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Northern Ireland

My Lords, I personally know of no private deals that have taken place or are planned. I do not think it would be helpful for me to comment in detail on the noble Baroness’s first question, although it is a legitimate question that people will want to ask. The point is that the political parties need to build trust in this period of time. Each of them probably knows that to build that degree of trust it needs to get around the table. I gave an example earlier this afternoon where all four parties recently had discussions on domestic, local matters. They need to build that bit of trust if each of them wants any share of the success. The test in a way is: do they want a piece of the success? If they do, they have to build the trust of other parties. Most of the parties over there know what they need to do in order to do that.