those excluded groups to be in the room.

An aspect that dogs peace negotiations and peace processes globally is where people decide that you can only get a few actors into the room and that will help you to solve the matter. Our view was that by making it inclusive of all the different interests, you have a lot of diversity. Yes, it can be difficult to manage complexity but get over it. If you learn how to manage complexity and make sure you have all the stakeholders who are going to have things satisfied and to learn to make compromises, you can make an inclusive agreement. One of the successes that has been shown in our process is that it has been a much more inclusive process than many negotiation processes in other conflicts, and the agenda was inclusive, which is really important. We wanted to push that forward but there was still a resistance, even from people who had experience in the negotiations, that it would be a bit destablising to manage that amount of diversity but that is not my view.

Fergus O'Dowd (Louth, Fine Gael)
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Next is the Fine Gael Party.

Emer Currie (Fine Gael)
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I thank Ms Hinds for her brilliant opening statement. What is her view of women's participation in politics? Can she reflect on what is happening in both the North and South?

I was lucky enough to be studying in Queen's University Belfast when a lot of this was happening, and I did a module in women's studies so I find myself very much drawn to the Northern Ireland Women's Coalition and the role of women in community participation. When it comes to Northern society, Ms Hinds is right about the role played by civil organisations. I think of the campaign for social justice and the civil rights campaign. I completely agree with Ms Hinds that the civil forum could operate whenever politics breaks down. It could safeguard against political dysfunction while creating the momentum for solutions. It is such a pity that a civil forum was not prioritised.

What impact does Ms Hinds believe the St. Andrews Agreement has had on politics and the potential of the agreement? I ask because many people have commented on the polarisation of politics and the lack of progress due to the bolstering of the two-party system.

Ms Bronagh Hinds:

I will first respond to the query about civil organisations. We are very lucky with our civil society organisations in Northern Ireland. A colleague whom I was working decided to take some time out to travel across the world and learn from civil society organisations elsewhere. When he returned, he said he was amazed to discover there were more civil society organisations in Northern Ireland than elsewhere and they were more developed. These organisations have managed some unbelievable complexity. In my view they have been under-recognised and underlauded throughout the conflict in terms of what they have done.

I will outline a problem I am looking at now. Way before we had the PEACE programme moneys, Quintin Oliver, who was the director of the Northern Ireland Council for Voluntary Action - I was its chair - and the NICVA, which is the umbrella body of civil society organisations in Northern Ireland in the community and voluntary sector, did a lot of work to create links with Europe. They were involved with Departments in setting up committees and the distribution of funding, and then that moved on to become PEACE funding. I am referring to the original funding for building prosperity and all of that. We were already negotiating and writing things while working with officials in Northern Ireland, including things in documents sent to Europe. For example, we came up with the concept of community infrastructure and I dreamed up that concept. We argued about significant investment in community infrastructure and, indeed, the EU invested in that. We made an input into the original document, which had the first North-South chapter. We put some of that in the North-South chapter. We particularly wanted North-South collaboration between strategic organisations but the implementation of that was not as farsighted and it never went much past the Border. We wanted North-South co-operation on the Border but also in a more strategic way, which I think we are moving towards now and that is great to see.

We had a strategy to support the development of the community and voluntary sectors in Northern Ireland. It is something that we engaged on and steered through in Northern Ireland, from the voluntary sector through NICVA. It was a Government strategy. We worked with officials on that. They were officials in the Department of Health in those days because there was no Department with responsibility for communities and not much investment in community infrastructure. We said to those officials that we knew that they could get the money from Europe, which would assist the coffers in Northern Ireland and that is exactly what happened. Since that time, even though various Departments fund civil society in Northern Ireland, a lot of the moneys have come through matching European moneys through the European Social Fund, PEACE moneys and everything else. Those organisations have been absolutely fundamental in terms of what they have done in communities and are absolutely fundamental going forward. We know the situation with the moneys. Even though the PEACE money will continue for a period, it will be less. There will be a great loss unless the funding is replaced. We are going to lose organisations. Hundreds of these organisations are putting people on notice now because the resourcing is not there. An active civil society is necessary to protect the fabric of society. It is a measure of a democracy. We are a premier example of it in the world and we need to keep it going.

On the need for a civic forum, for the Stormont House Agreement and the Fresh Start Agreement I came up with a proposal for a compact civic advisory panel. I am not sure many people know about the panel.

However, it was to deal with two issues a year and report to the executive. It is good in that it is about strategic thinking, strategies and plans on issues to help shape Northern Ireland’s future and to think beyond the immediate but it does not have the same standing or clout as a civic forum and that is a pity. I do not think people here know about it. It seems very internalised.

On the point about the St. Andrews Agreement and polarisation, the problem is that we have polarisation in Northern Ireland and we have to overcome that. There are groups working on trying to do that. We had to built-in a mechanism for protections and cross-community voting. That goes back to the Belfast-Good Friday Agreement and what Ms Gildernew was talking about the fundamentals and I am a supporter of putting in those fundamentals; we would not have got the agreement without it but what we have had is excessive use. What was tried to be resolved - I think it was in the Stormont House Agreement but we have had multiple talks and agreements since the Good Friday Agreement - was to stop the excessive use of petitions of concern which increasingly polarise people. They were being used constantly and, I must say, they were being used mainly constantly by one party, namely, the Democratic Unionist Party. We need to stop that way of doing business. That was my reference to collaborative government.

In the St. Andrews Agreement, the DUP also negotiated some changes there which it has now found in the context of the current Assembly and who ends up as First and Deputy First Minister that perhaps it made a mistake. Is that good or is it bad? In my view it is important. It is a democracy. It needs to get back into government and it needs to accept Michelle O’Neill as the First Minister because Sinn Féin won the vote to be the first party in Northern Ireland.

I think what I am saying is this: it goes back to the same point. Whether it is the Good Friday Agreement – and I have said that it needs to be more inclusive in voting – St. Andrews Agreement or whatever other agreement, it is up to the political parties to begin to step up and exhibit collective cabinet government and a demonstration of reconciliation and absolutely working together, not silos and not ministers saying “I take my decisions and don’t interfere and you take your decisions and don’t interfere; I am doing this for my community and you are doing this for your community.” That needs to be done. In addition, we need to invest in integrated education and take courageous steps to do mixed housing and attacking the paramilitaries so that mixed housing areas are not under threat. That is the thing to stop polarisation, but it requires leadership from politicians.

Fergus O'Dowd (Louth, Fine Gael)
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Before we go on, I will stop the clock if I may. Deputy Wynne has to leave for very good family reasons. If it is in order, I will allow her to come in now.

Violet-Anne Wynne (Clare, Independent)
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I will keep it very short and sweet because An Cathaoirleach is being very kind allowing me to come in here. I am solely dependent on public transport, so I apologise. I will look back to read Ms Hinds’s comments.

First, I extend my thoughts to Detective Chief Inspector John Caldwell and his family.

I thank Ms Hinds for her thorough contribution. It was very interesting to read and to hear her speak on it today. I would love to see something similar to the Women’s Coalition in today’s politics. I attended the For Peace and Prosperity event organised by IBEC for International Women’s Day where we heard from Liz O’Donnell and Mary Harney. The main takeaway was that we should solely focus on reconciliation and progress all all-island collaboration and connections based on human rights and the common good for all, such as the all-island cancer strategy. I thank the Women’s Coalition for pushing back on language and behaviour in particular and for being very brave and pushing against the norms such as sitting at the tables of political parties. These were very brave acts and simple measures to take. I am sure those actions at the time sent a strong message. I would love to hear more on that and how we female politicians can replicate those kinds of actions now.

Hypothetically, had a group of women such as themselves had not been present and were not able to make the difference in the way they did, how would negotiations have gone?

Ms Bronagh Hinds:

The Deputy’s comments on the Women’s Coalition reminds me that I did not answer Senator Currie’s question to comment on that relating to women and the number of people who ask me: “Could we have the Women’s Coalition back?” That is particularly the women in the women’s sector who do not feel like they are necessarily getting enough representation. They are asking who is running with the policy agendas that are important that they see on the ground.

I have said that moving from 10% to 30% has been great in the assembly. I said on a radio programme the other day that we have great women leaders in Northern Ireland. They are great and I am talking about from all parties. I sometimes get very sick when people say that parties are still going on in the same old, same old way. This has been going on for hundreds of years and someone expects that because there are four or five women leaders of parties that they are going to change the culture, just like that. Come on; give us a break. There is a lot of culture to change and to be open to that.

Something I really admire down here and that we do not have, and will not have, in Northern Ireland, although I support it, is 50:50 representation. We have a young woman who is now running Northern Ireland 50:50 and I know there are 50:50 groups in the South around women’s representation. Am I glad that someone has taken up the mantle? I have been around too long, and I am not going to give up, but it is great that we have great young women leaders coming along as well but because equality and human rights have been an absolute fault line in the conflict, it is very difficult to get to the situation of quotas being acceptable. We have it in the political voting system, in the cross-community voting system, but we do not have it anywhere else. We have argued that it ought to be there for women but it is a difficult issue. It is very good in the South. I would like to hear from women here on how much difference it has made. I do not have the recent figures off the top of my head, but I was monitoring what was happening in the South as well as what was happening in the North. When we started to push the boundaries of women’s participation in all parties, we did better in the North than in the South and particularly in local government. It is not enough in local government but we have done better and we have had women move up to be mayors and deputy mayors, etc. Some of our councils are better than others. I was involved, from DemocraShe, as well as working on training people in the assembly and working with women in the assembly, Westminster, local government and the Local Government Staff Commission for Northern Ireland on a fantastic women and local councils initiative. We had 26 local councils and none of them led by women. There were no chief executives women and women were very much not visible politically in those councils.

Ms Michelle Gildernew:

Fermanagh had the first one.

Ms Bronagh Hinds:

Well, I was just about to say that. Fermanagh had Aideen McGinley for a period and when Aideen went, we were back to all-male councillors.

Then we reduced the number of councils. What we wanted to see was equal numbers of women in senior positions. One of the reasons we wanted to do that is that there is an awful lot of money spent politically, by political representatives, in local councils. They do not have a lot of money from their parties and so when politicians are supported locally, they are often supported by the administration and local councils. We saw that it was extremely important to invest in developing women leaders among council officials as well as developing and supporting women councillors because those networks were formed. We got to a point where we ended up with five women chief executives of the reduced number of local councils. What was the reduced number of councils?

Fergus O'Dowd (Louth, Fine Gael)
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I do not know.

Ms Michelle Gildernew:

I am not sure. Was it 17?

Ms Bronagh Hinds:

I think it was 12. Apologies, the number has gone out of my head.

We ended up with two councils that had all women members on their senior teams and we saw more women move up in local councils. We have tried to do it that way. There is a lot of work to be done, North and South. I was leading an initiative in the Assembly on building capacity under what we called the Next Chapter programme, with six in the North and four in the southern Border counties, to develop women champions of peace-building in political and public leadership. Right across the board, there is new talent there but it is not feeding its way out into councils, particularly in the South but also in the North. There are things that we can share and learn and maybe we should have more strategic partnerships on that.

John McGahon (Fine Gael)
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Ms Hinds's opening statement outlines the real impact of the Women's Coalition, as well as the female perspective on the Good Friday Agreement and the negotiations leading to it. Ms Eleanor Kane, who is in transition year at Dundalk Grammar School and is with me today, looked at the statement and drafted a number of questions on it. Much as I would like to take credit for these very good questions, I cannot do so because they are Eleanor's. When she read the statement she noted that Ms Hinds said that one strategy was to call out language and behaviour, particularly the ingrained adversarial politics of antagonism, bullying, sectarianism and the militaristic language that was present at the negotiations. Where was that coming from? Was it coming solely from hardline unionism? Where was most of that coming from at the time?

Ms Hinds said that it is time for all paramilitaries to leave the scene and argued that they should not receive any public funding. She also said that there should be a solid strategy to deal with their criminality. That is what they are - criminal gangs masquerading as paramilitaries. It is 25 years since the Good Friday Agreement but paramilitaries still have a role, albeit less substantial, in parts of Northern Irish society. Will Northern Ireland ever be rid of paramilitaries or will they always exist?

Ms Hinds mentioned that her presence and the presence of the Women's Coalition interrupted the behaviour that was there and facilitated the setting of a new standard of discourse and a new standard around language and behaviour. Does Ms Hinds believe that in the last two or three years the language and discourse has reverted to what the coalition was trying to stop and stamp out 25 years ago? Where is political discourse in Northern Ireland today?

As I said, I would like to take credit for those questions but I cannot. They are all the work of Eleanor.

Ms Bronagh Hinds:

I thank the Senator for the questions. I will deal with paramilitarism first and then I will go back to the language and behaviour.

The Senator asked if paramilitarism will ever be stopped and the answer is that it has to be. In the Stormont House Agreement and the Fresh Start agreement there are approaches to doing that and that is why I raised the issue of policing, which is really important. There is a task force to give strategic oversight and an operations co-ordination group on this. It involves the UK Government, the Irish Government and the Northern Ireland Executive on the one hand and, operationally, it involves the PSNI, An Garda Síochána and the Revenue offices North and South in terms of criminal proceeds. That is why I am concerned about the reducing numbers of police when we actually have to really get in and tackle this paramilitarism and criminality. In the area of addressing the proceeds of crime, we are able to do more and more.

Fergus O'Dowd (Louth, Fine Gael)
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Is that a question of an Executive allocation or is it-----

Ms Bronagh Hinds:

It is going to have to be a matter of an Executive allocation with support from the British and Irish Governments. We need a certain amount of investment and real North-South collaboration, just like we saw following the recent attack on Detective Chief Inspector Caldwell, with An Garda Síochána pulling in behind that. Down here, there are issues around proceeds of crime, criminal activity, drugs and so on and we need real co-operation on this island on those issues. I am sure the PSNI and An Garda Síochána are working on all of these issues and it is absolutely essential that they continue to do so.

Policing is so important because we have to be able to respond. The Chief Constable of the PSNI has said that the drop in numbers means that the capacity to investigate crime may be reduced or slowed down, there will be fewer investigations and the ability to respond to sustained protest and public disorder may also be reduced. I spoke earlier about threats last weekend to burn Northern Ireland down if some people do not get their own way. Lower police numbers simply means having a reduced presence. All of this is important if we are going to tackle paramilitarism. I mentioned the new strategy developed last year but how can the police invest in that and in tackling violence against women and girls? That is the first part of it; the protection and the investigation has to be there.

In terms of the second part, in the Fresh Start agreement there is talk of transition initiatives to help move away from paramilitary structures and activity. There has been investment in that over the years and there are people who were leading paramilitaries and who were involved in paramilitary organisations who have made the transition. I am not attacking everyone who was involved in paramilitary activity because many of them have moved on with the new process. They are playing their part and have become engaged in other activities, including in communities. However, I really do resent, 25 years later, that we are still spending money in transitioning people who have clearly demonstrated that they are not prepared to transition. I cannot square that circle. Some people are masquerading as community leaders. We are hearing this from women in communities. Those people should not have their hands on public money. That is it. This is a worry about funding, particularly European funding. The vast majority of that funding that we opened up was to go into the community and voluntary sector. Even before the PEACE fund moneys became available, we were accessing social funds in the 1980s that were coming from the EU. Who is going to sustain that sector now? I would be putting more of my money into civil society organisations and women's organisations that were on the margins of the funding, to enable them to invest and do other things. I would be putting my money into youth work and youth organisations and doing that to deal with the criminality, if I had the choice.

Fergus O'Dowd (Louth, Fine Gael)
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On that point, we met a group of young people from the North - I will not mention the community - but they could not access funding because they were not part of the inside track in terms of knowledge or part of the system that was operating the funding. It is very difficult to understand why they were being left out and were being given inadequate support when they were dealing with drugs and crime.

John McGahon (Fine Gael)
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It is almost like gatekeeping. That is a good way of describing it.

Ms Bronagh Hinds:

It is gatekeeping by certain organisations and often by paramilitaries. To be fair, the Department of Foreign Affairs has picked it up with me. When it goes to meet people in communities, who are the gatekeepers letting through? Often they are not the women who are working on the ground and other people. We need to look at this more clearly and be much more strategic about it. Let me add to that. I am serious about this. People prioritise economic investment. It is important. It is really important to turn around the Northern Ireland economy. They prioritise attention on the politicians and political process, investing money and keeping the Assembly running. Even if you added all the investment up, and people think you would get a lot, in maintaining the active citizenship and those civil society organisations, particularly women's organisations, there is not enough money to go around. I believe the money should be accounted for and should be for the right things but the pools of money are not sufficient for that activity. There is an imbalance. There are those who are lesser in this despite the contributions they have made. That is the point I would make. We need to deal with criminality and invest in the others, build them up and make sure they do not go into the hands of other people who are masquerading.

In terms of language and behaviour, I am sorry to say that it only came from the unionist side of the house and primarily from the DUP. It was obviously part of its strategy but it was a strategy that backfired. When we had the Northern Ireland Forum for Political Dialogue running alongside the talks, Sinn Féin did not go into the forum for political dialogue. I believe it was wrong; it had a different view. The SDLP went into the forum and after the first summer, with a very egregious marching season, it left because it was getting the brunt of the abuse. When the SDLP left, the abuse then transferred primarily to the women's forum. We got a lot of abuse at that time. We came under an awful lot of pressure from Sinn Féin and the SDLP to leave the forum because we were upholding a unionist forum because all the nationalists had left. We came under pressure from other people, including women in the Northern Ireland Women's Coalition, to leave. Monica broke down in tears at times. We said we could not stay here and take this abuse. The brilliant Baroness May Blood, who was from the Shankill, came to me and said "Bronagh, please don't let them leave the forum." Abstentionism was seen as something that nationalists do. As soon as we left the forum, we would immediately be identified in the unionist community as being a nationalist women's coalition. We were not a nationalist coalition. We were a party of all issues. The Alliance Party says the same but we had a completely different policy in terms of inclusion. Baroness Blood was right.

When we developed the principles for the Northern Ireland Women's Coalition, I developed the one on inclusion. We were arguing about the inclusion of Sinn Féin because it went in for the first year of the talks. When we were running for election, I argued that. I remember a meeting in a loyalist community. The only broadcaster there was RTÉ. Annie Campbell, May Blood and I were there. I was talking about how Sinn Féin needed to be included. The ceasefire had broken down. The RTÉ people were amazed. They came up to me afterwards and asked how I could get away with this discussion in a loyalist community. I replied that it was very clear and that people in that area understood. This is the point that is linked to language and behaviour. I have been in private meetings in unionist and loyalist areas as well as others but I am thinking of one closed meeting in a loyalist area. It involved people who had moved from paramilitarism and were represented those groups politically and who were challenging groups like the DUP and saying "but it was your language and your behaviour and we thought we were doing what you were telling us to do" and then they were being left to the side and accused of being gunmen etc. I said that these are communities where people have suffered from lifting guns so they understand the issues. It is not acceptable but they understand the issues of including everybody. May Blood said to me that we could not leave. It was important because if we had the policy of inclusion, we had to include ourselves. When we challenged that language and behaviour, the public responded and those parties, particularly, the DUP, started getting bad press about it. We turned the victimhood of women into the power of women to make change. That is what was done. It also meant that we were the only party that could go out when the DUP left and say we argued for the inclusion of everyone, we thought the DUP should continue to include itself and we wanted it back.

Fergus O'Dowd (Louth, Fine Gael)
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I appreciate Ms Hinds's comments.

Ms Claire Hanna:

It is really good to see Ms Hinds. I am sorry I am not there in person. I really enjoyed this session and really appreciate everyone's comments, the depth of them and how practical and future-focused they have been. While it will be interesting, there is a danger over the next few months of historicising the agreement, not making it contemporary and treating it as an ornament to gaze upon, rather than a toolkit for getting through all our challenges, including Brexit, so I really appreciated a lot of those very nuanced comments around the practicalities of policing right now. We always get sucked in when we talk about policing. We only ever really talk about legacy issues and it is really useful to talk about how some of those cuts affect us now. The points around paramilitary transition and things like designation were also really nuanced and go beyond what is in vogue sometimes.

Mark Carruthers's "Red Lines" podcast this week was mentioned. I thought it was very positive about where we are in terms of women in politics in two ways. Ms Hinds explained very well the coalition's focus regarding not being pigeon-holed on what would have been known as women's issues but being political women with political perspectives talking about the kind of heavy issues of the day, including constitutional issues. I thought it was positive about how far we have come on that. It was the women's coalition that created a dynamic that forced all of the parties, my own included, to up their game on that front and in that way. You get to be one of those successful parties that achieves the thing it set out to do, whatever that means for it electorally, so I thank the coalition for all that. I thoroughly enjoyed the whole afternoon and found it very stimulating.

I do not want to get too far into the weeds of some of the institutional stuff. I was really taken by the argument that while they are not perfect and the points around managing the different community identities, it is welcome and very clear that this is evolving.

If I am interpreting what Ms Hinds was saying rightly, and it is something I agree with, wanting to move away from designation is not the same as saying it is not acceptable or somehow regressive to have a view on the constitutional issue. Has she done any work or thinking on some of the strand one institutions in different ways that we might dial down the significance of designation, or how we might look at different forms of coalition other than mandatory coalition and other ways to kind of downgrade the veto that has been a big problem for the last few years? Similarly, she mentioned and referred to some of the proposals Mark Durkan had made around strands two and three, and how we can better use some of them. Is there anything Ms Hinds thinks is particularly pressing in respect of North-South enhancement or more east-west stuff that could give people reassurance in the years ahead? I suppose I am asking her to nerd out further on some of the structural stuff. I thank her for the whole statement and for all of her answers so far.

Ms Bronagh Hinds:

Ms Hanna has caught me out. I probably have not done enough thinking on these different issues.

Ms Claire Hanna:

That was not my intention at all. The statement was broad. I am not asking Ms Hinds to propose any standing order amendments. I was just wondering if she has any thoughts, even on the politics around it.

Ms Bronagh Hinds:

I have just been thinking about the issue of designation since, because it was a big issue for the coalition, who were not hung up on it and actually tried to use it in a way that might help whatever needed to be helped at the time. It does become an issue now if we are looking at the assembly seats, for example. Sinn Féin has 27 seats, the DUP has 25, the Alliance Party is now up to 17 and its percentage vote share in the last polls has been going up. To be fair, so have those of some of the other parties as well. It is something that we need to think about, but without losing track of the fundamentals and protections in the agreement. I am not really sure how we would do it, expect with maybe some kind of higher threshold voting. I am sure we could put our heads together on it. Ms Hanna has given me a challenge that I will take up and think about more, because it deserves more thinking. I want to link the idea of having different positions on the constitution, and that being protected, back to the new constitutional arrangement, because that has actually been misrepresented over the past while with all of these issues around the EU, Brexit and the protocol, and the bandying about in incorrect ways of what consent is about, and a kind of an illusion of power-sharing with the cross-community vote with consent and it all being mixed up. It is very clear that the constitutional position of Northern Ireland has changed, that it works on the basis of the wishes and decisions of people in Northern Ireland and it is based on consent. That is what the position is.

The issue of being designated unionist or nationalist in terms of that is, therefore, not perhaps being teased out sufficiently. We can go into what is meant by consent, what the proportion is and everything else. Seamus Mallon was wrong when he said a 50% plus one majority would not work, in that it has been 50% plus one up until this point. However, I think 50% plus one would be mad to run on. That is my view. We have to talk about the future in Northern Ireland. We have to stabilise things and we have to stabilise our relationships. The women's sector has fantastic relationships with gender budgeting groups in Scotland, England and Wales, as well as working with the South. We need to be thinking about that. There is a particularly close relationship between Scotland and Northern Ireland, as well as with the South. We need to be thinking about all of those issues. It is a bigger debate about teasing that out and making sure that some of the fundamentals are protected. As I said, just like the agreement was endorsed by a large number of people, we want to get a large number of people talking about this, and thinking about what they actually want from their society. We also have to think about what we need in Northern Ireland.

In terms of strands two and three, I read all the submissions that came before me before coming to the committee, because I wanted to see them. I happened to quote Tim O'Connor and Mark Durkan. I had not thought about it in that way. I had actually thought about it, but I had not thought about it within the context of placing it within strands two and three. We know that there are provisions within the protocol for the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission and the Equality Commission for Northern Ireland, and for the Irish Equality and Human Rights Commission in the South, on rights and safeguards. We need to build on that. We need to build something more around some of those strand two relationships relating to human rights, equality and safeguards. I say that because in all of the conflict situations on which I have contributed and have lived through, people think the hard issues are those around the political debate and the paramilitary and security debate. They are extremely important, but they take up an awful lot of the oxygen. The real lingering hard issue in moving forward is being at ease with ourselves. I do not mean being at ease with ourselves in the sense of just kind of glossing over it; I mean having the hard conversations, dealing with the legacy of the past, being compassionate and sharing with victims and dealing with respect. Equal citizenship, equality and human rights are all part of that. I see, in so many other conflicts, that people think that to maintain power they should knock the rights of everyone else so that they hold onto the power. Of course, that erupts in another conflict later on. We know that equality and human rights have been a fault line in our conflict. Those are the hard issues that we have to deal with to build citizenship and citizenship of the world. For me, that was a critical and heart-rending point about Brexit, and I am nearly going to cry here. We were able to elevate the human rights and equality agenda beyond the confines of the conflict in Northern Ireland, which was particularly focused on orange and green, into culture, identity, women's rights, race and all of those rights within a European and international context. It broadened our horizons and began to change that debate within a global framework.

I said earlier that I am glad that younger women are coming along now to carry on this debate - not that I am going to let go. The very last thing I want to do is to come to the end of my time is to go back to a small insular looking place again because we have come out of the EU, when we actually managed to magnify it and internationalise it and to see it as something that was not threatening and for everyone. We need to find a way of keeping those connections. I was commissioned to review the national actions plans on women, peace and security for the Department of Foreign Affairs for several of those and I made critiques. The Irish Government was ahead of the world in applying that - on women, peace and security - domestically and not just in the international context, beyond changes in its military forces and everything else.

You might say it is natural you would apply it here because we have a conflict in this island, but also to refugees and asylum seekers. I remember critiquing very strongly that this is a good signal but it is not being moved ahead with. There were statements about refugees and asylum seekers and there were statements about the Northern Ireland conflict and women in Northern Ireland. It is not just about funding from the reconciliation fund; it is about what is being done strategically and what more is being done. This cannot just be talked about at the international level without doing it at home. I am please to say that has been moving on. It has been a great disappointment to women in Northern Ireland, though I am hearing that it might change. I have had several discussions in Britain, including with the Foreign Office, on why Northern Ireland is not included in the UK's women, peace and security national action plan. However, it is great and it is in that context that there must be answers around strand two in particular, but also strand three and that we can be working on both of these.

Ms Claire Hanna:

I do not disagree with a single word of that. It is interesting. I was not trying to be narrow in talking about strands two and three. It is just the way I organise my thinking. I put them in those-----

Ms Bronagh Hinds:

Do not apologise, you are great.

Ms Claire Hanna:

I am aware of the time so I will hand back to the Chair.

Rose Conway-Walsh (Mayo, Sinn Fein)
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I thank Ms Hinds. It was an interesting conversation from a number of different aspects. More women on the council was mentioned. It just crossed my mind that there may be an opportunity within the PEACEPLUS programme, which now facilitates more collaboration between councils, North and South. I think there is room there for a number of positive projects that could be done across the island with the exchange of learning between women on this side and councils and others. One of the deciding factors for me going into representative politics was when I brought a group of women to a Mayo County Council meeting and of the 31 seats, only three were women. It was just the starkness of seeing it. I had come back from London and thought, “My goodness, where are all the women?” These were the people who were making the decisions that were impacting on our lives. That made me decide I had to do something about it, inasmuch as I could. I think there is an opportunity in PEACEPLUS that has not been there before and that is good.

I commend the work of Fidelma Ashe, Joanna McMinn and those women. I met them here a number of months ago. Senator Ó Donnghaile facilitated them to come down here. They presented the work that they were doing on gendering constitutional conversations. There was a real richness and progressiveness in the exchange and what they were presenting. I hope we will have an opportunity in the committee under the work we are doing under the constitutional future to hear more from them. How can we - as a committee and Government, whether it be under the shared island unit or the reconciliation fund or whatever – better support and ensure that those voices are heard? We absolutely need those voices in any discussion around the Constitution. We need to make sure that it is gendered from where we are now.

We need a balance between the voices of urban women and rural women. We have to make sure that rural women are heard in all of the decision-making as well. In many of the groups that I speak to, they say some groups do not have an experience of living in rural communities and the different challenges. There might not be only challenges around transport but also isolation and lack of equality and opportunities and all that. We have hear those voices. Do the guests have any advice on how we can better do that and support it?

I have to ask about the role of further and higher education in reconciliation as well.

Finally, in the Good Friday Agreement, there was provision for the charter of rights, that is, of “establishing a charter, open to signature by all democratic political parties, reflecting and endorsing agreed measures for the protection of the fundamental rights of everyone living in the island of Ireland". That all-island charter of rights was never done. How can we progress that at this stage? It is absolutely a ludicrous situation, if one thinks of it, even on the Border counties. Deputy Brendan Smith is from Border counties and others are as well. There is one set of rights for a group of women or citizens a few miles up the road and another set the other side of it. How can we have an all-Ireland charter of rights?

I thank our guests for their valuable contributions today.

Ms Bronagh Hinds:

That is a great suggestion on room in the PEACEPLUS programme. I noticed when the Taoiseach made one of the opening statements here and talked about the shared island programme, there are elements in that which they have designated in terms of council collaboration, particularly in the west of Northern Ireland, which is a thing in itself. Much of the collaboration seems to be around the Border counties and in the west. Perhaps we need to extend it across to more councils. It is worth looking at that to see who is involved in those collaborations. It is a question of trying to gender-proof. Are women present? Are women present substantively? The substantive is the impact, input and output in relation to women. That would be the place to start and see how that is being built on.

On how to do that strategically, I was a commissioner on the Local Government Staff Commission for a period. It is that organisation that I was working with on the women in local councils initiative and I am still involved in an advisory capacity with an advisory group, which is now championing equality and diversity. It has been fabulous. At one point, I could not understand why it was going to be abolished and I do not know whether it still is to be abolished. I think the political parties wanted it abolished. It challenged a number of councils in terms of their application of equality and diversity. Perhaps it was that. However, for an organisation, it spent very little money for the benefit and the work that it was doing, as far as I could see. It is still there in a small capacity. One of the things it prioritises is equality and diversity. We have had some good meetings. Perhaps we can talk later but I think some collaboration could be fed in there. It would be a good organisation, working with the Northern Ireland Local Government Association, in terms of trying to move an equality and diversity agenda and in particular, a women’s equality agenda where they are under-represented could be looked at.

I refer to the work Fidelma Ashe and others have been doing. Some years ago, a piece of work was done by a group – I am trying to recall who it was led by – that brought out a paper on gendering legacy issues as well. The first thing is no more can there be any body appointed in Northern Ireland that does not have an equal participation of women. Second, that does not necessarily guarantee how to gender those issues. It is not easy. Even though we have had section 75, which comprises the equality provisions and was supposed to be a mainstreaming tool, it is often used as tick-box exercise once people see it. People do not understand how to apply it and that you interrogate your policy to look not just the input in terms of representation and contributions but the outputs and impacts of what you will have. I refer to transport and lighting. Is lighting a gendered issue? Yes, it is, but some people do not think it is. It is about thinking in that way and ensuring that if those inputs are not going in and that representation is not in, that is where you make the sure the voices are heard.

On urban and rural women, we have a great set-up in Northern Ireland. Some people might think, unlike other places, we do not have one umbrella organisation in the women’s sector and no one would dare set themselves up as such.

It should not be done because the collaboration that has emerged, particularly from strategic women's organisations, is fantastic. I mentioned the Women's Resource and Development Agency. There is also the Women's Support Network, which co-ordinates all the women's centres in Northern Ireland. There is the Women's Platform, which does a lot of the work on United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 and was the European link for the women's sector. I have to hold my hand up as a founder of that organisation when we were setting up the European Women's Lobby. It does the United Nations links for women and ensures that women are tuned in to all those. We also have the Northern Ireland Rural Women's Network, which is always a part of that.

During the pandemic, people had to go online. We now need to think about communications. We discovered that people from some areas were communicating more because they did not have to travel to Belfast all the time, Dungannon, which it is in the centre of the universe in Northern Ireland, or wherever else. That was fabulous. We need to have face-to-face contact because that is where one develops relationships but we need to vary our communications. The rural women's network has done a fabulous job.

These groups work strategically but they are well connected into the women's information group, which brings together local grassroots women's groups in Northern Ireland. All these organisations have different groups. Together, they work in the Women's Policy Group Northern Ireland, which involves women from those groups and other organisations who get together and develop policy. During the pandemic, for example, women were not included in some of the strategic roles. That policy group lobbied until women got involved. I did a piece of work for the Women's Resource and Development Agency on the impact of the recession on women and brought out a document on all the policy proposals. In particular, there is the issue - Ms Gildernew will love this - of moving our absolutely antediluvian childcare policy into something that really supports women and families. That needs to start from the point of providing for employment and support on an all-round basis and then building education and welfare for children into that. We are only now beginning to think of that at times when it is very costly but a big document on the impact of the pandemic and recessions on women was produced and it is a fantastic piece of work.

Similarly, we now have the Northern Ireland Women's Budget Group, which brings many of these organisations together and links with women in the South through the National Women's Council of Ireland, as well as women in Scotland, England and Wales in addition to its work in Northern Ireland. It brings women's organisations together to have strategic conversations, including with permanent secretaries and senior people in Departments, about where the money is going, where are we seeing the impact and the investment policy. We are not seeing enough shift in that regard. We all need to put our shoulders to the wheel to push that further. The sectors are organised, however. It goes back to the point that they are run on fewer staff than many of the bigger organisations. Where is the investment? They need investment if we are going to turn our societies around.

I do not know that I am qualified to speak on further and higher education in reconciliation. There have been a number of pieces of work. I am thinking of the work of Tony Gallagher, as well as that of Laura Dunne, who has been looking at education and other maters in schools and all those issues. They have a big role. Queen's University Belfast has the teacher training colleges as part of the university and we need to build that into teacher training as well.

As regards the all-island charter of rights, we need to get a move on. It needs to be done efficiently. I have been doing charters of rights since the 1970s, when I was in the civil rights movement and the women's rights movement. Maybe we need to do it at grassroots level and put the pressure on. We also need support from people such as the committee members, however, who have more influence with the centres of power. We need to move that agenda on.

Rose Conway-Walsh (Mayo, Sinn Fein)
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I thank Ms Hinds.

Fergus O'Dowd (Louth, Fine Gael)
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I also thank Ms Hinds for her contribution. She touched on a significant number of issues about which we need to think more. She certainly informed our debate. It will make me think far more about society overall and what we should be doing, particularly in terms of women's rights, access and so on. It is a small point but 40% of candidates at the next general election in the South must be female. I agree that it should be 50% but it is a big step up from what it was before. There are changes taking place. In my county, the chief executive of Louth County Council is female, as were two or three of her predecessors. There is a lot of progress being made in my county at least.