Rose Conway-Walsh demands clarity from Secretary of State

I suppose at the outset I really want to thank Colin and Mark for this paper I think it's enormously important and I would certainly refute some of the comments that have been said about it but why I think there's a big value in it is because it raises the questions around it raises key questions that I haven't seen raised somewhere else so in any of the papers that are written we will have observations and you know a certain editorial stuff but there's real factual stuff in here around you know who has the right to vote for instance and other things and the questions in relation to you know engagement with others and all of that I have yet to meet anybody who doesn't want to prepare or doesn't recognize the need for preparation and it keeps being raised all of the time like that there's a cohort of people there who doesn't see a need to prepare we certainly see and I know certainly on behalf of my own party see the need to prepare what needs to be done whether that be an assembly a constitutional assembly whether it be a white paper whether it be the Ruxus committee or whether it be a combination of all of those and I think we need to to move the conversation on I think we need to take that off the table but I really hear what you are saying in relation to the responsibility of this committee of this committee into how we're going to carry this forward I'm really glad to have the opportunity to for your input again today because arising from your discussion your recommendation the last time as well and I think the chair would probably confirm this for me but what we agreed to write to the Secretary of State to ask him to bring some clarity to the matrix and the criteria that he was going to use in the same way as you had written to him in December and I suppose my first question to you Colin would be in relation to then the follow-on letter that you sent to the Secretary of State on the 19th of January have you had any response to that The other question I want to ask you in your papers I think it's interested in point 40 where you have presented reunification should be presented as a vindication of the Constitution rather than an unacceptable risk to its stability and I'd ask you maybe to if you could speak further to that Also in relation to the other like nobody has the monopoly of this and I think Mary Lou MacDonald made it clear as well last night Nobody owns the questions and nobody owns the conversation around the Constitution and the future and we would all have input and I want to ask you as well Colin just in relation to third level I was really interested a couple of weeks ago when the University Times for instance did an article did an article around the role that universities and third level would play in all of this so if you had any suggestions around that and and also maybe just in terms of the other platforms and stuff that were mentioned There's a new online platform that hosts the debate around the Constitution as well that was prepared by Professor Pete Sherlow from the Liverpool University and his and the group working with him Again I think that's really informed nobody has a monopoly on the conversation but if you could maybe ask me the Secretary of State The Vindication of the Constitution and the Vindication of the Constitution and the third level that would be great. Thanks. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, thank you very much again for the questions and also thank you for the following up in relation to writing to the Secretary of State. I think it's very much appreciated. Just to explain again that the aim was to try and elicit some more clarity following on from the Court of Appeal and McCord judgment. Conscious that the Secretary of State has a significant amount of flexibility in relation to triggering this process. Really my letters were an attempt to try and get a bit more transparency to get a bit more detail as to what precisely the Secretary of State does. For example, what evidence he relies on in reaching his judgment and just basic questions around how often the Secretary of State reviews the relevant evidence. And I think that would be helpful for everyone on this island because of course the right to self-determination belongs to the people of this island. So I think clarity would be helpful. I've had two responses so far. I've shared correspondence with the committee as well and committee members and I've shared it more widely can reach their own conclusions from the responses. But my view is clear. The response was from a group within the Northern Ireland office and the Secretary of State has fundamentally failed to answer the detailed questions raised in my letter. And to my mind that shows a profound lack of respect for the people of this island. So my questions remain unanswered and I very much wish you all the best and having more luck than I had in getting detailed responses from the Secretary of State. But I think it's really important while it's not the only task at the moment, it's one part of the jigsaw if you like. It's a piece in the jigsaw of moving towards these referendums taking place. And I think the Secretary of State needs to provide detailed answers. Second question, just briefly again, before hand over to Mark, colleague Mark Bassett, is universities have a fundamentally important role. And there is a remarkable amount of work that is currently ongoing. You know, the work of the Aarons project, the Royal Irish Academy and Notre Dame University. People have mentioned the work of the University of Liverpool. There's work going on at Queen's, Ulster, TCD, UCD. In some senses, the preparatory work has started and other people are essentially catching up. And that is all very valuable, I think, in fleshing out some of the rather technical, boring, detailed questions, really, that need to be answered in advance. So I just really encourage that to be continued, but also encourage the committee and others to support that work. You know, there's work that could be done, for example, in establishing research programmes in order to facilitate that. So where there's an opportunity to support research, for example, by the Shared Island Unit. I know it can be a bit nervous about going near the subject, but I don't think it need be. The Shared Island Unit can talk both about how we share the island now and how we might share it in the future. So I think if that could support and fund some of that work and also, you know, organisations like Universities Ireland, which provide a coordinating role for universities across the island, supporting work so that we're talking to each other, we're analysing the sort of detailed questions that arise. So, you know, ultimately, I hope the committee is clear today and in our last engagement. You know, our work is all about making sure that we challenge myths, that we have an informed and evidence-based approach, that we do the work in advance, bearing in mind what Stephen mentioned about this being a condition-led process, that we're not bounced into a border poll, and that when the time comes, people north and south know precisely what they're voting for, and nobody is painting false promises on the back of buses, that that is verifiable, credible, evidence-based conversation, whatever the outcome may then be. Thank you. Thanks, Colin. Just to respond to the points about the Constitution, I mean, there's a lot to admire about the Irish Constitution. It takes, you know, fundamental rights and judicial review from the American tradition. It has features of parliamentary democracy, which we can see has been taken from England. But a central feature of the Constitution, I mean, it was drafted, it was adopted, and it's been amended with unity in mind. You know, it is one of the most important features of that document is now Articles 2 and 3. So it can accommodate United Ireland, subjected to some specific amendments. But it's not, in the Republic, I would say, a vote in the north for reunification should be seen as a compliment. You know, the state, for the most part, on the whole and in the main, has been a success. There are some aspects of the Irish Constitution that I think are very much admired in the north. The participation in the referendums on the repeal of the Eighth Amendment, the same-sex marriage, going further back, the contribution of the electorate to approving or rejecting European treaties was not something that was available in the UK. It's a different constitutional set-up. The other thing to keep in mind is the, I mean, the UK vision for Northern Ireland, we can see. It's, you know, the priorities of Britain are very different to the priorities in the north. The vote for Brexit wasn't replicated in the north. The form of Brexit, chosen primarily by, I suppose, English MPs, but the current UK government could not be replicated on the island of Ireland. So the mitigation of that is the Northern Ireland Protocol. And it's nobody's first choice. Nobody would design this from first principles as the best way. Northern Ireland is outside of the European Union. There's a lot of unionist unhappiness with the practical outworkings of the protocol. And next year there's going to be an assembly election. And two years after that there will be a vote on the certain aspects, certain limited aspects of the protocol. So particularly it's rules on the free movement of goods, internal taxation, state aid, et cetera. If there is an assembly which votes to reject those aspects of the protocol, we're still left with a conundrum of that neither it's an EU and an Irish priority that there's no hard border on the island. It's a UK priority also. So the Articles 5 to 10 that are in the protocol now will have to be amended, but something similar is going to have to come back and it's going to have to get the same sort of outcome. And there were opportunities for perhaps less divergence in Britain, but there's no political support for that. So the future for Northern Ireland, the vote for union is a vote for being outside the European Union, but in a protocol. So the task, as Colin was saying, is that those of us who do believe in Irish unification to come up with something more attractive than what's on offer from the current status quo or the medium term future for Northerners.