 I think most of us here do remember the troubles were not quite as young nor are some of your children. But I think it might be useful if you just told people recently quickly about the circumstances in which the new policing was established in Northern Ireland and why it was felt necessary to really have such a revolutionary stab at a new form of policing. I was going to say something very briefly about the two of us coming together in respect of this book. Robin is at a very interesting history. He was involved in the Northern Ireland office on the political side in the years coming up to the Good Friday Agreement. And therefore he was involved in what emerged in respect of policing. But before that he had been secretary to the North Commission, which was really to do with parading, the endless story. And my friend, I wrote a number of years, I filed away a comment that my friend, the Reverend Dr John Donlop made to me. He said, you know he can write. And I filed that away. And then he touched the life of the board at the beginning, but then disappeared. And later he became responsible for prisons in Northern Ireland. So that's a bit of his history. But because he was involved in the politics in terms of that background, you're going to answer the question that Dachis put. That's a lovely way of saying it. I too shall preface my remarks with it as an Englishman in Dublin talking about the politics of the North. That's bad enough. Then before such a hugely expert audience, and some of the things I shall say, some of you were there at the time, I know. You may say, no, it wasn't like that at the time. I remember well. So treat me gently in view of the events of Sunday afternoon, which I'm still grieving over. As the Minister put it so eloquently, and I couldn't really say better, it was a very different place than North. And as Nora has alluded to, it was nearly 17 years ago, the Good Friday Agreement, policing was the one issue that was too difficult to resolve in that context. And they had the wisdom to set up an independent commission. And again, as the Minister and Nora rightly pointed out, mixed responses, broadly very critical response to the independent commission, the pattern report from David Trumbull. And of course the DUP were outside the political circle at that time. So a difficult context to take it forward. A number of challenges further as we got closer to the setting up of the policing board. I was reminding myself we had two, what we call technical suspensions of the assembly in 2001, just at the time we were setting up the board. So a very difficult situation there, looking as though the assembly might fall. And of course I think, and I think Martin was there as well as myself and perhaps one or two others in this room at the Western Park talks. With hindsight perhaps even more significant that we realised at the time, we produced a document, I can't resist saying very shortly after that, which was a text for agreement we then spent I think the next six weeks negotiating the clarifications to that document, which give you just some idea of the complexity that policing was causing and it was largely the policing dimension of that. But that enabled the STLP to take that very courageous step. And as Seamus Mallon, I carry paraphrase his precise words to the effect that if you sought out policing you can achieve a lasting political settlement in the north. And I think Seamus was absolutely right and they came on board at that time. And the run up to the policing board it came into being in October 2001. Sinn Fein was still outside for another five or six years, but there was always the clear goal. And if I can pay credit in turn to Desmond, who was the chair from the beginning right through to 2009, he was always entirely clear from the beginning as was he wore from when he came on board as Chief Constable in 2002, that the goal was to achieve the support for policing of all the main political parties in Northern Ireland. And that indeed did come to pass, not without some ups and downs along the way subsequently. Thank you very much. I was also there at Western Park with Martin and I remember very clearly Mallon saying that he knows the difference between a horse and a camel. And this was a horse. It was very significant because it was the first time that any nationalist party in Northern Ireland had given the support to policing in the north. It was really very, very significant. But it followed on some very difficult negotiations. And the intent really, certainly on the part of the Irish government, and I'm sure on the part of the SDLP as well, was to try to ensure that all of the key recommendations in pattern would actually be implemented. Would you like to remind us of what those key themes were in pattern that made the difference between the police service in Northern Ireland as it evolved and the OUC, which had existed before then? Just in respect of pattern, this is the report. And it is a seminal document. Its relevance is, as the minister correctly said, to democratic societies throughout the world. You embrace the sort of thinking that is in that report. And you've got 175 recommendations. And they cover the whole spectrum of policing. And those of you who have it close ties with policing in this part of the island will no doubt have perused the report and those recommendations. Perhaps the most critical one for me was the recommendation that flowed from the obvious that a police service has got to be representative of the community that it's seeking to serve. And when I can remember reading that and being jolted by the power and thinking back to a paper that I'd read a number of years before and doing an MBA course in the United States. And where it emphasized that in terms of authority, authority comes as much from below as it does from downwards. It's what people consent to. And incidentally that has a powerful message in terms of style of policing. Because the emphasis is not so much on formal role. It's on ability to do the job. It's a considerable emphasis on interpersonal skills and relating to and with people. And that underlines the importance for the community. So the consent thing, that is extremely important. And of course what we had was roughly speaking 9% members of the Catholics through nationalist community through Republican community in the police against 35 to 40% of the society. It was an untenable position and had to be addressed. And it was addressed on the basis of recruitment in terms of 50-50. And was still the emphasis on merit, but 50-50 and with a target date of the end of 10 years or target percentage of 40%. That was all but achieved. It's just slightly less than that. Coincidentally, and it's little talked about, but the female figure, the gender issue, that changed in that as well. Not quite to the same extent, but just a bit less. So that was one of the critical issues. And the other area relates to human rights, the code of ethics. I think that we were among the one of the first services or forces that dealt with that. And that was extremely important. And that that was addressed. And so those are up, but two, but there are a number of other, any number of other things areas within the report that we can maybe touch on in the discussion. It seems to me that an element in that consent was the whole question of accountability. There was a very big element of accountability. What was the role of the board in the accountability issue? I think if I can go back just to stage one of the very percipient points that the independent commission made was the distinction in operational independence and operational responsibility. We'd never tried to put in legislation exactly what operational independence meant. So to an extent in the United Kingdom, at least, it was up to whatever chief constable and have a powerful, they were or weren't, and their individual relationship with that particular police authorities as it then was. And actually bringing out clearly in the report that operational responsibility meant that the decisions operationally with the chief constable in our jurisdiction and his or her senior staff, right down to the constable on the ground, but they were accountable to the policing board through the chief constable for their actions afterwards was, I think, hugely important and significant. Now the police authority had been composed of non-elected representatives. They'd done their best as individuals, but they struggled given both the security background and they tended to feel obliged to support the chief constable right or wrong, almost as an e-joke reaction. And I think there are a number of other points that have read across a baratiff detail one could go into. But for the first time, I think that that clarity that if you like the buck stop, not with the minister for us in the north, not with some other but with the policing board was hugely valuable. It's also in a curious way, I think, and I'd very much in the commissioners' view. I actually think it helped in a way our chief constables every a period of time because they knew they had a rendezvous with the policing board in due course. And sometimes that enabled both parties to avoid rushing into a premature comment or an earlier view of things that might actually have come back to haunt them and create difficulty. Because certainly the chair was able to say, we will be having a meeting next week. It will be a public meeting and the chief constable will be reporting to you and the media were present and we had a regular regime of basically 12 public meetings a year. And the public would know that there would be the television cameras there. They would see on their screens later on that evening. The chief constable giving a full and frank account and where they couldn't say that something I'm not going to go into for various reasons might be personal security or it might be national security. But I think that was hugely valuable the opportunity for the board to display that leadership and all credit if I may to the chairman and the members of the board from right across the political spectrum to the way they exercise that. I should say that in respect of the board itself the board is composed of 19 people including the chair and vice chair. And I was very fortunate in the initial period to have Dennis Bradley as the vice chair. In terms of the politicians, ten politicians based on the composition based on the haunt. They were reasonably big strong players right and I think that was important. I make that point deliberately and then you had nine independence and the nine independence they could in a sense put a check to. It didn't happen very often but they could say to the politicians look cut out the nonsense. We want this sorted and if you don't cut out the nonsense we sort it. And they could always rely on somebody on the politicians to give them a majority. It didn't happen very often but it was a very good counter. As Robin has rightly said you've got the operational responsibility in terms of the chief constable. And you also have then the board holding the PSNI to account through the chief constable for the delivery of effective, efficient and impartial policing. That was its role but it had an additional role. And if you stretch the act you could accommodate the additional point. And the additional point was in my view that we were there also to support the police. We were there to ensure that they had the resources above all to do the job. But equally they knew that whilst they had operational responsibility each month there would be a meeting in public session and in private session and that they would be put on their question. And now you could ask well how did you know what to go to the private session and what to the public session. Well typically the chief constable might say, well I might say to the board members that look don't we can get rid of that in the private session. It doesn't, it's of no great interest to the body politic. There are certain things that you could do with respect to that. But also the chief constable was likely to say look if you ask me that in private session I'm likely to tell you more than I would in the public session. And that was common sense. And I would then say to the members that is what he is saying to me. But they knew because I told them. However if you want to put it in the public session you do it. It lies with you. And then they would make up their minds. Sometimes politicians being politicians they would say I'll ask it in both. Which was fair enough. But equally and some of you will ask this question. I think that I look back on that period with great respect for politicians. They do difficult jobs and the majority of them do that very conscientiously. And in the field in some of that I'll go into some of the details of some of the things that we faced. My admiration knows no bounds in respect of the way they handled things. But basically they also they knew and I knew. I remember one of them saying to me one day. He said you know Desmond being on this board has been the best thing that ever happened to me as a politician. And he knew what I knew what he meant. It meant he was never out of the public eye and he played it. But God bless him. He also was a very good and astute politician. And I respected him for the way he did his job. So it's that and if I there's a chapter in the book on events. Now one of the big events of course that we had was not long after the board was set up was the Ombudsman's report. And the Ombudsman's office let me say this very important part of the policing architecture. The fact that things could be referred to them. But the fact also by the law they in that office could intervene in respect of certain things and publish their reports etc. But that's a story for some we we state in the book that's important that somebody writes that story. But the point that I was going to say her new list report and OMA hit the board not long after. Now it's not in the book because there's another book in it right. But all I can say to you is this the politicians on that board. They deserve great credit for the way in which they handled that whole the recommendations that came out of OMA. And the flow of things that flowed from it and needed to be handled. And then you have the raided castle ray you have the raided staunt. The northern bank lobby right. And there were those things that were shared with the board. Okay there were times when they breach confidentiality and they had to learn certain lessons. But overall they adhered to the confidentiality when the chief constable shared things with them. And that helps in carrying the community. And the other thing that's important to bear in mind because I'm not going to have time to go into it or we're not going to have time to go into it is the DPPs. And I think in particular the threats that they were under. And it's easily forgotten now that families were not only board members but also DPP members. Okay.