Ms Emma DeSouza:

I thank Deputy Smith very much for the excellent questions. One question is why I am more disparaging about the Civic Forum than are perhaps some others. It is because I had to critically examine the structure of the Civic Forum in order to create something different, through the Civic Initiative project. Often, when you speak with people in the ground, the people who were not part of it, have a very negative view of the structure of the Civic Forum. They see it as a space for the great and the good – people who were CEOs of civic society organisations or those who had a certain profile. They were political appointees. It was quite an aimless structure. It did not have a well-set agenda or purpose. The general view of it from the grassroots communities on the ground is that it was not for them and they do not see it as something that they could ever engage in. It is up "here" and they are all down "here". In terms of the structure of the Civic Forum, the ethos behind it is something that I am still advocating for, as we do need to have a structure similar to the Civic Forum. In 26 years there is a completely different framework available now that we can use instead. We can see the structure of the citizens' assembly here in the Republic or in other countries.

France is now bringing in a permanent citizens' assembly. Denmark has been doing consensus conferences since the 1980s. There are any number of structures and frameworks that can be used that are much more effective than the structure of the Civic Forum. If it were brought back, there would not be the participation levels one would hope for. There is an aversion at a political level in Northern Ireland to the Civic Forum, which is why you have to look at a way of approaching the same thing from a different angle.

We have worked with local authorities and public participation networks, PPNs, through the Civic Initiative Project and, yes, the resources and their networks need to be used. They are very valuable. Through the Civic Initiative, we have found a couple of different ways to reach harder to reach communities. Yes, there is a board or oversight committee and the people who sit on it include community activists and representatives of organisations that are arms into particular communities. The Women's Resource and Development Agency is connected with the women's sector, the Migrant Rights Centre is connected with ethnic minorities and YouthAction is connected with youth groups. The reason we have this kind of network is because all of these sectors are siloed. The youth sector does great work and the women's sector does great work, but they are not connecting. Never shall the two meet. This was about trying to create a structure where we could harness the work of all those different groups and bring them together under one umbrella.

The group operates in terms of having the regional structure first. We have this oversight committee, but we actioned 38 grassroots workshops across Northern Ireland and Border counties such as Monaghan, Cavan and areas in Louth. We actually piggy-backed on other community groups. If we were going into an area, we would often partner with community groups. We would not select the community groups because we did not want to be selective on who was involved, but we put out a call asking any community groups in the area that would like to be involved in this to come forward and we worked with them to get people into the room. We also partnered with groups such as PPNs and local authorities to promote the public forums. We also went into local community centres, newsagents and libraries to put up posters that stated a public forum was happening and the public was invited to attend.

We covered eight topics at the grassroots level, including poverty, human rights, political institutions, housing and education. They all link back to the Good Friday Agreement. We allowed the people who turned up to be able to say what was important to them and we narrowed those eight topics down to three. It gave us a space for people to highlight their priority issues. Through that process, we then moved into bringing in more experts and stakeholders in the second stage of the process. We brought in the business community, academia and stakeholders from across the island on an all-island basis to give us evidence and further submissions.

The third stage was the citizens' forum of 100 citizens. The way the citizens' forum works is we work with a UK-based charity called the Sortition Foundation, which essentially recruits for citizens' assemblies. It does that through a postal lottery. In the case of the citizens' forum we are doing, 25,000 letters of invitation are being posted to households across Northern Ireland. That is done by a postal lottery and any household can receive one. If a household receives an invitation to take part, any resident who is 16 years of age or older can register their interest. Of the 25,000, say 5,000 register interest. Of the 5,000 who have registered, 100 people representative of Northern Ireland will be selected. That is done by using characteristics from the census. Age, gender, ethnicity, religious background, academic achievement and where the person is regionally are all factors. It is actually spread across the Six Counties. That is how to make it representative.

On the all-island aspect, this citizens' forum on housing is only recruiting 100 citizens from Northern Ireland. Part of the reason for that was because we wanted to highlight the absence of a civic forum and any kind of vehicle like it. Under New Decade, New Approach, there is a commitment to have citizens' assemblies every year, but we have not had one yet. This is about trying to make a voice for Northern Ireland in terms of having a structure for civic engagement, but we are also acutely aware of the political context that we operate in and the aversion in Northern Ireland toward these kinds of structures. If we had done an all-island approach in this first iteration, we perhaps would have had more political pushback to the structure. There is a need to normalise this kind of engagement in Northern Ireland first before an all-island approach can be taken. There is absolutely nothing to stop an all-island forum. We could have sent out the invitations across the island through the Sortition Foundation. That can be done. In the future, this structure could very easily be replicated and recruitment could be done on an all-island basis.