Official Report: Minutes of Evidence

The Chairperson (Mr Nesbitt): I welcome Mr Michael Doherty from the Peace and Reconciliation Group, Gerard Deane from the Holywell Trust and Maureen Hetherington from The Junction. I am sorry to have kept you waiting. We had a very good session with your colleagues, and hopefully we will have the same with you. I ask you to limit your opening remarks to 10 minutes to allow for an exchange. Who is up first?

Mr Gerard Deane (Holywell Trust): I will give a brief collective introduction, after which we can have a conversation.

Thank you for the opportunity to attend today. I welcome the publication of the Together: Building a United Community (T:BUC) strategy and the efforts of this inquiry, as do my colleagues Maureen and Michael. To inform our submission, we had an engagement process in the north-west. That prompted some lively and challenging discussion, which we have framed in our submission.

Crucially, throughout the process, we made the effort to place the discussion in a positive light. That was not always an easy task, but our submission is a synopsis of the lengthy discussions that took place. All participants have received a copy of that and are happy with its content.

We are of the opinion that the T:BUC strategy could be strengthened in a number of areas, but we are fully aware that it is the strategy that is in place to help positively to shape our society for the future, and we are committed to working with the Office of the First Minister and deputy First Minister (OFMDFM) and other partners to strive towards a society that is, as stated in the document, a united community based on equality of opportunity, desirability of good relations and reconciliation.

Each of our organisations — The Junction, the Holywell Trust and the Peace and Reconciliation Group — is a member of the DiverseCity Community Partnership, which is a collective of 11 community organisations based in Derry or Londonderry, each of which is committed to modelling the society that we wish to live in. Our diverse groups share and own a state-of-the-art building in the city centre, and we hope that that is a model for others on how people can work together for mutual benefit and for the creation of a truly diverse city and a place where difference is welcomed and celebrated rather than feared and rejected. We would be delighted to host one of your external Committee meetings at some stage.

In all the work of the partnership, we try to work in partnership with a range of organisations, formally and informally. That approach should be replicated to address some of our biggest challenges: namely, the creation of a healthy economy, having a safe place to live, learn and work, challenging the divisive issues of sectarianism and its visible manifestations and addressing the legacy of the conflict. Between us, we have relationships with a wide range of partners, from community partners throughout these islands and beyond to educational institutions such as INCORE at Ulster University , Queen's University, Trinity College Dublin, and thought leaders such as the Young Foundation and the Irish School of Ecumenics. Our work is supported through a range of funders, including OFMDFM through our core funding received from the Community Relations Council (CRC), and others such as the Irish Department of Foreign Affairs.

As stated in our submission, and without going into the detail because I know that you have it in front of you, we have concerns about the strategy, particularly in the areas of resource; the development of the strategy and the lack of engagement on the development of such; the time frame for delivery, in that the document contains only three actions with defined timelines; some of the strategic connections; definitions of some of the terms; and concerns about reconciliation and the delivery detail needed, such as leadership and the political will to address the difficult issues. We also have a concern about the proposed merging of the CRC and the Equality Commission; the challenge with interfaces and the need to address not only the psychological but the physical interfaces; and the detail that is needed on implementation.

Rather than focusing on those concerns, we want to focus more on leadership and the need for leadership, and the need for good relations champions in government and in the political sphere. There is a need to detail the financial commitment made towards the strategy in the longer term, and I know that efforts have been made since the publication of the strategy. As for the ambition in the document, we recommend a longer-term view to achieve real change on challenging issues. We would love to see integrated education whereby the education of our children with those from a different background is the norm rather than the exception. We would also like the Civic Forum to be revisited as a way to refresh and formulate approaches to deal with difficult issues.

We are also aware, however, that the inquiry wants to examine models of good practice for good relations, to challenge sectarianism and to deal with the past. Please feel free to ask questions about a range of initiatives that we are involved in, including our diversity community partnership; the towards understanding and healing initiative, which is a project that engages people from all backgrounds and uses storytelling as a vehicle to address trauma and other legacies of the conflict; the city of sanctuary initiative, which is working towards recognising our city as a safe space for all; the garden of reflection project, which is creating a physical shared space with an associated programme, which is a partnership between our group, our Civic Trust and Derry City Council; the ethical and shared remembering project, which is a groundbreaking project that encourages us to remember ethically as we mark a range of centenaries; the interface monitoring forum, which operates in the city; the human library project and initiative, which encourages people to challenge their own prejudices by hearing from a range of human books; a city safari project, which encourages people to visit places in our city that they would not normally choose to visit; working in partnership with INCORE on the accounts of conflict project; the trauma memorialisation, which examines ways to engage positively on trauma in society; and other projects like the let's talk programme, cities in transition, our range of training and the resources that we produce. I will take a breath now.

The Chairperson (Mr Nesbitt): Good man. Thank you very much. Were you able to listen to the previous session?

Mr Deane: No.

The Chairperson (Mr Nesbitt): It will be reported by Hansard, so I do not want you to read the transcript and think, "Why did he not say that?". I think that Roisin, Johnston, Caroline and Terry are much more critical of T:BUC in a fundamental sense than you are. Maybe you are being more polite.

Mr Deane: We are much more civil. I do not think that it serves us well to come in here and be hypercritical. We have to realise that it is there, and the question is how we will work within its parameters. That is probably the way that we have to move forward.

Mr Michael Doherty (Peace and Reconciliation Group): This is an inquiry, and we are here to help it rather than to ridicule what is going on. It would be pointless for us to do that. As organisations working at the coalface, we are looking to the future, and we really have not been consulted about what is going on on the ground. Maybe people do not understand some of the work that we have been involved in, because they do not know about it. That is why we welcome the opportunity to have that discussion. If we can possibly help, we are open for you to ask us any questions that you would like to ask

The Chairperson (Mr Nesbitt): There is already a common theme with the Belfast experience: a lack of engagement by the Department in bringing forward T:BUC. I will ask the question that I asked previously: do you feel cherished by the Department?

Mr Doherty: Cherished?

The Chairperson (Mr Nesbitt): Can you answer rather than react visually, because that does not translate into Hansard?

Ms Maureen Hetherington (The Junction): It has been disappointing. Between us, we have over 100 years' experience of working in the field.

Mr Doherty: I have been at it since 1987.

Ms Hetherington: It would have been nice to have been able to share our experience and to have had a constructive conversation in which we could have outlined what is happening at grass-roots level. It is taken for granted. The community sector is sometimes seen as being less than others, yet expertise has been built up in that sector. I am talking about people who make a decision to work in the sector and the constant fight that we carry on our shoulders every day. There has to be recognition of the expertise in the sector and the choices that people have made to work in it. Dr Johnston McMaster and Dr Cathy Higgins are working with us, alongside people on our committee. There are educators, professors, doctors and people with MAs, but, most importantly, people who have been working for a lifetime at the grass roots, interface and coalface.

The Chairperson (Mr Nesbitt): If you had been presented with the T:BUC document before it was signed off and published, and the Department had said, "Maureen, have a look at that and give me your thoughts", what practical adjustments or amendments would you have come forward with?

Ms Hetherington: The documentation has so much of the usual language, but it is not followed through with strong actions on the ground. It proposes to set up an all-party group for dealing with the past, when that is one of the crucial areas that needs to be unpacked. Education is a huge area that needs to be looked at in great depth. There are so many areas in which we probably would have chosen different headlines and straplines. If I am honest with you, I find it hard to fit our work into any of the overarching aims. I would have to start to dovetail and work around them because of the work that we do, yet we are working across Northern Ireland in the border counties. I have concerns about many other organisations that are in exactly the same situation. It is difficult to fit in with work that I see as being already done by the statutory bodies. I worry that there is an opt-out of where work will be allocated and that the community sector will be left behind.

The Chairperson (Mr Nesbitt): Do you think that your work would qualify in achieving the objective of Together: Building a United Community.

Ms Hetherington: I do not want to be arrogant, but I know that our work happens on the ground. We deal with trauma, and we have been working with very sensitive groups. We have been working with subaltern groups — those groups that do not have a voice. We have been doing a lot of work on trauma, helping for healing and working towards healing. The ethical and shared remembering project, for example, is also doing amazing work on how we look at how we remember. That gives people a language and a new way of looking at things and dealing with the past in a very constructive way. We have rolled out training to the Heritage Lottery Fund, the Northern Ireland Office and the Community Relations Council. A lot of statutory bodies are taking on the training. So we know that, at policy level, Peace III clusters have undertaken them as guiding principles. That is only a fraction of the work that we are doing. We know that it is working at different levels. We also work, all the time, with loyalists, republicans, victims of state violence and victims of paramilitary violence at all sorts of levels to bring them together.

The Chairperson (Mr Nesbitt): I ask the same question to you, Michael. What would you have said?

Mr Doherty: I will tell you what my first reaction was when I read the strategy. I read the section on summer camps. I was involved in summer camps in 1965, so there was absolutely nothing new for me on what a summer camp was going to be about. This is what struck me: there is a boys' club mindset going on here. My question was, "What are they going to do in these summer camps?" What is it all about? Is it about taking young people away in the summertime because of an issue with parades? What thinking went into the proposal on summer camps? We are working at the interface, taking people to residential centres and other places during the parades season. When I looked at the whole development of the shared education space, I wondered why we were avoiding integrated education and talking instead about shared education spaces.

The Chairperson (Mr Nesbitt): Why do you think we are doing that?

Mr Doherty: It is difficult to have integrated education; we are not focused on trying to change it because of resistance to it on the ground.

The lack of understanding of definitions also struck me. It was all great flowery language as far as I was concerned, but do we really understand what sectarianism is and how we are going to deal with it? We talk about the expertise on the ground and the lack of consultation. I brought a document for you, Chair: it is my fourth document on peace building, with my experience of working in the field. The lack of consultation is an issue. The document states that experts in the field — I do not want to be arrogant about it — were possibly ignored. I had to ask myself what it was that we were doing that we were not asked. What did we miss out on? It is partly to do with the fact that, when issues are going down in a city like mine, a lot of people look at our city as a model of good practice in many ways. However, just because we have a model of good practice does not necessarily mean that it will work elsewhere. I am the first to acknowledge that, particularly with parades.

The Chairperson (Mr Nesbitt): I will come back to that because it is a very important point, Michael. Gerard, I will ask you the same question slightly rephrased. There is still scope, and, if the Department is persuaded, it will, presumably, readjust. What should it be looking to change?

Mr Deane: Vision is the key thing. Generally, there is a good vision in the document. The roll-out and the practicalities of some of the suggestions fall short. There is a realisation that it is a politically agreed strategy, which was probably the best that could be done at the time. There is a real opportunity for risk-taking and leadership from community leaders and political leaders to say how they would like to do things a wee bit differently and to indicate the risks that they will take. Let us do things that go beyond the next step. Some of the headline actions here read as though some Departments will do some of this stuff anyway, so they will rebadge it as good relations. Let us be a wee bit different and have a document that is purely about leading this society forward and changing how we think about ourselves. That is what I would have welcomed and could really have bought into.

The Chairperson (Mr Nesbitt): That is interesting. We will only know that this has worked if it makes a difference on the ground. My question is this: what should we be doing up at Stormont? Should we be setting a vision, such as a shared future, and no more, and be saying to you that you should deliver it? Michael, you said that the way in which things are done in Derry might be different from the way they are done here. I made the point that the way in which you do it on the lower Newtownards Road would be different from way in which you do it on the Upper Newtownards Road. Is that the way to do it, or should we be doing what I think we are doing at the minute, which is to present the vision with a 400-page manual on how to deliver it, and woe betide you if you do not tick the boxes?

Mr Doherty: Let me think about tackling your question. If people are really serious about a shared society, I would say to the people involved in rolling this out that they should look at some of the serious issues that affect us, such as sectarianism, and how that could be understood by people. That means that you need to revisit the education system and where we are at.

We need to talk about looking at our politicians as our leaders and about how sectarianism is covert and overt. That needs to be brought out clearly, because it affects what is happening with parades and flags and the people who protested. Most of all, we need to look at how we will deal with the past and the definitions that still cause confusion, such as who is a victim. We need to go back to the drawing board on all that stuff and begin to look seriously at whether the people on the hill who will roll this out to us really know what they are asking us to do. At this point, I think that they really do not know what is happening on the ground and what it is like, because they have not looked seriously at the whole issue of sectarianism. I am hooked on that in a sense, because I feel that this has been the blocker for all of us. It has been what I call an avoidance syndrome. We have all cleverly learned the skill of avoiding dealing with the actual issue that divides us.

The Chairperson (Mr Nesbitt): Let me emphasise that I ask the following question as Chair of the Committee, not wearing a party political hat. If we took one of those issues, such as who is really a victim, what do you think would happen?

Mr Doherty: I reckon that you would more than likely be divided on it.

The Chairperson (Mr Nesbitt): What would the impact be on the community?

Mr Doherty: It is having that impact as it is now. It is keeping us more and more divided. People need to look seriously at how their view is affecting what is happening on the ground. We need a more collaborative approach. I think that Gerard got it right when he talked about risk-taking. Some people are more likely to be left behind. It will be the sorry legacy of the conflict that some people will never be satisfied, but risk-taking needs to be involved.

Mr Deane: I agree with Michael, but this Committee needs to hold a broad vision, and it has to lead by example. You should make broad commitments about where you would like us to be as a society and say that we are heading towards it and that, within 10 years, we will start to look at it as a process. It is like saying that all peace walls will come down within 10 years. That is a challenge. Let us look at it as a process and say that, over 10 years, we will start the process of doing that, or that we will look at victimhood, survivors or however we want to define it. You should pick broad themes and look at them without being descriptive. Say that we are going to channel resources to do that work in communities, in Departments and in statutory bodies — wherever it is appropriate to do it — and we will try to support it through the strategy. You should look at all the major issues. It is about making broad commitments.

The Chairperson (Mr Nesbitt): Gerard, you mentioned resources and financial commitments. Are the three of you clear in your own minds about the level of financial commitment and the amount of resource that is available?

Mr Deane: We are now, because Linsey Farrell called down to see us last week, so we have a broad figure in our heads, but, before that, we were not really clear.

Mr Lyttle: You can enlighten us then.

The Chairperson (Mr Nesbitt): You may regret saying that, Gerard, when the Deputy Chair gets going in a minute.

Mr Deane: I think that a figure of £10 million being allocated to the strategy within the financial year was mentioned. We think that that is a good start.

Mr Lyttle: Did they tell you what it is for?

Mr Deane: No, it was not detailed. It was a broad figure.

Mr Lyttle: They would not tell me either.

Mr Deane: Our concern is that, for example, you pick one shared education campus, and that is your £10 million gone and another £10 million along with it.

The Chairperson (Mr Nesbitt): Absolutely.

Mr Doherty: One disappointing thing that sticks with us all is the roll-out of the tenders last year for some work from OFMDFM. People in the Peace and Reconciliation Group were left hanging, waiting on hearing word back that we had been awarded the tender, which we did not get. It looks like it was intended that we would never get it, because, as far as we understand it, there was no money in the pot. People were waiting for other money to come in, which did not happen. I could be totally wrong about that, but people like me were left with a bad taste in our mouths over the head of it, because we were depending on winning a few of those tenders, or at least winning the tender that we submitted.

The Chairperson (Mr Nesbitt): I accept that that is how you were left feeling. Whether that is based on fact, of course, Michael, is not something that we have the data to back up.

Mr Doherty: I understand that.

Ms Hetherington: We put in an application, and, three months later, we have still not had word on whether or not we were successful. I just have a real fear. I know that money is really tight and has to be spent efficiently and effectively. I totally acknowledge that. I will probably be retired at some stage soon anyway, so it will not be a priority for me, but I have a great fear about the expertise in the field that will be lost and decimation in the community sector. I have a fear that so much expertise that has been developed down through the years will be lost as people try to find other means of survival, especially in that field.

The Chairperson (Mr Nesbitt): It does strike me that, in your position, you would prefer to be told no early on so that you can plan and react to it rather than be left hanging.

Mr Doherty: It would have been better for us, and it certainly would have been better for me.

I will say something else so that you get a sense of where we are at on the ground. Our understanding of the peace process is that the people were willing the politicians to get the agreements and get it all worked out, but it was people like us who were left on the ground trying to work through those agreements, and we were left out on the street, working to try to get all this stuff sorted out. With the flags protest last year, for example, a large number of people were involved with us in trying to settle all that stuff on the street. A lot of issues were going on, and there was expertise on the street. If it had not have been for the peace work that was going on, I do not know where we would be.

Mr Lyttle: Thanks for your presentation. Our friends in Derry/Londonderry/Legenderry are showing great examples of really good work, and there seems to be a really good atmosphere in the north-west for a whole heap of key issues at the moment. I am grateful to you for your evidence today. I participated in a towards understanding and healing storytelling project and found it extremely worthwhile in challenging people to deal with difference and become comfortable with the different stories that people have to tell in Northern Ireland.

You were polite and positive about the strategy, but your critique has been fairly robust. I welcome that because I share quite a few of the concerns. Your submission is also useful on lack of resources and lack of actions. Indeed, it states that there are three actions with detailed timelines, one of which was to review the good relations indicators by 2013. That is the way to test whether it is doing what it says it is aiming to do, and we have missed that deadline by quite a way. You also mention the disconnect between the strategy and community relations in practice. We need to find a way to address that. I do not think that the Committee changed that behaviour in a great way by turning down the evidence of one of our foremost community relations practitioners in Northern Ireland. All of us have to overcome that challenge together.

I want to ask you a question about one comment. You say that the Community Relations Council is a valued and vital organisation in the promotion and delivery of good relations throughout Northern Ireland and that the sector supports the organisation and wants it to be sustained. Can you say a wee bit more about that?

Mr Doherty: They are the only people who have been supportive of us on the ground. The organisation is a connect for us. It has brought us all together on strategic planning days, at times of concern and at conferences. We have gone through a series of thematic meetings with people from the Community Relations Council, and they are aware of the type of work that we are all involved in. They have been supportive of us since 1990 when other people were not.

Ms Hetherington: Strategically, it has been crucial in bringing all the diverse voices together, including victims and survivors, which is no mean feat. It has had an input strategically and on the ground in giving support, and I have found that it has the expertise and has been willing to share. It has not just been about the core funding to help us to survive, but that has been an important part. There has also been advice and support, networking and wide connections. As Michael said, you can become very insulated when you are working in your own wee part of the world. The CRC allowed us to make the network much bigger and to exchange information and make our learning and sharing much wider. That has happened through so many different ways and approaches. It is a core body that knows what is happening at the grass roots. At the moment, it is looking at the decade of commemorations and has pulled together all the diverse groups, organisations and statutory bodies that are doing anything on commemorations. That input is invaluable on so many levels.

Mr Deane: I declare an interest as a recently appointed member of the Community Relations Council. I think that it is an important organisation, and it is vital that there is an organisation that has a Northern Ireland-wide remit that holds the vision for the work that goes into community relations and holds the challenge as well. Michael and Maureen have captured most of the stuff.

Mr Lyttle: I was not aware of your membership.

Mr Deane: It has only been since December.

Mr Lyttle: I was not intending to set that up in any way. Obviously, T: BUC proposes to take the funding function and put it into a funders group, as far as I can ascertain from the level of detail available. It proposes to put the independent scrutiny role into an equality and good relations commission if and when legislation comes forward to deliver that. Where do you think that this leaves the Community Relations Council with the role you believe it should be playing in the delivery of community relations in Northern Ireland?

Mr Doherty: Can I be so bold as to say that the people who thought of changing the Community Relations Council to bring it into the Equality Commission obviously did not know about the work that was going on in the Community Relations Council.

Mr Lyttle: It was not me, just to make it clear.

Mr Doherty: No, I am making a general point.

Mr Lyttle: I would like to make that clear because I do not agree with it.

Mr Doherty: The fact that people had a lack of understanding of the role of the Community Relations Council gives me cause for concern. Why would you want to change something that has been working? I believe that, had it not been for the Community Relations Council supporting us on the ground, we would not have been as far on as we are with the peace process. The point I want to make is that this conflict has been transformed to be less violent, but it is not a post-conflict situation and is not over yet. I would like to see the Community Relations Council staying as it is and not being changed and subsumed into the Equality Commission. Let the Equality Commission be a stand-alone commission.

Ms Hetherington: I think that the board representation of the CRC is diverse and is a microcosm of what is reflected in the wider community. I think that it is a stand-alone body and that it gives support at the grass roots, but it is also strategic, so it works from the top down as well as from the bottom up. I think it would be a shame to lose the expertise, and, more importantly, the trust built up over years where people who have been working in the field and need that support can get it from somebody who can help and support with regard to policy at local level as well as at top level.

Mr Deane: It is really strange that a strategy recommends what an independent charity should be doing and says that the Community Relations Council will be merged with the Equality Commission. I think that this was a step beyond, because this is an independent organisation. I realise that, in the future, the organisation might need to change, but it is independent and it should decide what it should do in the future. That is just my opinion.

Mr Lyttle: I have a closing question: have you had any indication that the gross mistakes in relation to the administration of the good relations fund in the last few financial years will not be repeated in the forthcoming financial year?

Mr Deane: We did meet Linsey Farrell. As I mentioned last week, she called down and gave us a general update on the plans for delivery. She reassured us that lessons have been learned, it is fair to say.

The Chairperson (Mr Nesbitt): I am not questioning your views on the CRC, but, Gerard, the point is that, in fairness, if it was created by government, then government has to have the right to uncreate it or merge it.

Mr Doherty: Yes, of course.

The Chairperson (Mr Nesbitt): You have very strong views, quite rightly, on whether this was a good idea or not, and that is perfectly acceptable.

Ms Hetherington: Unfortunately, down through the years, too many people have had a say on what is peace-building and what is not. People who may not be fully informed are making decisions, and I think you need to have a body that does have a long experience and knows what is happening at the grass roots to be able to make the best informed choices on where the funding goes.

The Chairperson (Mr Nesbitt): Going back to my point, is it our function to set a broad direction of travel and vision that can then take a shape that is different in different parts of the country? You give meaning to that vision, and we should not get too hung up about saying that we are very prescriptive in how we see this happening but need to be a bit more relaxed and mature about saying that it will be different here than it is there, but that it is all good. How is it in Derry at the moment? What is the interface situation like?

Mr Doherty: The interface situation, at the minute, is fantastic. At our last interface meeting, there were no reports of any incidents whatsoever, and that has been the same since last August.

The Chairperson (Mr Nesbitt): Why is that, Michael? Do you know?

Mr Doherty: I think it is because we have built up relationships over the past lot of years. I am just thinking back to the Beyond Hate conference in 1992, when relationships started to be built up in the city. That has made it easier.

The interface forum meets every six weeks. It will meet next week. It meets before a parade. While the parade is on, there is a mobile phone network in operation. We then meet after the parade — the loyal orders, the respective interface groupings and the PSNI. It happens on a regular basis.

I have a black spot with republicans in the city who are not on board with the peace process and seem to be hell-bent on destabilising it. We still have expulsions happening. We still have punishment beatings happening. You heard in our local media yesterday about the bomb that was planted deliberately to attract PSNI officers and, in my view, kill them. This is still happening up our way. Apart from that, our city is wonderful. In many ways, we have sorted out the interfaces and all the parading issues among ourselves because of those relationships in the past that have not been built up in many other parts of the North.

Ms Hetherington: I do not think that you can underestimate the community and voluntary sector. We have such a vibrant community sector with a number of women's groups, self-help groups and mental health groups. There are so many people who feed in. When we were running this, we had to submit at very short notice, Gerard. We called two meetings, and there was a huge response and people who could not come along gave apologies. You have that vibrant voice of the community sector. That is civic society in action and it helps to support the work we do. It helps us to lead from the grass roots. It also helps at council level that we have a vibrant community sector that is always on the go.

The Chairperson (Mr Nesbitt): We heard evidence from academics who said that, if you want to build a united community, the thing to not do is say to two people, "Will you both come to an event because you are different?". They say that the thing to do is to create an issue, such as good parenting, and say, "If you want to be a better parent, come to this meeting". Is that the way to do it? Is that the way that you do it?

Mr Doherty: I am more proactive than that. I do not hide behind any other way of bringing people together. If you are going to come in to talk about sectarianism, that is what you are going to talk about. I am more direct and clearer in that, if I am involved in it, this is what I want to do. I am not for bringing people in to do flower arranging just for the sake of them meeting across the table. We can all do that. We can all create community choirs. Are we going to talk about the hard issues? I would rather that we talk about the hard issues. The other stuff will happen anyhow.

The Chairperson (Mr Nesbitt): And it works for you.

Mr Doherty: No, I cannot say that it works for me. It works some of the time. I try to make sure that we are really tackling the hard issues that other people are avoiding. I am not against flower arranging, community choirs or whatever, because all those things are natural. However, I want to have people in the room having the difficult conversation about what is really dividing us.

The Chairperson (Mr Nesbitt): In fairness, the evidence we were getting was about good parenting, perhaps to tackle educational underachievement, so it is a very important issue, Michael.

Mr Doherty: I am not disputing that.

The Chairperson (Mr Nesbitt): The interesting thing that I am hearing from you is basically that one size does not fit all.

Mr Doherty: Yes. What I am asking is this: what about the radicalisation of young people today who are maybe being attracted into some of the paramilitary groups that have not gone away? That is a hard issue for me.

Mr Deane: It is also about normalising society, so that bringing people together to do normal things is OK. That builds relationships and trust, and, over time, we get to address the issues.

Mr Doherty: Where we are complementing each other is that we are all working at different levels, doing different things, at different times and with different people.

Ms Hetherington: A lot of it is about respect. I do not want to avoid the hard issues. I am in the field of peace building. I do not want to stay in a comfort zone. We challenge, but it is about respect. It is about building up mutual trust and a code of ethics.

I am glad to say, Chris, that it was in Towards Understand and Healing, because our training covered ethics at length, and that has to go across society. It is how you go about tackling the hard issues. For organisations that have built up trust and mutual respect over a long time, that is a really important part of peace-building, as well as being who we are and being allowed to be who we are.

The Chairperson (Mr Nesbitt): I will ask one more question, on the more oblique approach, where you pick an issue, such as good parenting, as a way to bring people together. The event, such as the bringing down of the Union flag at City Hall, was used as an example of something that forces communities apart. After a short period, however, the people attending decided, "Well, I am not going to let that put me off, because I am becoming a better parent". They come back, and there is a certain resilience. Would that also be the case with the head-on approach, or is there more danger and risk?

Mr Doherty: It depends on the motivation. If you want to bring people together to be good parents, that is great; do that. If, by accident, other conversations take place, that is also great. What I am saying is this: there are times when you have to look at what is happening on the ground. Here is the challenge: would you speak to your enemy? Would you go into the same room? Would you speak to somebody who made you a victim? These are all hard issues. Let us talk about sectarianism. Let us talk about who is a victim. These are the hard issues that, on many occasions, we tend to avoid. When we avoid them, they just rumble on. For my part, I believe that we have another century of work ahead of us before, possibly, the end is in sight.

The Chairperson (Mr Nesbitt): Another 100 years?

Mr Doherty: Yes. We talked about a shared vision. What have we not got? We have not got a shared vision. For many in the republican camp, the vision is of a united Ireland. For many in the unionist camp, it is to remain with Great Britain. It is not a shared vision. What we are trying to do is share this space, but, while we are still a big threat to each other, that will be hard. We have not sorted out flags, parades, and — I will finish by saying — the past. We are allowing them to rumble on.

Mr Maskey: Thanks for your candour and the wealth of experience you all bring to the table. That is very important, and it is one of the things I have been picking up on in the sessions so far.

A lot of people are frustrated that the expertise on the ground has not been drawn on through T:BUC, not so much in its genesis, but in its shaping. This has to be corrected because, obviously, the work going on is invaluable. There are a lot of other people doing similar things as well, and we have to find a way of bridging the gap that quite clearly is there. I share that with you, so, hopefully, you can take that forward.

I tend to go along with your way of thinking: if there is a problem, let us identify it and try to deal with it. Sometimes you have to find ways of doing that, because everybody is not at the same point, or some people may want to come at it a bit more subtly. I am interested in how the commission on flags and identity, which was agreed at Stormont at Christmas, is going to work out, because we could have 20 meetings that are just going to be shouting matches; it is going to happen. Obviously, you would expect such a commission to shape how that evolves. I am trying to reflect ahead, because, while it may not mean an awful lot to me, it might present an opportunity for a lot of people to have their say in a rational and mature way. I am not so sure what the outcome will be, because some people will still want to have their flag respected and others will want their identity manifested in a respectful manner.

I see this as an opportunity in our peace process, probably the first in a long while, if not the first ever, for such a question to be put to people through some formal structure. The question of what to do about flags is always put to us as politicians. I represent people who have a view about flags, and they do not all hold the same view. Every elected representative here represents people with very firmly held views and who will hold us to account for defending their views. I am quite prepared to challenge the people I represent about those hard discussions, and I do so, on an ongoing basis . I am therefore looking forward to this, because I am interested.

I do not expect you to comment on whether such a commission is a good idea, but how might you prepare for it or prepare the people you are working with to engage with it? For me, it is a platform for the hard questions to be put. People would be expected to give their views, if you know what I mean. I see this as being one of the first opportunities to send the challenge back to wider civic society and get their views on it. It is all very well saying that people are arguing over flags. People argue over flags because they mean so much. One of the things I have learned in politics over the last lot of years is that, unfortunately, symbolism sometimes means a lot more than substance. It frustrates the life out of me, I must say. But, I understand it, and I have to deal with it. Do you have any views on that? For me, that is part of the bigger picture we are dealing with, because T:BUC cannot just stand on its own. It has to link and relate to other parts of our environment. I wonder whether you have any views on how this might unfold or what your advice to people might be on how to engage.

Mr Doherty: First, there needs to be a recognition that, when somebody feels that something has been taken away from them, they will resist more. Unionists are in the position where they feel that their flag has been eroded, so they are going to resist and look for support for their position. That was what happened in the 2012-13 period. It is about recognising that this is important to a lot of people. But, also, those from a unionist perspective need to understand that others have an issue with a flag that is not theirs, as far as they are concerned. When you start from the position of trying to remove a threat from one another, it is grand.

Getting people to look at simple solutions could be a starting point. I could sort out the parades' issue tomorrow by giving two solutions and then letting one of the groups select who will go first. The first solution is to allow parades to go into areas where they are not wanted. The second solution is for them not to parade in those areas. It is so simple and could be over tomorrow. But who is prepared to do it? Those are the hard discussions that facilitators and mediators need to be prepared to get people around the table to have a look at — the common-sense solutions that accommodate us all.

Rather than trying to get agreements, we look for accommodations. One of the factors in this has been that people are trying to shove their decisions down one another's throats. It is just not working at the present time. There has to be some encouragement to look at accommodation and compromise.

At the moment, it is not working. We have to look at why it is not working, Alex. It is not working because people have got themselves into fixed positions and are not prepared to move. How do you weaken those positions? This is me looking at what is called the best alternative to a negotiated agreement. Why does the Orange Order not come to the table to negotiate an agreement? It is because their better alternative is to let somebody else like the Parades Commission make a decision for them and then blame the Parades Commission. It is the same with the residents' group whenever the decision goes against them. Do not blame the Orange Order; blame the Parades Commission for the decision that went against you. We have to let people know that they are allowing others to make decisions on their behalf for their community. It is about encouraging people to have those internal dialogues, but they are feeling threatened.

Ms Hetherington: I might add that knowledge is power. Community education equips people with a language, an understanding of where they have come from, and a deeper understanding of where they are and how they got there. They have to really understand all those things and unpack them.

We have not done enough on memorialisation or memory work. History is more about psychology than facts. Facts are very limited, and there is an interpretation of history. When you start to get people to have a different dialogue from what they have been brought up on, and to find out their diatribe or what they have been digesting, that is a really important area.

We have had very diverse groups coming in and starting to discuss this. When people start to unpack it and begin to understand where we have come from, and the deep legacy of the roots of violence, it frees them up to be more open to other possibilities. This comes back to the fact that if you do not feel that you are being heard or, possibly, that you cannot articulate what you are trying to say, it reduces things to a shouting match simply because you are limited in your own language.

I am not trying to be insulting or to belittle, but there is a huge knowledge deficit out there, and, I am not saying that we are geniuses. A lot of the work that three of us do in different ways is basic grass-roots education. For example, we worked with a young parades group in the Waterside. They had been out marching and protesting, and we took them right back to the ice age to understand Ireland and all the different people who had come to the country. We took them right back to basics, because the education system has not been the best way for them to receive their education. It is about how we see ourselves and what we have been brought up on. It is about unlearning some of that stuff and those deep religious roots of sectarianism — the unpacking of all of that — and trying to see things differently and open ourselves up to other possibilities. It has worked.

Mr Deane: If we get the rationale and ethics of it right to start with — the, "here is why we are doing it, here is what we are going to accept, and here is why we are asking you" — then it is back to some of the approaches towards understanding, healing and ethical and shared remembering. If those are right at the start, and if people know what they are engaging in, and buy into the process, then it is less likely to be disruptive.

Ms Hetherington: It is about the greater or common good. If you have basic principles, you keep going back to them.

Mr Attwood: Thank you very much for coming. First, your comments about the CRC are timely. My party began to go down a wrong road in relation to the proposed equality and good relations commission. We corrected that some time ago and decided that the appropriate model is not to take away from the CRC and give to something else, especially to the Equality Commission, which has been struggling for a long time and continues to struggle. However, separate from that, the CRC is showing good authority, and we should now work to protect it. I hope that the proposed legislation does not come forward as a consequence of all that. As practitioners and people on the ground, your common message in that regard is useful and timely.

Michael, we were all struck by your comments in respect of another century. I probably have different words that convey a similar sentiment, which is that we are in a phase where we are managing the conflict but not transforming it. Whilst we are much better than we were, for all the obvious reasons, in our politics and governance, and, probably, in many but not all parts of our community, we are just managing the conflict. It seems to me that it will take a long time.

We do not seem to have the ability or ambition for the paradigm shift we require. We manage things, such as the Stormont House talks, and move some things forward, if all that evolves into what it is meant to be as opposed to what the limited words say it is at the moment; but I worry that we are in this phase.

If this is your assessment in Derry, which is seen to be a city of leadership, then there are other places where it is more difficult. That came across in the submission from the previous group. Urban inner-city Belfast has an intensity and critical character that makes it not in as good a place as Derry, even though there are still issues in Derry.

Separately, you talk about your observations on an ethical process for dealing with the past. I am worried that we have a structural process for dealing with the past that is not ethical, and that will be found wanting when it comes to ethics. Eames/Bradley was a comprehensive and ethical approach. I wonder if we now have a structural approach as opposed to getting behind all of that in the way that we should. It is seen, most acutely, in the Stormont House Agreement's attempt to suppress the patterns and policies of the past in relation to the activities of terror groups and state agencies. There is a clear attempt to suppress all of that in a very unhealthy way. That is not ethical, in my view.

I will bring you back to the inquiry and ask the questions that I asked the organisations in the previous session. You touched on this, but I want you to elaborate. What is your experience of delays, the absence of transparency, the failure to have an appeals process around T:BUC and the assertion that an attempt is being made to steer T:BUC into Peace III in order to fund narrow areas? Those were the words used by one of the previous group.

Mr Lyttle: Peace IV.

Mr Attwood: Sorry, Peace IV. Do you have any observations on this? Do you have a sense of Peace IV being steered towards T:BUC and, if so, is that narrow?

The second point is on the delays and the absence of transparency in the appeal process around the management of T:BUC to date. You referred to some of that when you mentioned making bids and not hearing anything for a year and three months, and making bids and then realising that it was all notional and that nothing was ever going to be funded anyway.

Mr Deane: On the structural approach of the central good relations fund, it was a generally frustrating process that people really believed in at the start. They put a lot of effort into making quality applications, or so they thought, that were not supported, and people found that to be frustrating more than anything. It was not that the funding was not hitting the ground; it was the fact that we did not hear and could never get an answer. That was the frustrating thing. We accept that resources are limited, but, as was said earlier, a clean "no" is at times a lot handier than being held on and held on and held on.

I think that this strategy needs to sit separately from Peace IV. Yes, it needs to reference it, but it should not look like it. It should not look like central government objectives are being met through European money. European money should be used for other things. For example, it should be used for some of the projects that are funded, and that we are involved in, such as Towards Understanding and Healing and the Garden of Reflection project. Those types of things are innovative and ground-breaking and should continue to be done through the Peace IV programme.

I have a concern that this will be resourced through Peace IV. We feel that there should be a real commitment through government to say, "We value this strategy and, as such, we will commit the following resources to it in addition to Peace IV stuff".

Mr Doherty: I concur with what Gerard said about Peace IV. The amount of money put into community relations from central government could be pennies compared with what is needed. If it had not been for European money — and I go back to the peace process — I do not think that the peace process would be as far on as it is. Central government needs to look seriously at the amount of money given to community relations work and at the European money as being add-on money.

Ms Hetherington: I acknowledge that there is a huge struggle between the politicians and that it is very hard to come to an accommodation on decisions given the different constituencies. I understand the difficulties that that presents. It is even hard to get a document that is totally agreed on across the board.

As Gerard and Michael said, this document can be about real partnership working between the politicians and the community sector. It could be the document that envisions how we might work together. We are all in this together. Peace is too important to be left to politicians alone, and it is too important to be just left at the grass roots. There has to be a coming together and a common ground. A document like this should be a stand-alone document, but it is a partnership. It is about saying, "We all need one another. We are all in this together. What are we going to do about the common good?". The vision here is very good and there are ways in which we could work.

It has to stand separately from Peace IV. That can be the add-on, but here is a visionary document in which politicians are acknowledging the work at the grass roots, and the grass roots is acknowledging the difficulties in the way that politics works. This is the way we can pull it together. Sometimes, politicians cannot make the difficult decisions about who is a victim. Maybe we can help in that struggle. Maybe we are the ones who can carry the torch for that. With memorialisation and commemoration, maybe we are the ones that civic society has to strengthen, that need to get our act together, and that need to start to lead and support at the top.

The Chairperson (Mr Nesbitt): That has been most useful, Maureen, Michael and Gerard. Thank you very much. I hope that you feel that it was worthwhile making the trip.

Ms Hetherington: It was. I think that we feel that we have been heard.

The Chairperson (Mr Nesbitt): Good.