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The political temperature's been rising at Stormont in recent weeks, as MLAs have disagreed, often disagreeably, on a wide range of issues.

Everything from flags, the Irish language in the Middle East to funding for teachers, health workers and police officers.

Beyond those day-to-day exchanges, helping to shape the debate across the floor of the Assembly Chamber

is the wider issue of reform.

And the question is, are changes necessary to underpin the devolution project and to make it more

straightforward for parties to work together on a shared set of goals?

I'm Mark Carruthers. That's what we're

discussing on this week's red lines in the company of the former DUP special advisor Tim Cairns and

Professor Duncan Morrow, who teaches politics at Ulster University. They're both with me in studio and

we're also joined by the commentator Chris Donnelly and by Dr. Sean Hockey, senior lecturer

at the Institute of Irish Studies at the University of Liverpool. Welcome to you. Well, thanks very

much indeed for joining us today. Sean Hockey, first of all, you gave a presentation to the

Assembly and Executive Review Committee at Stormat last month on this issue. What was the thrust of what you had

to say? Essentially, Mark, we were going with a body of public opinion from research we conducted

last year. It was based on the Northern Ireland General Election Survey. So some of those

questions got to the heart of institutional reform really when we were asking people,

are you satisfied and happy with the institutional status quo in terms of how power sharing works,

or do you want change? And most people, this was based on over 2000 face-to-face

at views, most people said that they supported

some degree of institutional reform. So that was the kind of overarching theme to my presentation.

It gets more difficult when you get into the weeds in terms of what does reform mean.

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