On behalf of the committee, I am pleased to welcome Mr. Peter Osborne, chairman of the Community Relations Council, Mr. Joe O'Donnell, director of Belfast Interface Project, Ms Mary Montague of Tides Training, Mr. Derek Poole of LINC, Ms Charmain Jones of the Rural Community Network, and Mr. Rab McCallum of the North Belfast Interface Network. The delegates are very welcome and it is good to see so many of them again. We have had great consultations with them over the past few years and I am delighted they have come down to address the committee. I invite Mr. Osborne to make his opening statement, after which I will invite members to ask questions.
Peace Building in Northern Ireland: Community Relations Council and Partner Organisations
Mr. Peter Osborne
I thank the Chairman and committee members not only for inviting us down this afternoon but also for their interest in, and support for, these sorts of issues over recent years. It is very much appreciated by everybody here and within the communities in which we work in Northern Ireland. It is useful that we are making a presentation after the previous presentation on the Good Friday Agreement and associated outstanding issues. It was very interesting and convincing. We are going to touch on some of the same issues, including the role of civil society, in our presentation.
The Chairman has introduced everybody present so I will not do so again. Ms Mary Montague will do most of the talking as part of our introduction. The Community Relations Council has been celebrating its 25th year this year. Over its 25 years, it has been an arm's length body of government and acts independently of government to try to develop peace building and reconciliation in Northern Ireland through funding, policy, innovation and supporting good practice. In 2014, it became obvious to the Community Relations Council and everybody else to whom we were talking that there was significant frustration within civil society and among the practitioners with whom the council works over the current state of peace-building efforts and the peace process. That frustration manifested itself in practitioners getting together with the Community Relations Council to start a process they called "Galvanising the Peace". The council has been helping to facilitate that process which has been driven and led by the practitioners and civil society. The delegates present are some of the people who have been driving the process as part of a working group. It is a process that has involved many more people and, as Ms Montague will outline, it involves increasing numbers. It is a substantial initiative and one that I believe will make a significant contribution to our understanding of peace and how it can be galvanised in the coming months and years.
I thank the members. I will hand over to the practitioners who have been leading this initiative.
Ms Mary Montague
On behalf of Tide Training and the whole delegation, I thank the committee members for taking the time to listen to us. Building the peace is not just a laudable aim; it is one of the most complex and toughest to achieve. Practitioners feel there needs to be systemic and structural change tackling the causes of division and the reasons sectarian and divisive attitudes continue to prevail. Beyond that, relationship-building work is critical to the building of trust, which is a key component of a shared and reconciled society.
We need a vision that takes the best of what we all represent to create something special that has not yet been possible on this part of the island or as part of the United Kingdom. That is why a large number of practitioners in the field of reconciliation, such as ourselves, have produced the document called "Galvanising the Peace". The process has been facilitated by the Community Relations Council but is driven by us, the practitioners. We hope that after extensive discussion with civil society over the coming months, a thousand or more voices will identify a way forward for developing the peace process that highlights the critical issues and outlines the key needs.
The Northern Ireland peace process has comprised a series of initiatives designed to bring about an end to armed conflict, create the basis for a new inclusive political settlement and support reconciliation. It includes the implementation of the 1998 Agreement in addition to peace-building work on the ground.
The Agreement and the Northern Ireland Act provide an institutional architecture and underpinning structure for a society based on equality, human rights and good relations. Some progress has been made in dismantling the physical infrastructure of conflict but there is much work still needed to dismantle the attitudes that gave rise to the conflict and that sustain racism and sectarianism. Much of the goodwill displayed at the signing of the Agreement has evaporated. Sectarian and racist tensions and cultural conflicts have exacerbated this. Intolerance and hatred remain in many forms. Destructive political and community relationships can lead to violence. Anti-peace factions feed off this and have the potential to undermine progress. This position is unsustainable and causes a great deal of concern among us.
The peace process itself needs to be reignited and recalibrated. We need to build, not dismantle, the reconciliation infrastructure. We must utilise the commitment, courage and skills that people here have demonstrated for generations to move on to the next phase of the peace process.
The Agreement affirms a number of human rights, one being the right to equal opportunity in all social and economic activity, regardless of class, creed, disability, gender or ethnic background. To enable this aspiration to be a reality, an agreed strategy for our future aspirations is critical to address racism, sectarianism and segregation, encourage regeneration, challenge poverty and promote a shared society. Austerity measures are contrary to the creation of a vibrant and strong community. For this, people need to have access to good health care and have their educational needs met and opportunities for work. Strengthening the peace is essential for economic progress and creating jobs in areas that have experienced the most negative impact of the conflict enables a sustainable peace.
The changes happening as a result of the peace process have created a perception of loss and imbalance for some and a feeling that the process has not been of benefit to all. This perception must be addressed and it must be acknowledged that it is deeply felt across all working class communities. The Executive needs to give clear leadership and outline a path to a peaceful future based on equality, human rights and respect for diversity rather than a path to a society marked by sectarianism and intolerance and eroded by poverty.
The Agreement states, in respect of the past, that the achievement of a peaceful and just society would be a true memorial to the victims of violence. Practitioners feel the issues of the past must not be confined to those who lived through it. Our legacy is inter-generational and will have a profound impact as we move forward.
There is an urgent need to find a meaningful commitment and mechanisms to deal with the past and trans-generational trauma as victims and survivors are within every part of our society, regardless of age, community background or profession. It continues in the youth. The participants recognise that young people from areas affected by the Troubles face particular difficulties and will support the development of special community-based initiatives based on international best practice. There are many examples of good practice in youth work. However, we, as practitioners, believe this work is undermined in areas where there is still a paramilitary presence. Paramilitaries still act as gatekeepers in some communities and such behaviour drives out investment, hitting the poorest hardest, with an adverse effect on the youth of the area.
On policing, the Agreement states it should be responsive to the community's concerns and encourage community involvement, where appropriate. It is very difficult for those who live in fear and feel they cannot raise their head above the parapet as it rebounds not only on themselves but also on their families. The role of civil society and its confidence in policing are important. While providing resources to respond to community concerns is effective, it is also essential.
The Agreement goes on to state policing should be designed to ensure policing arrangements, including composition, recruitment, training, culture, ethos and symbols, are such that in Northern Ireland there is a police service that can enjoy widespread support from and is seen as an integral part of the community as a whole.
Police reform measures are under immense pressure as the PSNI strives to manage the legacy of the past while delivering policing services with less money. An example of this is the withdrawal of training in community relations and community policing as part of the reduction of training for new recruits from 40 to 20 weeks, but it is not just in policing. The justice system is feeding into one of the legacy issues. The community wants a quick response to anti-social behaviour. Therefore, communities are still looking for quick, effective local responses rather than the more formal and legal routes. It appears to the community that the system treats offenders better than victims and that harmers do not face the full consequences of their actions.
As regards our work as practitioners, it is stated in the Agreement that the participants recognise and value the work being done by many organisations to develop reconciliation, mutual understanding, respect between and within communities and traditions. They see such work as playing a vital role in consolidating peace and political agreement. Accordingly, they pledge their continuing support to such organisations and will positively examine the case for enhanced financial assistance for the work of reconciliation. We continue our efforts to grow peace, trust and reconciliation. Our commitment remains strong, but we are under severe strain. Intolerance and hatred are common and developing better relationships where they are difficult or non-existent between communities and people is critical. A participative framework involving civil society to build peace, support and good government is vital. To achieve this, as practitioners, we require a systemic approach with cross-departmental working, shared strategic and operational plans implemented through respectful partnerships between statutory, community, business and all other sectors. This will require investment and resources.
The galvanising peace process we are facilitating will, no doubt, engage civil society's participation in government and policy development, in ensuring people are not left behind by the political system or vice versa. In strengthening trust in the institutions, it may highlight a need for the final dismantling of paramilitarism and the reclaiming of communities by communities. It may suggest structural and systemic reform around education and housing. It will no doubt address the need for relational change amidst a concern that an erosion of the reconciliation infrastructure is taking place which could have significant detrimental consequences in the years to come. For practitioners like us in the field, it feels like this is a crossing point in the peace process. It is a time that will be judged by history. Was there a serious intent on the part of everyone to make the peace process work or was it a missed opportunity? All of us can make a contribution, whether large or small. What we do now will have a long-term impact on us, our children and our children's children. Many of us came into this work because of our children. We need to reflect carefully and find the courage to seize rather than miss the opportunity.
We are happy to take questions and actually have a chairperson. As peace practitioners, we need to be kept in order; therefore, Mr. O'Donnell will chair part of the discussion.
I thank Ms Montague and hope Mr. O'Donnell will have more say than I sometimes have in this committee. I now invite questions and Mr. O'Donnell can decide who in the group will answer them.
Mr. Mickey Brady
I thank Ms Montague for her presentation. I appreciate and I am aware of the work her organisation has done for many years. One of her comments was very telling, that the legacy affects everyone, including children. I am lucky in the sense that I come from Newry where we never had the sectarian issues other areas such as Portadown and Lurgan had. Sometimes it is difficult to understand. I am not saying we did not have issues, but they were few and far between, certainly on a personal level growing up in a mixed community but which was predominantly Nationalist. We played football and other sports and had friends in the Unionist and Protestant community. I have to say it was never a problem, coming from a mixed background and having Protestant grandparents on both sides of the family. As my father was from Markethill and I came from a very mixed community, perhaps that helped.
One of the difficulties in terms of what happens in the North concerns the media. I was talking to Mr. Osborne and Mr. McCallum about this beforehand. I sat on committees at Stormont for eight years and there is a lot of constructive work being done there and a lot of consensus that is never portrayed. If I meet an objective journalist, it will probably be for the first time, in the North certainly, and I have to say it does not seem to be much better in the South. There is work being done which really is not appreciated. One only has to listen to know this. We have five hours of comment, starting at 6.30 a.m., apart from some music between 10.30 a.m. and noon. We have comment in which the Assembly and the peace process are constantly criticised. We need to have a broader discussion with people, including the members of this committee who are on the ground.
As someone with a background in dealing with welfare rights, I was struck by the welfare cuts. In speaking to loyalist communities in east Belfast, for instance, on the Newtownards Road and in the Woodburn Church, it was clear that they had exactly the same problems as those encountered in my community. The difficulty is that in talking to people who are, to use Ms Montague's own word, galvanising to mobilise against the cuts, the flag protest took over and became a bigger issue.
I was listening to the radio this morning before this meeting. Again, the issues raised were what people term the bread-and-butter issues. Average disposable income per household in the North is almost £100 less than it is in Britain, yet these cuts will be imposed and will affect everybody. It will make the committee’s and our work that much harder because we are not dealing with practicalities but with ideology that is being forced upon people.
Generationally, sectarian issues are being broken down. The father of one of my son’s best friends is a Free Presbyterian minister. His son spends a lot of time in our house and vice versa. It has not become an issue. They would never discuss religion or politics. Maybe there is some light at the end of the tunnel and we are getting away from the sectarian and racism issues that we come across almost daily. The work of the committee is bringing forward reality and is based on common sense. It is about people accepting that we need to move forward and not to be constantly looking over our shoulders. That is an important issue.
I welcome the delegations to the committee and thank them for their excellent presentations. They highlighted the work that still needs to be done. I detect from this and previous contributions that there is a sense of a lack of confidence in the process. There is a sense that the peace process has been neglected politically, maybe at governmental level. I spoke to Ms Mary Montague at one of her organisation’s events about how many young people in the North do not vote and there was a cross-community aspect to it. There is a sense of disillusionment. We have much of that here where many young people do not vote. It could be because the political system is not reflective of the aims and aspirations of young people, either from a vision or from a practical point of view.
The point was made that the peace process needs to be revitalised. Will the delegations suggest how this could be done and the role the committee could have in driving that forward? It was stated that while there was a kind of utopian support for the peace process, in the most affected areas during the conflict one still has anti-peace process factions, such as paramilitary groups, working to try to destabilise it for their own ends which is not in the interest of their communities. What is the level of support for anti-peace process-dissident republicans, or whatever they like to call themselves, and those in loyalist communities? Is it secured through intimidation and fear in those communities? The one thing that comes across to those of us involved politically is the role of a hidden hand regarding what is being done in those areas in the so-called name of an ideology.
We have met with people from loyalist working-class communities, ex-combatants, former paramilitaries and so forth. One of those, Jackie McDonald, said that Sinn Féin has MEPs, councillors, TDs and MLAs, but the loyalist working-class communities do not have representation. They are being represented by people who might espouse an entirely different economic ideology to what is suitable for their own communities. What is needed in working-class loyalist communities is working-class loyalist representation. This is necessary to bring about a situation where one can build a working-class rights movement. During the Troubles, most of the conflict took place in working-class areas. Those people were also the victims in the lead-up to the Troubles and they still are the victims, in terms of the proposed welfare cuts and so forth that are coming down the track.
We recently met a group of young people associated with one of the main loyalist groupings in working-class areas. They were talking about flags. I said to them there is an issue that affects republican and Nationalist working-class areas and loyalist working-class areas, namely, the proposed welfare cuts and how they will affect all of them. I said to them they should unite around this common issue that will affect all of them across the divide. Doing something like that can help to build bridges and develop a struggle around rights and entitlements.
The lack of investment and resources going into those areas was also referred to. The consequence of that is the loss of jobs and significant unemployment and so forth. This has to be addressed by the Exchequer, or whoever is providing funding, and proactively pushed forward. Education is another aspect of this. Since I have been on this committee, I have been advocating very strongly for integrated education right across the communities. Most of what we are is what we learned. There is no difference between a black child and a white child, a Protestant and Catholic, or whatever. That has to be part of how one helps to erode the sectarianism that exists.
Mr. Joe O'Donnell
What we have tried to do is create a process of convenience. While we all come from the community sector, we all work in different fields. It may be just easier to explain it that way. We are bringing forward this document, Galvanising the Peace, as a consultative document. We will bring it around the community sector initially but it will be across wider civic society in the end. The intention is we will bring it to a conference in December.
Hopefully, we will have it endorsed in time for the elections and parties might agree to support it in the forthcoming elections next year. I want to emphasise it is still a consultative process. The intention behind it is non-confrontational. We do not want to get into an "us and them" situation with our political representatives. We see this as being very much a collaborative process. Perhaps the role we are trying to bring forward involves being critical friends but it certainly involves being collaborative partners and most definitely persuaders for peace.
We would like to be part of the heavy lifting. We realise that in terms of legislation, politicians need to bring those measures forward but we hope they would look upon the community sector in general and perhaps ourselves in particular as those prepared to labour to bring forward those endeavours. Part of the document was born out of a sense of frustration with "in-out" politics, such as the crisis management that we continually lurch towards or the fact that we are always held hostage by the negative media sensation. This is the new crash. I do not now think it is any surprise to the committee or others to find that we probably totally endorse all of the things that were said earlier in terms of the bill of rights, perhaps not in the articulate manner set out by Professor McWilliams but certainly in terms of what that means, the expectations people have about it and the engagement civic society would like to have.
To move on to what Deputy Ferris asked about, perhaps Mr. Poole and then Ms Jones will address those two issues and maybe pick up the part relating to young people.
Mr. Derek Poole
In respect of the paramilitary issue, which is the easiest one, it is worth starting by saying that we came to the Good Friday Agreement as a deeply hurt community. It was a profoundly hurt community that was traumatised through all the layers of society. You had to have lived through it to understand the coping mechanisms that were developed even by people who were not necessarily living in areas in which the violence was acute. Nevertheless, the kind of psycho-social adjustments one had to make to accommodate the abnormality of that protracted internecine war were such that we eventually learned to live with abnormality and live with it to such a degree that we did not know what normal was. The choreography of that still exists not just in our psyche but in our very body language and movements. A recent study showed that when a generation of young schoolchildren who were not even born when the Good Friday Agreement was signed were coming home from school, they still walked ten minutes via a longer route they no longer needed to walk. The choreography of sectarian division written on the very landscape of coming home and going to school was still part of the unconscious narrative of how people lived.
We cannot think of the issue of paramilitarism without understanding that the context of the peace process involved tens of thousands of men and women who belonged to paramilitary organisations and who throughout the protracted conflict saw their identity, sense of supporting the cause, ideology or pro-British or pro-Irish positions defined by the kind of structures the paramilitary formations provided. To a large degree, we came into the peace process with no idea about how all of that would be addressed. Of the three things that were essential for the peace process, the first was the end of hostilities. That is always the beginning of something. The other was an overarching political canopy whereby people felt their voice was represented at political and Government level. The third was what to do in the community with the hate, hurt, trauma, fallout, victimhood, the consequences of all of that violence and the threats and fears that became normative. We have been working with that at community level for decades and to a large degree and for various reasons, Government has not been able to address that or not necessarily able to meet us halfway in that healing process - not least in terms of funding and support. It is doing its best, but to a large degree it is working with the big overarching political dimensions of parking the constitutional question and stabilising the politics. The community sector has been working in that vacuum and looking at the issues of hate, hurt, reconciliation, healing and even concepts of forgiveness and truth telling - all those things that are not cerebral but that have a relational and emotional dimension. The paramilitary issue is one of those themes.
I know this is representative of the entire panel. Everyone of us around this table believes the culture and infrastructure of paramilitarism is no longer justifiable in any shape or form and that unaccountable authority is unacceptable in the kind of democracy we want to build. We certainly believe that any organisations that get their way through any form of emotional or physical threat are unacceptable to our society. We want to be nuanced about this by saying that paramilitaries did not arrive in our context like aliens on a spaceship. They are our community and are embedded in the reality of our streets, families, institutions and structures. Paramilitaries are not something that is not us. They are our brothers and fathers. They were predominantly men but they are also our sisters. They are our neighbours. They are people who defended us or threatened us, depending on our ideology. I was put out of my home at gunpoint by the IRA one night and moved across town into a house from which a Catholic family had been put out at gunpoint by the UVF. In that internecine experience of paramilitarism, ironically, we found ourselves living the very same experience of fear, threat and vulnerability.
The issue of paramilitarism must be addressed as an embedded community, not a set of aliens. It must also be nuanced about, to put it in the vernacular, good gatekeepers and bad gatekeepers. Paramilitarism is not one thing. It is a very complex phenomenon and legacy of the conflict that must be addressed with creativity and imagination. Of course, it has become a weapon or tool for demonising people in one way both at political level and at community level. The issue of demobilisation and the more complex issue of "civilianising" the psyche need subtle, sensitive, careful and generous engagement, particularly with community practitioners, who are the ones who often work with paramilitary institutions and organisations. The issue is one of not demonising those who find themselves involved in paramilitarism for all kinds of complicated reasons and yet paradoxically, against that is the issue of accountability, justice, victimhood and truth telling. All of those things are being juggled at the moment as we address the phenomenon of paramilitarism.
In particular, I want to say something about the gatekeepers. They are people with a paramilitary background who have the reputation of controlling an area. They are gangsters. There is no doubt about that. The issue of how the PSNI with its limited reserves addresses that and how the community stops looking to those structures to police the area and to deal with antisocial behaviour is complex. However, there are also gatekeepers from paramilitary backgrounds who have been doing community work, albeit sometimes through a paramilitary structure, that is a genuine attempt to do good in that community, to put things right and to address the legacy of the past.
I would also like to say something about loyalist paramilitaries because, to a large degree, loyalist paramilitarism has manifested itself in a particularly unique way, in a way that has shown all kinds of paranoia, insecurity and vulnerability about the political changes that have gone on. Loyalist paramilitarism, and loyalism as a phenomenon in general, have been badly served and profoundly misrepresented and misunderstood. As early as 1974, loyalist paramilitaries in the Maze Prison and through the PUP were writing a Good Friday agreement and maybe even a better version of it. Billy Wright and others were delivering a peace process and were looking for a way out of the internecine conflict that history had helped create for us. There is something about. In the past few weeks, the Loyalist Community Council said: "We want paramilitarism to go away. We want to end these structures and habits from the past and these ways in which we do community work but we need help in that. We need certain reassurances, and support." The demonisation of loyalism, in particular, needs to stop. We need to find a way to bring that voice as an intelligent political and cultural identity into the process and, therefore, we must be careful, when we address the issue of paramilitarism, that we do not fall into black and white answers. We need a nuanced, imaginative and courageous engagement with those structures and we need to do it out of a recognition that these people are part of our society and our neighbourhoods. The inclusion, while addressing issues that are unacceptable, of the people who are part of the paramilitary structure and culture is absolutely vital.
Ms Mary Montague
One of the concerns for us as well is that the leadership inside these groupings is getting older and some younger people do not have a dedication to the future as a peaceful one. They do not totally agree at times with the Good Friday Agreement or any of the new political structures. That is one of our concerns when working with the youth, particularly from loyalist areas.
Ms Charmain Jones
I work across rural Northern Ireland but I also worked in an urban setting for 15 years. I look at children and young people very much through the lens of how I was reared. I was born in 1976 so I call myself a child of the Troubles. Like Mr. Brady in Newry, I am a Portadown woman. I am, therefore, only 20 miles away from him. However, I was born and reared in an extremely sectarian town with a high level of violence. I have been able to look at my work with children and young people through that lens because most of the young people I deal with are under the age of 18. They are all peace agreement children. I am finding across the spectrum that there are kids who do not care about what is happening in Stormont or anything else. They feel they are engaging well with others and they are happy to continue with that. There are other young people for whom sectarianism and racism have an impact on everyday issues in their lives, including their schooling, how they get home from school, how they get bussed to school, what they do outside school and where they hang around after school, and that can be in an urban or rural context. In general, most young people, whether they say it or not, care about peace at some level. I was doing work with a group of 13 to 15 year olds recently and we were talking about the issues that affected them. While we take peace as a given, they also take it as a given, but they do not want to see violence similar to what we saw as young people.
Young people find it difficult to connect with the past. Last week I had to say to them that this is living history. They are being taught about this in school, but I was alive when these things happened and I am only 20 years older than them. It is hard for them to connect with what we are trying to do in talking about the past. Sometimes we put too much responsibility on them - fix the young people and Northern Ireland will be fixed. I was a youth worker for four years and I do not agree with that. I meet vibrant, energetic young people who want to move forward. We recently did a report with the Integrated Education Fund on community, housing and education. Young people said they wanted to learn together, connect together and do things together. They want shared classrooms, but the issue is funding. Shared education programmes are receiving less and less money. Over the past year, in particular, the level of contact between the youth and education sectors with young people has begun to shrink. If organisations such as ours are not doing this work, there will be less done within the school structures and the opportunities will shrink. Many people still live in segregated communities. There are walls in urban areas and I live at an interface. My children have no contact with anybody who has a different religion outside of my efforts to try to do that. They could continue to live like that for the rest of their lives if they wanted. They can live on that interface and never interact with anybody with a different religion. It is the same in rural areas. I work with young people in these areas who live two or three miles apart who would never connect if it were not for organisations such as ours going in to put in some resources and expertise to help them to mix together.
With our education system and the shrinking of the youth sector and the funding for children and young people, we could continue to live in a segregated, benign apartheid for the rest of our lives, but our sector is trying its best to give young people a hand in learning, sharing and engaging with each other as much as they can.
Are integrated schools a way to break down that barrier?
Ms Charmain Jones
Integrated education comprises only 6% of the education system in Northern Ireland. One opinion poll reported that 85% of people said they wanted integrated education for their children. The government is going down the road of shared education and that is better than what we have had. It is an option that we did not have. We are getting that now and that is important.
Integrated education is sometimes a middle-class concept, and the working class often do not have the capacity to-----
Ms Charmain Jones
I live in a working-class community, and integrated education is not a concept that my community would even consider. It is difficult.
I refer to the Buddy Up programme between Edenderry school and Holy Cross school in the Ardoyne and the interaction there, with parents bringing their children and getting to know somebody from across the interface. I visited Randalstown as well and it is incredible to witness that interaction. It is not about building a new school; it is about interaction between students from one tradition or school system and students from another. It is not about building new schools, integrated schools or shared education but about doing great work across the community. Is that correct?
Ms Charmain Jones
I did work last week with two schools in the Omagh area and it is a concern that the funding and resources for the shared programmes are decreasing. The two schools were concerned that in the future, if programmes shrink, teachers will not have the opportunity to engage at that level. Where will that leave children and young people in the context of engaging in the Omagh area?
Ms Mary Montague
There is concern that we cannot expect future generations or our children to address some of the problems we have created without our putting our hands up and saying we made mistakes. How we tell the story of our past will dictate how our children see their future together. Integrated education and housing was introduced throughout the Balkans, including Bosnia and Croatia. People were also integrated in their workplaces, yet when Miloševi decided to light the taper of nationalism there, it blew those communities apart because the story that held within the families and the communities was the old story of division and nationalism, which was never allowed to be spoken about. As Ms Jones said, if we put the burden of that on to our children and they go into homes carrying the old story and the tacit culture we all grew up with, and the hidden attitude of not trusting people on the other side because they will never change, that will be difficult.
I would like to bring in Deputies Ferris, Crowe and Smith. I am conscious of the need for members to contribute, although the witnesses are much more interesting.
I would like to come back to the integrated education programme. Ms Jones said the funding cuts are beginning to affect any possibility of the programmes moving forward. People in working class areas, unfortunately, do not have the opportunity for a full education because of their socioeconomic background, with many people living in abject poverty and so on. A conflict resolution process is first about truth and reconciliation, but it is also about understanding and having an element of forgiveness and recognising people's identity. Central to much of this is political leadership and religious leadership. I have a jaundiced view of the role played by religious institutions in dividing people, and they continue to maintain that division for their own selfish reasons. An element of dealing with that is through an educational process, whether it is shared or integrated education. If children are taught narrow-minded nationalism or sectarianism in the home, that will stay with them for the rest of their lives, but if they are given a proper opportunity to see people as they are, not as what they are led to believe they are-----
Ms Charmain Jones
There are many preschool and Sure Start programmes in Northern Ireland that bring young children together from the age of two or three to interact before they move into nursery schools and primary schools that have shared education programmes. The difficulty is once they hit 11 years of age and move into secondary school, and grammar school at the age of 14 or 15, the opportunity to participate in a shared education programme almost disappears. My young children have gone through two programmes, but once my child hit 11 and moved to the junior high school, all her contact with the Catholic school in Portadown stopped. It is up to me as a parent to seek out the children and their families with whom she has made friendships to rebuild those connections. That is a failure in the Northern Ireland system, whether the programme is integrated or shared. Once a child hits 11 years of age, the opportunities to connect disappear until they go to university or into employment, when the opportunity for cross-community engagement occurs again.
Yes, but that has to be resolved by leadership.
Ms Charmain Jones
That has to be looked at from the point of view of the child's entire life.
I thank the delegates for attending. The work they are doing is inspiring, and I do not mean to patronise them, but I have witnessed some of the work they have done on the ground. At times people doubt where a project is going, but when one sees the participants sitting down together and everything unfolding, it is inspiring for those of us who have visited the projects that the organisations are involved in.
A number of issues were raised in the submission. It states: "The erosion of reconciliation infrastructure is taking place, which could have significant detrimental consequences in years to come." Will someone elaborate on what is meant by that?
Policing is a key issue. We all want to live in a society in which we feel safe and so on, but it was clear that the change in policing in the North would involve a different approach. Reference was made to the withdrawal of the training and community element. How important is that element in the work the organisations are doing and to the communities they represent?
There is a timeline in respect of bringing down the peace walls. How important is that to the witnesses' work? The walls are a Belfast phenomenon only. They are not in place elsewhere. Witnesses are nodding their heads regarding the importance of the barriers coming down in people's minds.
I have met a number of loyalist groups and, when it comes to funding, they say that if £10 million is available it should be divided on sectarian lines in terms of headcount. How important is it that this money goes to disadvantaged areas where resources are needed?
Reference was made to division. Does that come from politicians or from the wider society?
I could ask about parades, welfare reform and so on, but the witnesses would be here all day. We appreciate the work they are doing. There is tiredness and goodwill is evaporating. Is that down to the slowness of change?
I apologise for not being present for the earlier presentations. Deputy Joe O'Reilly and I had a long-standing commitment to speak to a number of school groups at noon, which was arranged prior to the scheduling of this meeting.
Deputy Crowe and Ms Jones referred to the issue of disadvantage. She referred in a number of her contributions to shrinking services in education in particular. I am a great believer that if we do not empower the individual with proper access to education, training and upskilling, the cycle of poverty and disadvantage in communities will not be broken. Integrated and shared education is aspirational for all of us and we would like it to be achieved, but we need to be careful in aspiring to the optimum goal. Services will shrink further in the meantime and the students of today who need access to complete secondary education and to go on to third level or further education will miss out. We will not have either achieved shared or integrated education or educated the young person going through the system. We all work towards reaching the optimum provision of education but, in the meantime, we have to be careful to ensure that the present generation in disadvantaged communities who have not experienced the benefits they should have from the peace process do not remain in that cycle of poverty and disadvantage, which will contribute to further instability in these communities.
We had the RAPID programme in disadvantaged areas in our major cities, while the CLÁR programme was introduced in rural areas. They were targeted at these areas, and additional provision was made for infrastructure, services, community resource centres and education and health initiatives. The outcome was positive. Would we not be better off going down the road of identifying people's needs and insisting that the Northern Ireland Executive and the British Government provide adequate resources to ensure those who are in the education system or who may not be likely to complete their second level education are targeted? The completion rates for second level education in some communities in Northern Ireland are disappointing. There has been a dramatic improvement in this regard in the Republic over the past 15 or 20 years, and further improvement is needed. We need a huge focus on this because it is readily identifiable.
That is an area where nobody can come with baggage. We all want to equip young people from whatever political tradition or non-tradition from which they come. Do the witnesses agree that the Executive, the British Government, the relevant providers, need to give a certain impetus to those particular programmes that are targeted at those people most in need of assistance and most in need of educational attainment?
Does Mr. Brady wish to put one question before-----
Mr. Mickey Brady
Just a couple of things. Obviously we have the overhead renewal in those areas where people are in abject need. That is being changed from next April through a vote of councils so we live in hope to see how that will pan out. Just a couple of points. Because one comes from Portadown one had the Dickson plan and fortunately one's children did not have to go through the 11 plus. When I did the 11 plus, that was supposed to be the last year of it but my class did an experiment with us. We had the same teacher for four years, a Christian brother. There were 43 in the class and we all passed the 11 plus, mainly through fear, probably, and some through effort. The point I am making is that 50 years later we are still arguing about it. Instead of doing one examination, many children are doing five which, I think, is an absolute disgrace, but that is beside the point. One of the issues Deputy Smith mentioned in terms of young people is integration and trying to get together. Sport can be a way of doing that. A couple of weeks ago I was out in Newry Rugby club. When I was growing up rule 27 in the GAA was still in place. One could not even look at soccer, rugby, foreign sports and so on. Interestingly when I was growing up rugby was a middle class Protestant game in the Six Counties. When I went out to that club there were about 60 or 70 young people, boys and girls, all at different levels, being given very good sporting activities and the opportunity to integrate, yet it is struggling for funding.
Ms Charmain Jones
Yes.
Mr. Mickey Brady
Those of you who come from the voluntary sector, and I as somebody who worked in it for 27 years, are aware that much of one's time and effort is spent on trying to get funding rather than doing what one is supposed to do, and therein lies one of the huge problems. It is incumbent upon us, as politicians, certainly in the North and, obviously, in the South as well, to ensure that proper funding is made available because the work the voluntary sector is doing can only be enhanced by giving it the opportunity to go forward knowing one does not have to spend half one's life chasing one's tail to try to get funding. That is the big lottery. That is a hugely important part of their work-----
Ms Charmain Jones
Particularly in rural areas.
I agree. All the groups are funded by the CRC and the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. There is a good deal of funding available but we always need more. I am asking Mr. Joe O'Donnell to become the new chair of the group.
Mr. Joe O'Donnell
I thank the Chairman. Could I-----
We will want all the answers.
Mr. Joe O'Donnell
I invite Mr. Rab McCallum to address many of the questions raised by Deputy Seán Crowe and then if Ms Charmain Jones and if Ms Mary Montague would pick up on the points raised by Deputy Brendan Smith and Mr. Mickey Brady MP, that would probably the best way of proceeding.
Mr. Rab McCallum
There is such an interconnectivity between all the issues we are talking about. Poverty and deprivation and all the other things we experience in conflict and the remnants of conflict are within those communities that are most impacted by discrimination and poverty. One of the reasons I came here today was that I took the galvanising the peace conversation into Ardoyne and met some of the groups who were involved in all aspects of cross-community work. They all work with the cross-community partner whether that is advising on housing, youth work or other aspects of community development work. We began the conversation on how we could get back to galvanising the peace. The conversation suddenly turned into how can we galvanise our community. There is almost an apathy within communities and a lack of cohesion because of the impact of cuts and austerity. People turn around and think of peace building in the absence of violence. It was mentioned earlier that we are in a post-conflict situation. We are in a post-violent conflict situation and we are still in this confrontation over ethnicity and whatever which still ravages our communities. The reality is that in the absence of violence people do not see peace or the reconciliation aspect as being a priority for them. It is almost a luxury or an abstract concept for those people who are not disadvantaged by poverty. They are thinking of the day-to-day life that they lead, how to get through the next day and how cuts will affect them. All those issues comes into play as to whether they participate in sport and go to school. Quite often, highly ambitious behaviour impacts on our communities.
If I took the committee to Ardoyne tomorrow morning, at 11.15 a.m. it would see a group of about 14 or 15 young people walking around the street who are not in school. They are out of school. They are a needs group. I guarantee that of those 14 or 15 young people, ten will be involved in all sorts of anti-social behaviour at night which, quite often, transfers on to interface violence. I believe there is a huge connectivity in terms of those areas. That can be in the Shankill Road, the New Lodge Road, Tiger's Bay or Ardoyne where the same issues are taking place. One of the difficulties I encountered somewhere along the line was when we stood in communities, sometimes people thought it was a bad thing, 80% of the community may have voted for Sinn Féin and may have voted for the DUP but 80% of those people connect themselves to a political process or to democracy. Now that a declining number of people are engaging in the political process, the ability of people who are anti-peace agreements means dissatisfaction grows. It is imperative for us to go in and deal with those issues. For most of the communities in which I am involved there has been no peace dividend. We have the term "transformation through regeneration" but we see no real regeneration. There is talk of anti-poverty strategies. Where are they? People have been left floundering and feeling that the war is not actually with their Protestant neighbours or any longer with the British state, it is with those people who are going to increase their anxiety with the cuts they intend to impose on them. There is a huge anxiety within those communities. They are turned away from the issue of reconciliation by concerns about how to get by next week. That makes the work we are all involved in extremely difficult.
Mr. Joe O'Donnell
Does Ms Jones want to pick up on the points Deputy Smith made regarding some of the education initiatives?
I want to bring in Deputy Joe O'Reilly for a brief question.
I will be brief. I welcome all our guests. I agree fundamentally with them on the view put forward by my colleague, Deputy Brendan Smith, in that I believe the key to reconciliation, community building, reconstruction and so on lies in integrated education. I know we are a distance from it and that there are many institutional blocks, but it behoves all of us in this room to work towards integrated education because therein lies the key to a solution. Deputy Smith outlined it well. I agree with Mr. Brady's point about sport being a medium. All of that is necessary as well and will happen by virtue of integrated education. As Ms Charmain Jones said, we have it at primary and preschool levels but it must be got into the 11 plus area. That is the secret. If we were to devote a full meeting to how we could in any way contribute to integrated education in Northern Ireland it would be an enormous achievement.
I thank the Deputy. It is now back to Mr. Joe O'Donnell.
Mr. Joe O'Donnell
Does Ms Jones want to give a brief response to that, although I am aware we are running out of time?
Ms Charmain Jones
Deputy Brendan Smith spoke about targeting young people, particularly in disadvantaged areas. That is something Rural Community Network, RCN, has very much tried to ensure is at the fore of our agenda, particularly young people in rural areas. Dell had its united youth programme, which was for young people from the age of 14, to get involved in initiatives and programmes outside of school with a view to encouraging them towards education and employment, particularly in rural areas. I know RCN, along with a couple of officials in the department, has championed that to make sure those programmes are targeted specifically at children and young people who are disadvantaged.
Some of these young people may not have an opportunity to engage with each other in the school environment but certainly they can do it outside school.
Sport plays a major role, in particular the GAA and the IFA as well. A number of good initiatives are happening across Northern Ireland, for example the PeacePlayers International is another organisation that has been doing really good work across Northern Ireland to try to engage young people. I think it is the role of our sector to try to encourage young people to meet each other. If they are not meeting each other in school and a great many young people whom I meet daily are not meeting in school, they might meet each other on the way home from school. I was told the other day about a rumpus over some uniforms in the middle of the High Street. Any informal opportunity to meet outside school should be supported.
I am an advocate for the youth work sector, which I think does not get enough recognition from the informal education sector of what youth clubs and organisations and youth leaders can do for young people. Sometimes they can bring them on the journey to reconciliation more quickly than a school can. I know from experience that I have been able to bring young people on a journey that they would not have been able to do in school, but that was my role and I did that for three years.
When we are looking at education, we are not only considering formal education but the informal education sector does not get its fair share of recognition. There is much good work happening in Northern Ireland with bodies such as Youth Action Northern Ireland, that is doing good work, in rural areas in particular on the hard contentious issues such as parades, flags and emblems, engagement with civic society and democracy. It should be recognised that much good work is happening in the youth sector.
Ms Mary Montague
May I add to those remarks? Deputy Brendan Smith mentioned the RAPID programme, which helped areas where educational attainment was low. The European Social Fund has a programme for young people who are not in employment, education or training, NEETs. We did not receive funding from this fund, but we challenged the decision and were told the reason we were not eligible for funding was that we were offering the young people a qualification at too high a level. If one is trying to support young people who are in the NEETs group, how can one ever offer them education that is at too high a level, when one wants to give them every single opportunity to achieve something?
Deputy Seán Crowe mentioned the division of funding. From our point of view the funding should not merely be divided out as all organisations in this sector have to meet the strict criteria of the Community Relations Council, CRC, and other funders that call those they have funded to account for what we have done with their funding. That is very important. Decisions on funding must be based on need and the work of the groups in the area and must be judged by the outputs from those who have been funded. People like us must be supported and be given funding for our work. This is an aspect of the work that has become particularly difficult.
On the issue of policing, some of us would have been involved in the training of new recruits to the PSNI. They would have come to our organisation for three days before ever putting on a uniform. All of that has been reduced. The 40 weeks of training has been reduced to 20 weeks. Our concern is the preparation of the new recruit to step out onto the street, and his or her understanding of the context in which they are placed and being aware of the triggers from their social background and experience in the past number of years. If we are talking about a police force that can go into any community and belong and be able to work together with a community, we have to have time to work on the issues that we are all carrying from the legacy of the Troubles.
We, the practitioners, have all agreed that there is no shared vision of what the police will look like in the future. We do not have political leadership on that. As part of a process of galvanising peace we would like to get people to talk about what the future looks like for them. What do they want to see and what is their vision of what the North of Ireland will look like in the future.
Mr. Joe O'Donnell
There are two things that are key to many of the conversations we have had today that are worth mentioning. It goes back to the point I made at the start around expectations and assumptions. When people signed up to the Good Friday Agreement, certainly when it was followed through at Weston Park and St. Andrews, the assumption and expectation from communities right across the board was that certain things would happen, that certain things would fall into places and certain activities would take place. That is part of what this committee is trying to do and what the current talks are trying to do, but that was around a bill of rights, a process of some form of civic engagement, if not the civic forum, then how that collaboration would take place. We were trying to put in place a process that would work up and down, in terms of interfaces and barrier removal, working out how regeneration would happen and when and how we would be part of the barrier removal. For example, the media are currently highlighting the barriers to the employment of former prisoners, and their ability to engage in employment.
These are some of the issues. When we talk about a timeframe for barrier removal, the majority of people have an open view of the future. I have never in my life met a person who voted for a 40 ft. wall in their back garden. People want to see a plan, the planning application, and know there are the resources and budget and know what government departments and bodies will be involved and if there will be investment in regeneration. They do not want to be left in a wilderness, where more conflict can happen when the barriers are removed.
These two important points run across many of the conversations we have had today.
I now call on Mr. Poole.
Mr. Derek Poole
On the issue of the community sector, the Office of the First Minister and Deputy First Minister set up a committee recently to look at the latest Government document on a holistic vision and strategy for the peace process, known as TBUC - Together Building an United Community.
We welcomed this document, which has a great many affirmations. This was the first time the community sector has heard from Government. One of the concepts is the protection of the peace and reconciliation infrastructure through financial support, funding and so on. The irony is that this is a genuine and sincere recognition that the community structure bridges to a large degree many of the issues we are talking about, disaffected communities, disadvantaged, marginalised people who are often not listened to or heard on issues of education. The community sector provides the means of articulation and a conduit for that voice to a large degree. Although there is a commitment to this in that committee's recommendations, the reality is that the peace and reconciliation infrastructure is dissipating as we speak. The infrastructure that has been built up over the past 40 years, not just in the past ten or 20 years, but the expertise, the organisations, the connectivity with communities, the awareness of the issues and the nuances that are necessary to move disaffected communities into a more confident and articulate position themselves is ceasing to exist. Everybody around this table knows of organisations that are no longer there. Key individuals who played an absolutely vital role in the housing estate or the local community are no longer there. If that infrastructure goes, it seem to us not just unfortunate, but the removal of a vital role in the community sector of civic society.
It is a vital and important role that acts as an informed and capable bridge between Government and the community.
Will Mr. Osborne comment?
Mr. Peter Osborne
Time is running on but I will make a number of comments to pick up on the conversation so far. We could all speak for a considerable length of time because there are so many issues here. Galvanising the peace process involves a number of groups that receive funding from the Community Relations Council but it is much broader than that. It crosses sectors and includes organisations that are not directly affiliated or linked into the Community Relations Council in its funding role.
There is a huge discussion to be had about shared and integrated education. It is a very important conversation. One of the things I would throw into that conversation is making sure that when we talk about shared education we do not dilute it so much that we avoid dealing with the hard issues around politics, religion, sectarianism and racism. When all section 75 categories are included, there may be a temptation to deal with sharing on the less difficult issues and not on the more difficult ones but it is certainly a useful contribution to the debate to incorporate shared and integrated education.
One of the big issues around education, which was referred to by the CRC over a year ago in this committee in our peace monitor report from 2014, is to look at the huge educational underachievement in the Northern Ireland education system. A number of people have touched on that. There has been some very good achievement. There are high achievers but there is a huge amount of educational underachievement on both sides of the community, particularly within working class communities. It is very important that hope and aspiration about the future be central to the lives of young people. If, because of a lack of qualifications, young people do not look ahead, do not have hope and aspiration for themselves, and are told within their own communities that things are very wrong and broken, that there is no real hope for the future, then they will live in the present with a very negative outlook on what goes on around them. That takes them onto the streets. We need to invest urgently in the young people in those working class communities on both sides of the divide and try to invest in their futures in a way that does not mean that they have low educational achievement.
The reconciliation infrastructure has been touched on already but I want to put it into a little bit of context. People will very often say that over the past 17 or 18 years there has been huge investment in peace building and reconciliation work and there certainly has been significant investment. If one looks at it in the context of Peace IV coming up, a couple of hundred million pounds seems like a lot but spread over seven years and given the needs that exist in Northern Ireland it is not. If one looks at the amount of spending that represents on investment in reconciliation work in Northern Ireland, it is something like 0.1% of total spending.
We must have a serious conversation about whether we are seriously investing in reconciliation for the future. To put it in a slightly different context, in 2012 in Northern Ireland, £60 million of public money was invested in the Titanic building. That is a good investment and it is an outstanding facility. It would take the Community Relations Council 30 years to spend that amount of money on funding organisations working on the ground, because we are allocated £2 million a year. We are the main regional body supporting reconciliation work. There comes a point where one has to ask if we are adequately prioritising reconciliation in Northern Ireland because we are not doing it when it comes to investment in communities. That infrastructure is disappearing. I talk to community organisations all the time. In the last six or seven months I have talked to one or two that are out of business and others that are going out of business. These are people who do critical work at interfaces and elsewhere. We are not sufficiently investing in that reconciliation infrastructure - 0.1% of total spend or £2 million is not enough for a regional funding body. It needs to be revisited.
The process has been described here as inspiring. What has come across to me in the galvanising process is the expertise, commitment, professionalism, experience, and capacity of people on the ground who do this work. In some ways it is the heartbeat of the peace process. The heartbeat is not in political terms. The peace process is ours - it is the people who voted for it and the people who do the work on the ground. The people here today and the dozens of other organisations involved in the galvanising process know what they are talking about and can communicate very well what the issues are, including the short-term and long-term strategic issues. The galvanising process shows that as we develop this peace process further and enter into a new phase of it - we are at a crossing point - the people who know what they are doing need to be heavily involved in making strategy and policy and delivering services. If we do not do that we will store up problems for the future.
I again thank the committee. The invitation is always there to come out and get involved in the process. The committee meets with many of these groups on a regular basis but the next time it is in Northern Ireland, not only Belfast, but other parts of Northern Ireland, including the rural parts, we will be happy to help facilitate those conversations. Some of these similar issues still exist there. There are interfaces that are relevant in rural areas, not only physically but in people's minds.
I thank Mr. Osborne. I like to think we get around. I was in Ardoyne and Randalstown only a few weeks ago. We like to get around, as a committee, to see exactly what is happening. On Thursday, 3 December 2015, we will go to Strangford Integrated College in Newtownards, Hazelwood Integrated Primary School in Newtownabbey, and also to Belfast. We believe that youth unemployment is a huge issue. I come from Boyle in Roscommon in the west of Ireland. When I was growing up in a small town of 3,000, there was a boys' national school, a girls' national school, a boys' secondary school, a girls' secondary school, and a Church of Ireland primary school. Church of Ireland people used to go to the grammar school in Sligo or maybe King's Hospital and the well off used to go to the Diocesan colleges of St Nathy's in Ballaghaderreen, Summerhill or St Mel's in Longford. At the time, most young men spent three years in sixth class, or seventh class as we called it, or they went to England. I am getting out of politics now and I have been asked what I will do. I have said that I will go back to college but I realised that I have never been in college.
Our challenges pale into insignificance when compared with the challenges in Northern Ireland. We have to be positive because we are in a much better position than we were 20 or 30 years ago. We could have a negative outlook but nobody owes us a living. If the economy is going well, there should be a huge emphasis on trying to get further funding. That is our job. If our economy is going quite well then the Department of Foreign Affairs should be contacted to ensure that part of the dividend goes towards peace building and projects like this.
It is a privilege to have the witnesses here. The work they have done is very valuable. I thank them and the members of the committee for spending so much time here. If there is any way that this committee can be helpful, we will visit the witnesses, and I look forward to working with all of them.
Mr. Joe O'Donnell
I have a parting thought. The issue of interfaces might come up in the media or on television.
Just keep in mind that the interfaces are the site of violence, not the source of violence. Think of what those communities are going through, because they are the victims of the violence at the site, not the source or creators of the violence.
Thank you.
The joint committee adjourned at 1.20 p.m. until 10.15 a.m. on Thursday, 26 November 2015.