Recommendation 28

The potential for meaningful, substantive engagement with civic society has already been formally acknowledged by both governments and the Northern Ireland parties as a means of finding a pathway through Northern Ireland’s most intractable issues. Citizens’ assemblies have the potential to empower people to find solutions and reach across deep divides in a way which politicians—except perhaps in the case of events leading up to Good Friday 1998—rarely can. We regret that past provisions made for formal civic engagement have largely failed to get off the ground, but we are encouraged by the commitment made in New Decade, New Approach toward the idea’s rejuvenation.