I apologise for the delay. Another committee was in possession of the room, which is frequently nine tenths of the law. I welcome Tony Kennedy, chief executive of Co-operation Ireland and his colleague, Ms McGill, the manager of its civic link department. We have agreed to hear a presentation by Co-operation Ireland which will have an emphasis on education, but may be more general if that is felt appropriate.
Co-operation Ireland: Presentation.
Mr. Tony Kennedy
I thank the Chairman and members for the opportunity to meet the committee today. Some members will be aware of the aims and work of Co-operation Ireland. The Chairman was involved in early links between Clare and Newry and Mourne Council. I will briefly recount the aims of Co-operation Ireland before Ms McGill speaks in more detail about our education programme. I will make some points at the end. I am the chief executive and Ms McGill manages our civic link department and all of our education programmes. I will speak about the nature of our work and the manner in which we measure its effectiveness and I will propose that this work could be much more effective if there were proper partnership between Government and semi-State and non-governmental organisations such as ours. I have provided material which touches on the main points of the presentation and a leaflet about our exchanges which demonstrates the levels at which we work. There is also a leaflet about the civic link programme and a short leaflet about building peace which recounts the experiences of people who have been involved with our work.
Different agencies are involved in peace-building in Ireland at various levels, as is the case in all post-conflict circumstances. It is vital to agree and operate political structures and to resolve issues of security and policing. It is also vital to reconcile divided communities which is the work in which Co-operation Ireland is involved. Nine years have passed since the ceasefire and five years have passed since the Good Friday Agreement, but there are still serious divisions on this island. Substantial work must be done to promote understanding within Northern Ireland and between North and South.
The most stark example is internal to Northern Ireland. The number of so-called peace walls in Northern Ireland was 15 in 1994, but there are 37 today. This division runs through the island. Co-operation Ireland carried out research two years ago which showed that only 27% of people in the Republic of Ireland felt they had a good knowledge of Protestant or loyalist traditions in Northern Ireland. Only 19% of Northern Ireland Protestants felt they had a good understanding of traditions and culture in the Republic. In the Republic, 52% said they would be interested in participating in a cross-Border activity, but only 4% have done so, while 87% of people living on the island thought more needed to be done to build peace.
Our work in the area of education, as in other areas, is based on the importance of the role of education in promoting peace. I would like Ms McGill to take us through the programme.
Ms Marianne McGill
As Mr. Kennedy mentioned, Co-operation Ireland aims to promote understanding and respect between peoples from Northern Ireland and the Republic. The education programme has been in operation since the mid-1980s and has used the vehicle of reciprocal residential exchanges between schools and youth groups as the medium for promoting contact and communication. If one brings young people together, through communication many of the myths, stereotypes and prejudices they hold about each other will be diminished. We have worked at a number of levels to bring young people together. They spend two to three days in Northern Ireland with their partners. Young people are partnered with a school or youth group and engage in programmes of social, cultural or educational activities. The visit is reciprocated when the northern group comes south and spends two to three days in the partner's community in the Republic of Ireland. The groups work at their own levels. If the group is only able for social interaction, we call it a level 1 exchange. The levels progress in terms of the thematic contact up to level 3 which entails young people engaging in discussion of issues of identity.
Civic link is the flagship project in our education programme. It started in 1999 and has been supported by the Departments responsible for education in the Republic, Northern Ireland and the United States of America. The project takes the exchange model a little further by building in a classroom component. It uses the theme of citizenship and civic participation as the medium for interaction between young people. They look at a problem in their community and ask how they can address and solve it. They present their solution to their community and partner group in Northern Ireland or the Republic. The project equips young people with the skills to participate actively in their communities and to develop partnerships with the exchange group. Part of the process involves examining policy solutions. If a group chooses litter as the problem it wishes to examine, their solution will not simply involve cleaning up. They must ask how they, as young people, can have an input into policy making with regard to littering. They must ask how they can prevent the problem from occurring in the future. Involvement in the project equips young people with the skills of lobbying, communication and discovering who are their local elected representatives and allows them to share the information with their partner group in the other jurisdiction.
We evaluated the project in terms of its two-fold set of objectives at the end of the three-year pilot period. The evaluation was independent and carried out by Work Research Co-operative. The evaluation considered the degree to which young people had improved their awareness of their own communities as well as their participation skills and it examined the development of their understanding of their partner group in Northern Ireland or the Republic. It asked how much more open young people were to issues of identity and difference. The evaluation was positive in terms of both sets of objectives. The project has been successful in terms of equipping young people with the skills to participate in their own communities, but the evaluation was less positive about mutual understanding. There was still a positive note because groups had to be viewed within the project in terms of whether they were Northern Protestant, Northern Catholic, or Southern Protestant.
Overall, the project has had a positive impact in terms of achieving both sets of objectives. Mutual understanding and civic participation were not as strong among disadvantaged groups. There was greater positivity of impact among young people who participated in two face-to-face exchanges in terms of civic participation skills and mutual understanding. Within the project we build in 30 hours classroom teaching time during which community issues are examined. There was no significant difference in schools which had not completed the North-South face-to-face contact element of the project. Groups which had completed two exchanges experienced a more positive impact than those which had completed one and those which completed one experienced a more positive impact than those which had not done any. The evaluation makes a very strong case for contact and communication exchange programmes between North and South.
We correlated the two sets of objectives. We examined those who had demonstrated positive change in terms of civic participatory skills and those who had shown positive change in terms of mutual understanding to find out if there was a correlation. While a correlation was evident, it was quite weak. The conclusion of the evaluation was that groups which engage in civic education do not necessarily show a positive impact in terms of mutual understanding and understanding of identity issues. This finding is key in terms of the conclusion that there needs to be a special place in the curriculum for mutual understanding and reconciliation work. The required space and resources must be provided to meet the challenges presented.
The recommendations of the report were that we should focus more on disadvantaged groups and examine ways in which we can achieve a positive impact on them, engage more with the Protestant community in Northern Ireland and adequately and effectively resource these groups because dealing with disadvantaged groups and sensitive areas, such as identity and all the challenges this implies, will have implications for strategy, policy and vision in terms of the funders and the Department of Education and Science.
Mr. Kennedy
The civic link project has been overseen by a committee chaired by Co-operation Ireland and composed of civil servants from the Department of Education and Science here and the Department of Education in Northern Ireland as well as several members of the United States Embassy here and its consulate in Northern Ireland. The reason for this is that the project is funded by all three jurisdictions. It has been viewed as expensive due to the investment in time and recruitment and in supporting schools, especially from loyalist areas. We will speak in more detail about the difficulties with recruitment if the committee wishes. We understand the Department of Education and Science is about to announce a reduction in the level of support we receive.
In terms of reconciliation, the project has worked and has been shown to work by research. The effectiveness of this work would increase substantially if we were operating within a clear policy context which recognised the need for reconciliation and if strategies established to meet this need were followed through logically. Increased commitment is needed at both policy and operational level to facilitate community relations and North-South work in schools. This should include a clear rationale to underpin this work and statutory work in terms of a statement of intent, strategic aims and picking up and sharing the learning outcomes.
There is a need for strategic resourcing, for instance, in teacher training, and capacity building in schools to help them participate. We need to develop real partnership between the statutory sector and the voluntary sector to facilitate input from people with direct experience. There needs to be long-term financial support for face-to-face contact. It must also be realised that high short-term costs must be viewed in the context of long-term outcomes. Strategic financial support for piloting different approaches is needed.
While the work being done at political level to resolve the conflict and divisions on this island is essential, work at a community level is also vital. This would be most effective if there was real partnership and proper resourcing of Co-operation Ireland's work. We are trusted by all communities on the island. We have involved loyalist schools many thought would be impossible to work with. We have 20 years experience in this work. We have evidence of our success and a willingness to work together. We will gladly answer questions. We hope the committee will support us in our efforts and this will be just the first of a number of occasions on which we speak to its members.
I welcome the delegation. It is interesting to hear its views on the work it does and useful for us to regularly meet groups such as Co-operation Ireland, which do not necessarily fall directly within our jurisdiction, to hear about the difficulties they face on the ground and positive results such as those we have been shown today.
Those familiar with the Good Friday Agreement will be aware that it was more focused on the future than the past. Much of the discussion at the time related to children. The Taoiseach, the British Prime Minister and the then United States President, Bill Clinton, consistently referred to the Good Friday Agreement as offering a future for children. Co-operation Ireland has an important role in this respect and its work to date has been highly beneficial.
Does the organisation receive sufficient assistance from the relevant Government Departments on this side of the Border? It was suggested that Co-operation Ireland would establish a structural framework with policy guidelines under which it would work. It would be helpful to the committee if this theme was developed in a White Paper. Perhaps work has already been done in this area.
Like every other agency in the State, Co-operation Ireland does not have sufficient funding and is unlikely to receive much additional funding in the current climate. Are there any particular areas in which it is experiencing shortfalls? Are there particular measures, with which the committee could be of assistance, which would broaden the important civic link programme?
I join my colleagues in welcoming Co-operation Ireland to our meeting. Has the initial enthusiasm for Co-operation North, as it was originally known, waned? When the organisation was first founded, there was considerable support and enthusiasm for it on both sides of the community, both North and South. Is its work confined to schools in the Border region or is it also active further South? As a Member from the south east, I do not hear much about Co-operation Ireland or work it may do in schools in my locality.
I welcome Mr. Kennedy and Ms McGill. Will they indicate the difficulties they have in finding the 30 to 40 contact hours, which is considered the ideal, within classroom hours? Given the demands on time within the structured school set-up, it would be difficult for schools to find time to participate in the project without first receiving a clear indication from the Department of Education and Science that it is necessary for it to proceed even on a pilot level. This is not sufficiently recognised in the Department. Immediately, therefore, one is working within limited time constraints. How can this problem be overcome? How could the Department be encouraged to recognise the need to allocate more time for the project? Perhaps the transition year, a feature of the system in this jurisdiction, could be utilised for this purpose. From previous experience, I am aware that transition year is the only year in which one would address this aspect of education.
How does Co-operation Ireland monitor the success or otherwise of its contacts and liaisons with various groups, for example, changes in mindset? Ms McGill stated it was difficult to recruit in certain disadvantaged areas, particularly loyalist areas. For obvious reasons, Co-operation Ireland targets young people. Is it easier to change attitudes among younger age groups? Has the organisation followed up on groups which were involved at the beginning of its activities?
As Deputy Nolan stated, the enthusiasm with which Co-operation North was embraced when it was founded has waned. I am somewhat disturbed by the lack of a policy in many quarters. Given that the main issue facing this beneficial programme appears to be a lack of resources and finance, do the witnesses not find they are working with their hands tied behind their backs?
I missed some of the figures Mr. Kennedy gave earlier. I understand he stated that 52% of people in the South who were surveyed indicated they would like to visit the North, but only 4% did so. Will he repeat the equivalent figure for numbers in the North who indicated they would like to visit the South? I did not pay close attention because I thought I would find it in the presentation but I have not found it.
Senator Ulick Burke made a point on recruitment difficulty. I know Ms McGill dealt with this at some length but perhaps the issue of how the difficulty manifests itself could be further teased out. She also indicated that the process is somewhat less successful with disadvantaged groups. I am not exactly sure to what area of disadvantage she is referring. I presume it is to do with less well-off areas and so on. This is also an interesting point in the sense that if one is speaking about civil society and civic concerns in almost any country one would probably find, to some extent at least, that there were difficulties in certain pockets. I wonder how much that is exaggerated in the context of Northern Ireland or whether it is similar to what one would find elsewhere.
I think it was Mr. Kennedy who mentioned the increased number of peace lines or peace walls. That probably came as a surprise to everybody here, even to those of us who visit the North frequently. That is far from being a positive manifestation of whatever improvements may have occurred.
I am also not clear whether the links are always North-South or whether they are, on occasion, between various schools and communities within the North itself or within the South for that matter. I have already touched on how much the difficulty of mutual understanding is particular to a sectarian society or is, as I suspect to be the case, quite general in a range of other societies.
One of my colleagues made an interesting point on the impact down the line, particularly 20 years on when the people who have participated are decision-making adults and the leaders of their communities and whether there is a positive impact at that level.
I have another question that nobody will want to answer. Is it the view of the witnesses that denominational schools present particular difficulties or are advantages evident in non-denominational schools? Whatever we may want to think in the South those of us who give the matter some thought frequently come to the conclusion that the denominational religious divide issue at school level seems to be anything but helpful.
Mr. Kennedy
There are a few points there on which we can come back. I will start and then Ms McGill will take over. By training she is a teacher and is good at sweeping up the bits I skip over. I will take the points in the order in which they were raised.
The point about the Good Friday Agreement relating to the future and children is a good, solid point. There is much talk about parts of the Agreement that have not been fulfilled. Substantial parts of it are about support for civil society and carrying through work that had not been fulfilled. Much still needs to be done.
To give the members an idea of what goes on, last year we received just short of €320,000 for the civic link programme from the Department of Education and Science. We also received some $500,000 from the US Department of Education and £75,000 from the Northern Ireland side. For all our other exchange activities we received just short of €46,000 from the youth affairs exchange programme. I appreciate the problems with finances but if reconciliation on the island is an objective that we want to achieve together, we have to recognise that some resources are required. I will return to this again.
As I mentioned earlier, the money could be used more effectively. There are instances where Co-operation Ireland was asked to ensure that some 40% of schools in the civic link programme came from a disadvantaged background. I know of other instances where funding is going out but there is not a similar requirement for the agencies involved.
Does Mr. Kennedy think he is being asked to take on the role of dealing with disadvantage rather than dealing with the area of co-operation? An issue often arises in terms of directing Government money or policy towards the area of disadvantage and ensuring that everything targets disadvantage. In essence, the role of this group is to create some level of understanding between the two communities rather than targeting the disadvantaged.
Mr. Kennedy
There is an element of that but we do not have a particular problem with it. There is an issue about tackling disadvantage which Ms McGill mentioned. She said that research showed that the reduction in hostility is less with disadvantaged schools. Part of the reason for this which emerged from our analysis is that the more exchanges people get involved, the more effective the outcome. We suspect that disadvantaged schools have been handicapped in this regard and we are quite happy about continuing impact in those schools. That is a fortunate spin-off because there has been a pressure just to tick the box in regard to disadvantage but it is something in which we are keen to get involved anyway.
On the development of a White Paper, I should say - as is mentioned in our presentation - that work is currently being undertaken to establish a North-South agency to co-ordinate and promote exchange work. The groupings involved in this work are the Departments North and South, Léargas, the British Council and the Northern Irish Youth Council. We have been trying to get involved in shaping this but because we are not a statutory agency, it is felt that we do not qualify.
There are advantages and disadvantages in being a statutory agency. We do not fall under any direct jurisdiction. We value our freedom as a non-governmental organisation and the fact that we raise funds from elsewhere to do the work. We consider it important to operate in an overall context and Ms McGill will talk in particular about some of the problems involving loyalist groups. As we are not a Government agency, nobody thinks we are up to anything. We are not luring people onto the slippery slope.
One can also follow the other side of that logic.
Mr. Kennedy
People can take part in a Co-operation Ireland activity and if they do not like it or the direction in which it is going, they can walk away from it. There is no pressure on them. Oddly enough, because people are not obliged to participate, they are prepared to try it. There is a great tradition on this island that if one forces people to do something they refuse, but if one says they do not have to do it they will give it a go. There are elements of that in the work in which we are involved.
It was asked whether the initial enthusiasm for co-operation in the North has waned. I would say there is a feeling, certainly in the Republic, that things were sorted five years ago and people should catch themselves on. If I could put it like this; people in the Republic think that the problem is in Northern Ireland while people in the North think the problem is in Belfast. The people in Belfast think the problem is in the Ardoyne. People in the Ardoyne think it is confined to about two streets and people in those two streets think it is confined to a couple of houses. This runs through attitudes on the entire island.
Perhaps the best example of this attitude was seen last May when we had a civic link presentation ceremony. We had 800 young people and 100 teachers in the RDS. The Minister attended, as did the American ambassador. It was a great event. It is the only time in my recent life I have been wolf whistled when I got on stage. The kids were really fired up as members will gather if they were wolf whistling me. We invited RTE to come along to support and give some publicity to this, which it duly did. It door-stepped the Minister and asked him about the recent killing of two gardaí by two young people that had absconded from a home and had run into the gardaí at a road block. After he gave his answer, RTE went away. No attention was paid to the 900 people that were involved in active co-operation and were celebrating that inside the building. There is an issue about getting publicity for what we do. We work in schools throughout the island and our work is limited by the funding available. It is paradoxical that there is no problem in the Republic in recruiting schools and young people who want to get involved. We reject more people than we take on board. If any member of the committee wants to see what we are doing, he is welcome to do so.
Let us consider the difficult questions about the contact period, how we target, research and measure success. I said that 52% of people in the Republic would be interested in participating in a cross-Border activity. It is not just a question of crossing the Border; our survey showed that only 4% of people had done so. I furnished the committee with a figure to the effect that only 19% of Northern Ireland Protestants felt they had a good understanding of traditions and culture in the Republic and only 27% of people in the Republic felt they had a good knowledge of Ulster Protestant or loyalist traditions.
The 52% and 4% relate to activities of this nature rather than to holidays or business.
Mr. Kennedy
Yes. We asked people if they would like to participate in a cross-Border exchange or activity and that was the response we received. On the question about the absence of policy and resources and whether we feel our hands are tied, we accept that everybody is short of resources and that this is a continuing problem.
In the field of education, we are involved in promoting community relations, and the measurement of the impact of the work should concern the building of understanding and respect between different people, not GCSEs or some other measurement. Another aspect of our work relates to economic development and people say they want to measure jobs created. We are neither interested nor uninterested in this but the measure we are concerned about concerns the reconciliation achieved in this respect. At some stage, the work at community level needs to be analysed properly. Government Departments should be required to promote reconciliation and should do so in partnership and this needs to be measured.
We are quite happy to subject ourselves to a system whereby it is said: "This is what you said you would do and this is what you have done." The terms of the work are important in this respect. We mostly work on links between North and South. We work on some links within Northern Ireland and on none within the Republic. On the question of whether a lack of understanding is only found in sectarian societies or is common to all societies, it is probably a common factor of humanity that we do not understand the other. However, it is important to tackle that lack of understanding when it leads to community breakdown and violence. That is common throughout the island.
Apart from working with the schools in Northern Ireland we are working with a group in Tiger's Bay, which is in loyalist north Belfast. It approached us 18 months ago and said it wanted to establish a link with a group in Dublin. I asked those involved if they had considered establishing a link with those on the other side of the peace wall 100 yards away and they said they had not. I said: "So you will talk to someone 100 miles away and you will not talk to someone 100 yards away". They said: "That is it. Yes". I replied: "We will work with you provided you can also work with a group on the other side". There is a group in an area called Newington which is linking on a North-South basis, as is the Tiger's Bay group. We have them on a programme that will eventually lead to their building links with each other. It is now 18 months down the line and they still have not done so because they are very wary of each other. In a seriously divided society, people do not want to give too much away.
North-South links can be very important, not just in terms of promoting North-South understanding but also in developing and supporting North-North understanding.
Ms McGill
Let us consider some of the specific issues raised in terms of fitting our work into the curriculum and recruiting and following groups. A committee member asked about recognition from the Department in terms of making provision for our kind of work on the curriculum. It is correct to say that it is not adequate. In order to implement the programme in the past three years, we tied it in with CSPE in the junior cycle and transition year in the senior cycle. That is where groups have been implementing it. An issue arose with the Department concerning clear policy and rationale for this kind of work because we were being required to fulfil the CSPE objectives and our agenda was very much to do with reconciliation.
The WRC independent evaluation has also posed the question of whether it is appropriate for us to try to fit this kind of work in with the curriculum and has suggested that we should be lobbying for a particular space for it. This is pertinent given that many diversity issues will arise in the Republic apart from the North-South agenda. It is very important that we create some kind of space on the curriculum for this.
Departmental vision needs to be informed in that the kinds of outcomes and expectations it envisages relate to numbers and quick impact. A reconciliation agenda involves a very slow process and demands a lot of trust building with groups, training of teachers and capacity building in the schools. One will not be able to show huge changes at the end of an academic year. Civil servants need to understand that it is a slow process. This relates to Mr. Kennedy's point about meaningful partnerships between voluntary and State agencies.
Referring specifically to the Civic Link project, we involved 120 school and youth groups over three years. We recruited 30 in the first year, 40 in the second and 50 in the third. All are continuing into the fourth year of the project and we want to continue it further. Tracking is an issue in this respect. Unfortunately, the Department is not prepared to consider continuing support for that number of groups indefinitely. Therefore, our next phase of Civic Link involves taking the recommendations of the report and focusing specifically on another new pilot scheme with a small cohort of disadvantaged and loyalist groups. While that is very valuable and meaningful in terms of testing new methodologies and approaches, what happens groups in which so much time and money have been invested to sustain them? Schools must take on some of that responsibility but there is a role for agencies that can function in a development, training and support capacity as opposed to a mere funding capacity.
We need to change the focus in the Department from delivery and implementation to development and that is where we are going as an agency. It is a question of development, support and building in sustainability, not one of considering how many groups one delivered to and the impact on these groups and then moving on.
It has not been possible for us to track groups for more than two or three years. The Civic Link evaluation examined the kids who were involved for three years, but this is about as far as we could go in terms of surveying. How can one factor out all the other variables which may have influenced young people or adults in their twenties in terms of their mutual understanding? We are trying to deal with this all the time in terms of looking at measurements.
I feel strongly about recruiting loyalist groups. We consider it quite a success to have recruited so many of them but it has been a very hard slog. Ultimately, if one approaches them with a community relations agenda or a North-South agenda, they suspect that one is trying to sell a united Ireland. One of the reasons we have been successful is that we have spent a lot of time building trust with the schools in question. We have presented a project which facilitates the groups to look at themselves, their identity and how that is presented to the partner group. Some of the politicians from loyalist constituencies, even a DUP one, are quite happy about the project as they perceive it as their groups building confidence in their own identity and presenting it to others that do not know much about it.
We are also looking at how we can equip these young people to be confident and participate in their own societies. That has been one of the selling points of Civic Link. We have also tried to link it to the curriculum in Northern Ireland. We created a specific module on the GSCE syllabus called Civic Link and the curriculum council approved it. It meant that schools were able to add it to class timetables and this was another selling point. I know of a school in Ballymena that is now in its fourth year of the project. We have told the principal that due to the funding requirement and the issue of continuing to indefinitely support groups such as this, we may not be able to include the school or may have to change the partner as the Department says every group must be disadvantaged. The principal told us it took three years for his teachers to get to a stage where they spoke openly to the teachers in the other school and started to trust each other enough to build something in the future. To change the agenda and put new requirements in place defeats the whole purpose of the project. This is important in terms of a vision of the statutory supporters of this project. What do they want to measure the project by? What outcomes do they anticipate and do they understand the processes needed to achieve effective change? This means capacity building in schools.
I can think of loyalist schools where, after one year, only one teacher is committed. Partner groups will say that they are not yet free to go into the staff room in that school. We need to spend another couple of years with the schools. If we were introducing schools, we would accompany a school from the South to their meeting with a principal, teacher, or member of the board of governors of the school from the North. This is the ideal way to start the process. The first couple of months might be spent building that relationship before discussing activities in the school.
This is a slow process that requires time and money. The money is not needed for exchanges only, it is also needed for training teachers and giving them the support they will need to do this kind of work. For example, Civic Link will have a requirement next year that teachers spend 12 days out of school on this project. This will involve two reciprocal exchanges of two to three days, three training sessions of one to two days and a final showcase presentation together. There is an issue about substitute cover and Departments being willing to at least make a contribution to this. These are the kind of things we are lobbying for.
Someone asked how we measured attitudinal change. Within the work research co-operative report we used the Bogardus social distance scale. A questionnaire was given to every student before the project commenced and the same questionnaire was distributed when the project was completed. The questions looked at attitudes to religious, ethnic and community groups, etc. An analysis of the response after the project would look at the degree to which someone moved on a scale of one to eight, where one would indicate the respondent would marry the person and eight would indicate the respondent would not want the person in the country. This was a measurement of mutual understanding and there were other measurements of community awareness and civic participation. The responses were then compared to a control group of schools that did not participate in North-South work.
I thank Mr. Kennedy and Ms McGill for the presentation. I met Mr. Kennedy at a briefing for Senators earlier in the year and I was impressed with the important work his organisation does. Knowledge of the North of Ireland is something I have only gained late in my life through my work as a county councillor as there is co-operation between councils on both sides of the Border. Many people from the Republic have never been to the North.
Have the Departments acceded to any of the recommendations the report makes? Has there been any move on the strategic approach or financing required for this? Mr. Kennedy has said that while work in disadvantaged areas is important, it constrains organisations. The measure of disadvantage is old fashioned and prevents development in communities. It seems to be measured on how much unemployment there is in an area and does not recognise there might be disadvantage in developing communities or communities that lack facilities. The Departments need to recognise there are other ways of looking at disadvantage.
The Department of Education and Science is currently the lead Department. Is there merit in experimenting with the Department of Social and Family Affairs, which has identified a network of disadvantaged groups. This would remove the issue from the straitjacket of education.
The delegation has said there is always a problem of getting people involved and publicising the works. It has also said that it rejects more than it accepts. What does this mean? I will give an example of the contradiction of the structures that are in place. There are many traditional links between the great October fair in Ballinasloe and the Old Lamas Fair. Initial contacts were made at political and community level and then schools made contacts immediately afterwards. That was a reversal of the usual system. Four years ago, as a result of the contact at community and political level, the facilities of Leinster House were used for Scoil Mhuire, Ballinasloe to meet with its corresponding school in the North. That was the initial contact and it took a couple of hours for the meeting to take off. There has been a huge involvement at a community and educational level since and it has developed outside the auspices of Co-operation Ireland although there is an involvement at some level in the background. Perhaps the Department of Education and Science is the wrong lead Department.
I apologise for my earlier absence. There was an unfortunate clash of committees this morning and I am back and forth between them. However, I am aware of the work Co-operation Ireland is doing and I have been involved with some of the projects. I wish the organisation well. I will read the blacks later and follow through any questions I might have. I am not in a position to ask any questions, having not been present.
Ms McGill mentioned diversity issues, which we must address. Some societies, including cities in the UK, have been grappling with various issues of this nature - sometimes successfully but frequently unsuccessfully. Are there lessons to be learned from the Co-operation Ireland experience by those who draw up the curriculum in the Republic, among others? I believe there must be and I wonder if any formal or informal means are applied to ensure those lessons do not fade. Ms McGill pointed out that when there is curriculum provision, it is much easier for schools to accommodate visits. From what she said about Ballymena, I got the impression that there is at least some curricular and examination provision in the North and that what is in the South is less formal in terms of the content of the courses at junior certificate and transition year levels. Would it be better if that were made more formal and are there advantages to its being so?
The teaching background of several members, including myself, informs their questions. Is there a problem with the supervision of groups in order to prevent breakdowns or people reverting to type? These things happen in every school and every society when one puts young lads together. In some instances, something could happen which undermines the positive value of what is being done. How is this dealt with? I assume the 12 days allocated for teachers to meet in advance probably irons out most of the problems. I suspect that one or two people in a class are left at home.
Schools in the South have advanced to a considerable extent in the IT field, as I am sure is the experience in the North. While it is not personal contact, it allows inexpensive and widespread use. As a former teacher, I believe that society most unfairly places an onus on schools to deal with every problem that arises. Almost everything additional we do becomes a burden on teachers and schools, invariably at the loss of some other aspect. To what extent do the delegates find that to be the case?
Senator Ulick Burke reminded me that there are actually huge levels of contact between rural society in the North and South, particularly in the area of agriculture. It runs entirely across religious divides in the North, where people trade in horses, animals, tractors and machinery on the basis of the best value and quality available. This is a long tradition which, unlike the Lamas Fair-Ballinasloe example, never developed into anything much. I am sure that strikes a chord with Deputy Stanton.
That has struck a chord with me - the Chairman has been inspirational in that regard. Would it be possible for the committee to travel North to meet our counterparts and perhaps meet some other people involved in Co-operation Ireland, visit some of the schools and look at the system there? A reciprocal visit could be made to the South. It may be possible to do so in the autumn.
Mr. Kennedy
We still get surprised sometimes. A couple of years ago, I was surprised when we asked a young man, who had travelled from Belfast to Dublin, what had surprised him most on his visit and he answered that he did not think people would speak English. As they were all Catholics, he thought they would speak Latin. Another story relates to a Northern school delegation going to Dunboyne and sharing what they had written down before they visited. They had imagined that the young people in Dunboyne got up at five in the morning, milked the cows and set off across the fields. The kids form Dunboyne had imagined that in the North, the first thing they did in the morning was don flak jackets and set off with steel helmets. The ubiquitous nature of newsreel journalism is surprising.
Have we succeeded in persuading the Departments? No, we have not. As this is an education committee, we are talking in terms of education but we also receive support from the Department of Foreign Affairs. However, I would argue that the point that was made about the Department of Education and Science applies across the Government machinery North and South. Part of the problem is that there has been a growth in the amount of North-South co-operation and the activities that occur. In a way, practice has surpassed policy and strategy. Things are happening and no one has paused to ask how it all fits together, how we can be most effective and how activities fit in with the specially pre-programmed body, the peace funding and the cross-Border bodies set up under the Agreement. I suspect it has tumbled a lot. The workload itself has pushed matters forward but there has not been a context. We have the advantage of recognising the need for to develop a context. It has not happened yet but we will follow up with the Department of Social and Family Affairs.
We do not always work first with schools - we also have a programme for student journalists and one where we work with local authorities. We had a programme where we worked with small and medium-sized business, but we pulled out of it because we ran out of money and Inter-Trade Ireland was set up to operate at that level. We are not the only North-South agency, but we are one that thinks long and hard about its remit and is keen to see how we can co-operate with others.
I do not know enough about the definition of disadvantage. I suspect that some kind of compromise needs to be made, as in all matters of this nature. One of the difficulties we had was that there was a clearer definition of disadvantage in the Republic than there was in Northern Ireland and we were trying to match schools.
For the committee to travel North to meet its counterparts depends on what happens in the political negotiations and whether it actually has a counterpart in the near future. Nonetheless, the committee need not limit a visit to meeting its counterpart. Members would be welcome to travel North to meet with and talk to representatives of schools and youth groups. We would be delighted to see that happening. One of the advances that has come since the Agreement is that it is much more acceptable for people from one jurisdiction to visit those in another. The President is a regular visitor to projects in the North, including ours. Deputy Kenny has visited the North on a number of recent occasions and has visited Co-operation Ireland projects. The committee would be extremely welcome to see our projects in the North and South and meet the groups of young people together.
Ms McGill will speak further on the supervision issues, the IT contacts and so on. The Chairman made an interesting point about the UK lessons. There is no doubt the work we do in reconciling the different traditions on the island could also work in dealing with issues of racism or hostility in other groups, both here and in Great Britain. People on this island as a whole can learn lessons from the UK. Before I worked in Co-operation Ireland, I was chief housing officer on a local authority in Yorkshire. One of the things I learned from that was how institutions react in divided societies. Matters have progressed further in Britain than they have here. Some very interesting work was done following the riots in Burnley and Bolton by a community cohesion group attached to the Home Office. I advocate that Northern Ireland looks to some of the lessons learned from that experience. At the same time, things are being done on the island, both North and South, from which the British could benefit in dealing with race issues. We can learn positive lessons from each other. This is something that could be investigated in the context of the third strand of the Good Friday Agreement, which deals with east-west relations.
Ms McGill
On the question of whether it would be better to have programmes linked to the formal curriculum, I could say yes and no, because I have heard arguments for and against this. Links with the formal curriculum mean that the project has a better chance of succeeding, because there is the space and the time to deliver it and the structure exists. Having said that, some of our best projects have been delivered outside the formal curriculum in a situation in which the group is fully committed.
This is an ongoing debate we are having with the Department: the degree to which we should bring in committed groups and groups who really do not want to be there and are being cajoled into participating. If the leader is very committed, has the confidence to do this kind of project and will take the time to do it, as some teachers have done at lunch times and in the evening, the project can be much more dynamic. However, when groups that do not want to be there participate, then we must hold their hands and provide them with all the facilities to allow them to undertake the project. In that sense, the formal curriculum is probably the best place for it. However, it does straitjacket the kind of activities that can be delivered and the basis on which the results are measured, which does not always conform to a reconciliation agenda but will be in the area of the subject whose requirements are being met. There are pros and cons, but from a practical point of view the formal curriculum is the best place for it at the moment.
On the question of supervision, it is true that groups will revert to type. This is related to how adequately the teachers are resourced and trained to cope with this. It is one of the big areas we want to develop and again a strategy and vision is important, not only on our own part but on that of those who support us, in terms of how the project is delivered. It is a question of how many undergo this activity and come out the other end at the end of the academic year.
About a month ago we had a meeting between two groups. The children on our project communicate before they ever meet by sending profiles to each other and introducing themselves. In the canteen at lunch time one of the children from the Southern group took off his jacket to reveal a Celtic T-shirt. The other group, which came from a loyalist school, did not react and managed the situation. When the Southern group went out to the yard at lunch time however, the other big boys in the school were waiting for them and the teachers had to intervene. The reason the loyalist group was able to cope with this was that they had been prepared very well by their leader. Much time is spent at the beginning of the project investigating who the children are and what they and their groups represent, how they want to present themselves to their partners, what their observations of the other group are and what they might do to offend each other. They had done all that preparatory work, thanks to their leader.
This is an area of which teachers are afraid and, as a teacher, I understand this perfectly. How does one manage sensitive situations or contentious issues when they arise? Training and resources must be provided. Young people can revert to type, but if it is successfully managed there will not be a problem. It is important to equip teachers or any group leaders to do this.
It is true that IT contacts are probably a better way, in terms of costs, of sustaining relationships. However, this is something that must be built into a contact programme - it should not be one or the other. At the end of Civic Link last year, which was a three-year project, we sought support from the Department to sustain those links by following them up through IT. The implementation strategy in terms of co-ordinating all the current activities is important. The Department's argument was that it was already funding a North-South project with IT links, called Dissolving Boundaries. Its aim is to equip schools with computers, phone lines and so on. To me it seems sensible that something like our own project, which has a theme and under which groups are already communicating and which needs something to sustain those links, should be able to utilise that. We are encouraging the Department to look at the ad hoc activities it supports in a holistic fashion, so that all those separate activities can complement each other.
IT is not the only support mechanism possible. Groups doing European studies and participating in Dissolving Boundaries are now telling us that they are doing an IT link but want to supplement it with a face-to-face link. Now that they have made contact via computer, they want to meet each other. Complementarity is the answer there.
I was thinking about text messaging as much as formal school activities. Some of the telephone companies have a system by which one can nominate a number to send text messages free. In terms of follow-up, young people are extremely enthusiastic about text messaging and are able to send a huge amount of information in a very small space - they are not as good at anything else in terms of writing. It struck me as one of the ways in which people could maintain contact in what they consider an enjoyable way, although it is incomprehensible to me.
Ms McGill
That is absolutely right.
I thank Mr. Kennedy and Ms McGill for their very interesting presentations. We will follow up by examining the possibility of visiting some of the projects mentioned, perhaps through our counterparts in the Northern Ireland Assembly when it is set up again. I participated in a visit to one of the committees up there which was very successful. We have a lot of contact through the British-Irish Inter-Parliamentary Body and various other means. I thank Senator Joe O'Toole, who facilitated the meeting, and all the members for their participation. Next week we will meet representatives of the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment and the curriculum development unit, mainly in the context of the European Green Paper on entrepreneurship in Europe.
The joint committee adjourned at 12.40 p.m. until 11 a.m. on Thursday, 1 May 2003.