Brendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour) | Oireachtas source

The SDLP has for a long time called for a British-Irish intergovernmental conference to be convened. I raised this issue yesterday with the Tánaiste and he indicated to me that he had raised this with the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland. Has the Taoiseach raised the convening of an intergovernmental conference with the British Prime Minister and, if so, what was her response? As I said in statements on Northern Ireland in recent weeks, it would be a platform, for example, for both Governments to table the draft agreement that was virtually over the line with the parties involved in the discussions on the reconvening of the Executive in Northern Ireland.

The two Governments, as guardians of the Good Friday Agreement, obviously have a responsibility to forge a path forward. Would the Taoiseach support the return of the civic forum for Northern Ireland that was created under the Good Friday Agreement in 2000 but which last met in 2002? The assembly voted to recall the forum in April 2013. It was proposed in the Stormont House Agreement in 2014 that a smaller civic advisory panel be established. Recreating it would, I think, provide a space for those in civic nationalism, as the Taoiseach has described it, and in civic unionism to have a forum to address some of the issues people are talking about in silos now.

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