Official Report: Minutes of Evidence

The Chairperson (Mr O'Toole): Hansard will report the Committee deliberations using the magic of audio recording.

The Committee pack contains the departmental Assembly liaison officer (DALO) response on a Convention rights memorandum, which highlights some human rights issues; and written responses to the call for evidence from organisations that are interested in humanist or secular marriage, including the National Secular Society and Humanists Together, and from the Northern Ireland Children's Commissioner. If members are content, we will add those to the evidence base for the Committee report.

I am open to members' views, but we may want to consider approaching the Children's Commissioner to ask whether they want to give us evidence in person. That would enable us to get that information on the record. Are members amenable to that?

The Chairperson (Mr O'Toole): I therefore suggest that we invite the Children's Commissioner to come and give evidence for the purposes of the record. The response from Humanists Together is useful. Will a different local humanist group be coming to give evidence?

The Committee Clerk: A lot of it will come down to who responds to our request for evidence and who we can get to come in. Not every organisation has a local representative.

The Chairperson (Mr O'Toole): Should we wait until it closes and see who has responded before making any decisions on who else to invite? I think we can say that we will have the Children's Commissioner in. It will be good to get those points on the record.

The Committee Clerk: We already have a number of witnesses scheduled anyway. It is a matter of trying to find out who is able to come and give oral evidence, although we have had fairly good written evidence from some groups. On the Assembly's Citizen Space, the call for evidence closes on Friday. Once that happens, we will have a better idea of what we are likely to get.

The Chairperson (Mr O'Toole): OK. We will come back to it after that point.