Mr. Tom Arnold:

I thank the Senator for the clarification. In response to Senator Barrett’s question on how many people it took to get the 66 representatives, I am told that it took about 3,000. This happened through a polling company. It was given four criteria to find a representative group and it had to find people who were representative. When asked if one would be willing to give up eight weekends for nothing in the coming year, quite a few people might have felt they did not want to do that. Out of the 66 who agreed – there was a substitute list as well of another 66 who could come in where necessary. To the best of my knowledge all of those people are very happy they said "Yes". I think they feel they have really been part of something special and important.

It was a wise and appropriate idea that there should be participation by people from Northern Ireland. If one were to attempt to have something substantial in Northern Ireland it could raise significant political sensitivities for a constitutional body in the Republic of Ireland to have meetings there. I am not certain about that. What we have tried to do is to ensure that, where possible, there has been significant outreach to Northern Ireland. For example, when we discussed the possibility of citizens having votes in presidential elections we had a specific substantial part of our debate on that dealing with people from Northern Ireland. We had representatives from the Assembly in Northern Ireland. In addition, in June of last year I went up at the request of one of the Northern Ireland members of the convention to speak at an event in Stormont, to talk about the possibility of whether something analogous to the organisational form of the Constitutional Convention might have some relevance in Northern Ireland in terms of community engagement.

I am probably coming to the end of the questions that have been raised. I hope I have not forgotten anything. The comment by Senator O’Keeffe on the importance of cake is a profound one. It connects back to the issue of collegiality. First, we recognised the importance of the matter. In any group of people if one is to achieve anything, good personal relations must be at the basis of it. I can see some evidence of that in the House today. I refer to the importance of meeting on the Friday evenings in advance of the meetings and of the dinner on the Saturday evening. Such things oil the wheels of relationships and ultimately help to have respectful conversations and to reach agreement about particular issues.

On the question of whether the process has relevance to other countries or what we learned from other countries, I do not think we in the convention can take any credit for that. In advance of the construction of the convention some account was taken of experiences in other countries. I refer to such places as Canada and the Netherlands among others.

On the critical issue of whether it should be just a citizens' assembly or an assembly of citizens and politicians, it was a profoundly correct decision to have both citizens and politicians involved in the process. The main lesson from a substantial exercise in British Colombia was that after a lot of very good work by citizens' assemblies, following their conclusions, which on the face of it sounded sensible and well reasoned but because the politicians had not been involved in the process, it made it very difficult for the recommendations to be taken with the level of seriousness they perhaps otherwise would have been. I hope I have covered everything that has been raised. I thank the House for the honour of being present and for the chance to have the dialogue with Senators.