Official Report: Minutes of Evidence

The Chairperson (Mr Nesbitt): As we are doing this in a joined-up sense, from my left to right, we have Gerry Burns from Armoy Community Association; Colin Craig representing the Corrymeela Community; Charmain Jones from the Rural Community Network (RCN); Lyn Moffett, who is our host, from the Ballymoney Community Resource Centre — thank you very much; Sandy Wilson from the North Antrim Community Network; and Rose Smyth from Causeway Rural and Urban Network. Only the Community Foundation for Northern Ireland is not with us today. I am looking at you, Lyn, as our host, to make the opening remarks.

Ms Lyn Moffett (Ballymoney Community Resource Centre): I will, unless Charmain wants to.

Ms Charmain Jones (Rural Community Network): First, on behalf of the Rural Community Network, I thank Karen for contacting RCN and asking us to be the conduit today to bring rural communities here. We were asked, as an organisation, to have the meeting in an area of best practice. This was the first area that came to mind, with the linkages that I have with Ballymoney Community Resource Centre. I will just say thank you for hosting us today.

Ms Moffett: We are very grateful for this opportunity as well. As you know, we made a submission to the inquiry. When we were invited to come along today to bring examples of best practice, the first people whom we thought of were the other community networks in the area because we all cover areas that are both rural and urban. Our work extends into all those areas. The work that we do, particularly on building community relations and addressing community tension, happens in all those areas. It is not just an urban issue.

The Chairperson (Mr Nesbitt): If people are content, we will start with that point. If a first-time visitor to Northern Ireland wants to know about these things in the urban situation, in Belfast or Derry/Londonderry, it is very easy. I would almost certainly put them in the car, drive them to a peace wall and say, "Well, there are you are." In a rural area, I am not so sure that I would know where to go.

Ms Moffett: It might be obvious enough in the summertime when we have our cultural expression in full view with regard to how areas and flagged and the territorial markings that we see in certain areas. Very often, apart from that, you would not necessary be aware of it if you were not local to the area. It is the people who live in an area who know which streets they might like to avoid, which areas they would like to go through to the community centre or even which shops they shop in. It would be something that might be unique to each area.

Ms Jones: We commissioned a research report in 2009 called 'Beyond Belfast'. From that, the Rural Community Network has peace-building and good relations at the core; that is a main ethos of our organisation. The work that I do regionally across Northern Ireland is in what you would classify as a contested area, but, with regard to rural issues, it would be more subtle. The divisions might be not be as visible. There is a different way of working. I worked in the urban setting for about 10 years in Portadown and Armagh. I had to learn very quickly that, in an urban context, a spade might be called a spade; whereas in rural areas, there is a "say nothing" attitude. It is more subtle. I suppose that there may be less incentive in a rural area to come together because, at least, in an interface area — I live in an interface area in Portadown — when the wall is there, it gives you a focus to build relations of some sort, and there is an incentive to do that. When you live in a rural area, perhaps quite a dispersed rural area, there might be less of an incentive to come together. As Lyn says, we work across the whole of Northern Ireland. Rural communities are very self-sustaining; they have their own shops, post offices, garages and schools. There is sometimes less of an incentive to mix. Our organisation is about trying to do that.

The Chairperson (Mr Nesbitt): I wanted to ask you about that unspoken element. If you are in an urban setting and there is a physical manifestation, that is one thing. If you are in a rural situation, is it largely unspoken, and, as you said, Charmain, you have to learn it.

Ms Jones: It is not a one-size-fits-all situation. In some communities, we tried an exercise two years ago to map out rural contested issues. Week by week and day by day, we found something that a local village or town could change. A flag could go up in the area, and it automatically becomes contested; the flag comes down, and that goes away again. There could be a parade that normally does not happen. Then, it goes away again. Good-relations issues in rural areas are constantly shifting. You have to learn. You have to be very close to the ground to try to feel what the local issues are. It is not as in your face sometimes; it is subtle.

Ms Moffett: Nevertheless, we could definitely point to occasions when what is happening on the wider political scene comes right down to our local areas. We see that playing out in local estates and villages.

The Chairperson (Mr Nesbitt): Can you give an example?

Ms Moffett: Well, the obvious one is the flag at Belfast City Hall and how that affected our work locally; it made a huge difference to people's willingness to engage with cross-community work. Where they had been willing before, there was almost a cessation of that willingness to work across communities.

Ms Jones: After the flag protests, I would have had some people, particularly in quite small rural areas, using the sort of World War I phrase of "going back into the trenches"; the retraction from any type of cross-community work. I find that what happens in a larger city definitely radiates down to a very local level.

The Chairperson (Mr Nesbitt): It is interesting that you chose that example because a previous witness was talking about working in an urban setting. He was trying to bring people from either side of a peace wall together, not because they were different, but because they all wanted to be better parents. That was the reason for their coming together. The flag came down at the city hall and there was a hiatus when people went back to their trenches, but because of the value of the scheme, they said, "Well, I am not going to let that derail me" and they came back in.

Mr Colin Craig (Corrymeela Community): There is added complexity with the rural environment because, in my work, there is often a memory, in a sense, of cooperation because of the farming connections, which people talk about at one level. Then, there is a geographical separation whereby it is not as up close and personal as it often is in the urban environment. When people reach across and meet up and you get into programmes where you find connections, the relationships are there. However, it is also much harder for them to sustain that relationship because, often, if you are working with older people and rural transport issues, they do not just walk across; there are miles of separation. Going out at night to meet people regularly can be an issue. There are subtleties to the rural environment that are very different from those in the urban environment.

The Chairperson (Mr Nesbitt): How would you characterise how farming cooperation has changed in recent years?

Mr C Craig: I cannot actually talk specifically about that, but, often, there are memories of sharing equipment and moving across things. They speak of that. Then, it is your time of year, and you go and do what you need to do. Perhaps, many in the rural community did not directly experience as much of the violence as some urban areas experienced.

They did experience violence, but it was more of an absorbed fear through witnessing the external story, and they pulled back from each other at times. They also have a love for the land, which is a deep bridge for them. They connect on other points, which is interesting.

Mr Gerry Burns (Armoy Community Association): I do not think that the people in Armoy understand the word "subtle": we are one sort or the other. We have been there. Anybody I knew was of my side; anybody I did not know was of the other side. We talked among ourselves and did not know each other. We have a long history of division in the place where I am from. The road through it splits one community from the other. In 1911, it was the only ward in the whole of Ireland that was 50:50. It is now 55:45.

I was reared on a small farm of 14 acres. The Protestant farmers chose to rent land to my father. He and I appreciated that, but, in many other aspects, we were a very divided community. On the street that I live on in Armoy, in 30 years of the Troubles, I maybe walked up it twice. We have a place transformed today, but it has been a difficult struggle. I am delighted to be here as part of Building a United Community because we are from a diverse community. We have three Orange lodges, a Masonic lodge, three churches, three church halls, the Gaelic club and the rugby club. At one time, Corrymeela and Rathcoole had places within a few miles of the road that goes down through Armoy. There was division and sectarianism, but the place has been changed and transformed.

The Chairperson (Mr Nesbitt): I will come back to you, Gerry, on how you achieved that.

Mr Sandy Wilson (North Antrim Community Network): If I was asked what we do at the North Antrim Community Network, I would say that we build people. That is your starting point. Building with bricks is sometimes important when needs are identified, but building people is the most important thing. Alongside building people, you have to build respect.

I will go back to what Colin said about ownership. There are great opportunities in this time of austerity in service provision and community planning to get a renewed sense of ownership. Whether people own a house or a car, it is theirs, and they care for it and look after it. There are great opportunities in communities when the focus is on areas rather than groups. There is a fundamental difference.

Some people, politicians and parties would say that there are too many groups. All those groups are trying to do wonderful things, but they need to work together. We encourage them to develop forums. In some places, they are working not only in their own communities but in other communities. It is vital to build relationships in your own community to have the confidence to work outside your community.

When we talk about rural areas, we are talking about villages that might be only three miles apart. In times of austerity, people in government think that they are funding this community group or that community group and so on. However, we are already working together on the ground, teaching groups about collaborative working. There is less funding, so it is more important to work together to become more competitive in a difficult funding environment. When you are building people and respect, you build confidence, and, when you build confidence, you might then be able to make progress in good relations.

The Chairperson (Mr Nesbitt): The expression "building people" is troubling me a little, Sandy: what do you mean?

Mr Sandy Wilson: When building people, you have to build their knowledge and capacity. I think that we have gone beyond building capacity nowadays. We have to build tenacity. By tenacity, I mean that people have to be resilient and have to work together, and the most important people with whom they should be working in their local area are their democratically elected councillors. I know of some wonderful examples of those relationships building, and, in the challenges that we have — I say challenges rather than problems — if we work together, we can begin to make further progress on all the issues in all our communities. The key is to focus on areas rather than groups and ensure that groups work together, whether as an umbrella organisation or otherwise. If they work together as an umbrella organisation, that makes it much more receptive and accessible to work with government agencies. Bear in mind that, as we keep telling groups in our communities, at this point, all 26 councils have about 4% of the Budget in Northern Ireland. We tell them not to keep knocking on the doors of councils because there is roughly 96% of the Budget in the Departments, although it is very competitive, and there are restrictions and all the rest of it. If they do not always knock the doors of councils but work together, they will have a stronger voice and can go further afield. Respect your councillors and your council officials and work with them to encourage that collaborative working.

The Chairperson (Mr Nesbitt): We are three weeks away from the big change when we will have the 11 new so-called super-councils. Rose, you are Causeway —

Ms Rose Smyth (Causeway Rural and Urban Network): I am from the Causeway Rural and Urban Network.

The Chairperson (Mr Nesbitt): You have the Causeway Coast and Glens coming in.

Ms Smyth: Yes. My project is very much focused on the borough of Coleraine. I work closely with probably the most marginalised communities in our borough. Over the past couple of years, I have delivered projects to people in bands, bonfire builders and unattached nationalist youth. I go back to what Charmain said in that the end result, which is the resilience that Sandy is working towards, is just not there in the groups that I work with. I was in Garvagh for two years on a project that looked at reducing the number of flags and exchanging them for banners. In the middle of that, the flag issue at the City Hall came up. I worked for a long time with guys from two sets of bands, and I was struck by the fact that they were from all over the rural hinterland around the Garvagh/Aghadowey area. They were in several different bands and were often in bands that did not come from where they lived but had been their grandfather's band and stuff like that. There were so many areas that, in their heads, were no-go areas. They were completely paralysed by family traditions and issues such as who owned which house, who owned what farm, whose shop it was, where they would go and where they would meet. That was in contrast to other work that we were doing in the same village with more resilient young people in the more mainstream youth club and who did a wider range of activities. Work still needs to be done, but we need to find the best practice and really good work that can work for such young people to increase their resilience to come together.

The Chairperson (Mr Nesbitt): How do you do that? How do you approach a young person who says, "I do not go down that road because my father and grandfather did not, and it is not my/our road"?

Ms Jones: We have done a few bits of work with YouthAction Northern Ireland, and those difficult conversations have formed part of the programme. YouthAction does some really good youth engagement in rural areas. On a couple of occasions, I have worked with different groups of young people and have had similar conversations about their feelings that a shop, a street or a field in their area was a no-go area. There were even cases of fighting or feeling threatened because of uniforms when walking down a village street on opposite sides.

The Chairperson (Mr Nesbitt): A school uniform?

Ms Jones: Yes. We had a conversation with a group of young people last week about groups meeting when going up or down a hill and how they brush past each other on the way past. There is eye contact but nothing physical. We talked about that kind of stuff to find out how young people feel.

You asked me how we engage them. You ask them and talk to them. Many a young person will say to me, "I have never had the chance to speak about this. Nobody else has asked my opinion". If you create that safe space and allow them to discuss the issue and to vent their concerns, maybe they will not go home and tell their parents that, but, in a youth group setting in a safe area, they will discuss it. It is about trying to talk to them and engage on their level. We have talked about loads of issues across rural Northern Ireland. We have talked about shared education, flags and emblems and parading. I have had conversations with young people in rural areas about every issue that you could think of, and they are just glad of the opportunity to express themselves. Young people sometimes get a bad press. I was a youth worker for four years, and I am an advocate for young people. I think that young people have their place in society, and their voices should be heard. I am always encouraging young people to explore their own community and where they can and cannot go.

Ms Smyth: There is a lack of resilience. You said that it was about listening. That mindset had to come from somewhere. Sometimes, it can be seen to be linked to the cultural issue, but it will go beyond that: it will go to low self-esteem, their view of the world, educational attainment and life experience. However, the fact is that there is still a pool of young people who are living in a very closed in and paralysed mindset. Charmain mentioned what it is about: getting really good youth work in, listening and seeing how that can start to be built on to widen their world, because it is in widening the world that you will start to —

The Chairperson (Mr Nesbitt): You and Sandy are very clear about the need for resilience. That leads me to wonder whether single identity work needs to be emphasised to build up resilience and capacity before you try for cross-community work, or should you go straight for the ultimate goal.

Ms Moffett: We had a long conversation about that while we were waiting to come in.

The Chairperson (Mr Nesbitt): Is there an answer?

Ms Jones: We all had different answers.

The Chairperson (Mr Nesbitt): Six different answers.

Mr Burns: We had no choice, because it was a divided community. We were a single group with mixed identity. With regard to the funding programme for peace and reconciliation, we could not get money to work with ourselves. We saw groups going on all sorts of trips and doing wonderful things, but, when we applied to get money for our group in Armoy, that was really difficult for cross-community work. That is what our community is; we are a mixed community, a community abandoned and a community with no political representation for decades. I was 18 years old on 5 October 1968. Twenty-six years later, on 5 October 1994, I was invited by a Church of Ireland minister from Drumcree to go to a meeting to set up a community group that was started because we had a summer scheme. Those were difficult days.

When I was five and going to school, council houses were being built. Today, 61 years later, the people living in those houses are still waiting for the Housing Executive to extend their kitchens. That is the sense of abandonment right across the board in an interface rural area. We have worked so hard to put in infrastructure. You may ask me what the secret was at the end of it. The secret was a community regeneration and improvement special programme (CRISP), funding from the IFI and DSD, with real people round the table with an agenda who were able to deliver.

You may ask what effect the grand political scheme had. In October 2000, Tony Blair came to support David Trimble at a meeting — at the Waterfront Hall, I think. The night before that, our community office was burned to the ground. That was when we were planning the opening of Tilly Molloy's. We got three phone calls of sympathy because, two weeks previously, the Catholic primary school was petrol bombed, and I was on the board of governors for that school. We opened a facility, and the consensus was that it would never work. Not only might it not be supported but it would be destroyed. I am very grateful to the people in the CRISP scheme, the funders and the people round the table at that time who supported us. The funding environment and the support environment from 1994 to 2004 was a lot better than it is today.

The Chairperson (Mr Nesbitt): Thank you, Gerry.

Ms Moffett: One of the examples that Gerry brings to the table shows how good practice is not necessarily rewarded. We are probably all involved in both single identity and cross-community programmes. We would probably describe many of those as being good practice, but we really feel that we have to start moving very distinctly towards cross-community work. We are finding that, if estates become entrenched, the single identity work "concretises" — I am sure that that is not a real word — the attitudes that already exist. Rather than building confidence to come out and espouse other groups, it is entrenching ideas and ideals.

The Chairperson (Mr Nesbitt): That is maybe a key element that you are taking us to, Lyn. I think that it is right that OFMDFM and Stormont, as the devolved government, say, "We have a vision, and, in this case, the vision is of a shared future, and we are calling it T:BUC — Together: Building a United Community". However, we have to consider how that is brought into being. It is maybe not for us to say, "Here's a 400-page manual with 600 tick boxes; get on with it". It is maybe to say, "How are you going to do it?" I say that because the way that Gerry does it in Armoy might be different from the way that Sandy does it. Somebody might say, "Actually, where we are, the people whom I represent need single identity for a few months to build up resilience capacity". Other people might say, "No, I know how to do it with my people", and that will be very different. Do you feel that you have that sense of control over the way in which you deliver?

Ms Moffett: It is entirely right that one size does not fit all. "Criticism" is a strong word, but one of the criticisms that we might make of the strategy is that there is not enough involvement at civic and community level for us to inform some of the ideas as to how T:BUC might be rolled out. I do not know what other people might say.

Mr C Craig: Let me put a little bit of history into this. I was on the Community Relations Council (CRC) board when we were transitioning from Peace I to Peace II. We are about to go to Peace IV. Peace II was explicitly meant to be cross-community in orientation, because Peace I had put a huge investment into time and creating an environment in which you could have your space and your time. There was a huge outcry at that moment. People were saying that they were not ready. So a lot of Peace II went into single identity work. Peace III was heavily colonised by single identity work. The danger for those in leadership is that you are creating a ghetto that people stay inside. It is a funding ghetto. Why should people move? Unless you set up the stretch goals that allow us to motivate and guide, it will not happen, because they are comfortable. We all get comfortable in our own world. Unless we stretch, we will go round and round in circles. I think that part of the weakness of T:BUC is that, whatever the negotiation behind it, it went for the lowest hanging fruit. I was doing summer schemes with young people in the 1970s, for instance.

Contact is critical, but we know, through education for mutual understanding (EMU) and all the research, that contact on its own is not enough. We need more: a higher level of aspiration in the funding and innovation. Innovation has to be funded and not be the same old, same old attitude. You mentioned outcomes. Part of the risk is that we have to give some freedom to explore and to get it wrong. To do this work, there are no guarantees; there is no 400-page manual. You will do something with the best of intentions, and we, as the practitioners, need to put our hands up and say, "We thought this, but it was wrong".

The Chairperson (Mr Nesbitt): Lyn raises the important issue of pre-T:BUC consultation. I am going to go across the table, starting with Rose. Rose, I will phrase it in two parts. First, do you feel that you had something to offer to the design of the T:BUC policy? Secondly, did you have an input before it was published.

Ms Smyth: Yes and no. We had no consultation whatsoever.

Mr Sandy Wilson: I had no involvement, but my manager was involved.

The Chairperson (Mr Nesbitt): Your manager was involved in the design of the —

Mr Sandy Wilson: With the rural support networks.

The Chairperson (Mr Nesbitt): Lyn?

Ms Moffett: Yes and no, as per Rose. We certainly feel that we could make an input with other groups like ours, but we did not get the opportunity.

Ms Jones: We were consulted, which was great. We are funded by the Community Relations Council, which, I have to say, being a lone worker in rural development, has been a critical friend. As Colin said, there are many days on which you make mistakes. No manual comes with the job, so the CRC allowed us to have the door opened for our engagement. I looked at the level of our engagement with officials during the design of T:BUC and the co-design stage, and we have had an excellent relationship with OFMDFM officials. We had Donna Blaney and Linsey Farrell, who engaged with us in a number of meetings. We had Gavin King, who now sits as part of our Beyond Belfast steering group. We constantly feed into what is happening. Our Beyond Belfast group has a wide range of stakeholders across rural Northern Ireland, whom we meet every couple of months. That flow of information is still happening.

We were heavily involved in the United Youth programme. We had pre-design meetings, and a lady from DEL came to us with a blank piece of paper and said, "Tell me about rural issues. What do I need to know?". We had a lengthy meeting with her, and we were also involved with a fringe event. We had a large conference last year for rural dwellers, and there was a fringe event, so there was a consultation at that as well. We have been consulted on the United Youth summer camp; 30 people came to that feedback meeting a few weeks ago. The really good, positive outworking is that they asked us whether the money should be redesigned to go to hotspots or whether it should be a regional programme. The strong feeling was that rural issues should not be left out of the equation. Just because there is no interface violence and people are not rioting on the street does not mean that rural communities should be forgotten about. Gerry's prime example of that good work still needs to be supported. We also had our own conference, at which 60 people attended. We had OFMDFM officials, and the room was set up so that rural fed into all the strategic priorities. There is a conference paper. We have been very fortunate that there has been a very good, positive relationship with us.

The Chairperson (Mr Nesbitt): That is encouraging

Mr C Craig: Our answer is no and no, in the sense that —

Ms Jones: I am the odd one out here.

Mr C Craig: We were able to provide some commentary, but what we were looking at was already a fait accompli of design. It was not our experience that we had any influence on design.

The Chairperson (Mr Nesbitt): Gerry?

Mr Burns: No, but I would have been very happy with T:BUC if it could have delivered something, because we have had nothing delivered for years. We go it alone. Our work is completely different from all that community relations and peace and reconciliation stuff. Our champions and heroes are the people who run the playgroup, Sure Start, the community pharmacy and the tea rooms. There are 17 jobs in our mixed building. Of all the community buildings that I mentioned, ours is the only one that is open every day, right at the interface. From the day that Tony Blair came to help David Trimble, we have gone from there to a place of success, where relationships are flourishing because of everyday contact by ordinary people doing extraordinary jobs in a normal way. We know what normal is, because we have lived there all our lives.

The Chairperson (Mr Nesbitt): Thank you very much. I want to bring members in.

Mr Moutray: I welcome the opportunity to engage with you today. On the back of what you said, Gerry, do you ever feel that rural communities are left behind when it comes to resources and funding, given that there is not the same manifestation of disorder or community strife?

Mr Burns: We have paid a terrible price for being peaceful. I have written letters of complaint to Department of Education officials, never thinking that I would get this opportunity. I am the first person in the history of Armoy to sit at a table at this sort of gathering.

This is brilliant because it is real politics. This is the sort of question on which we need to be heard. We have three policemen in Armoy at an Orange parade. There are sometimes 200 in Rasharkin. Resources go in there. We ran a country and western concert; somebody came to play. We had to do 15 pages of a health and safety statement. We paid Roads Service £200 or something for insurance for an evening. I rang the Parades Commission and asked whether all the band parades paid £200. They do not; it is covered by some other Act. Stephen, we pay a terrible price for being peaceful.

Mr Moutray: That is what I wanted to tease out. I am all too aware of rural communities across the Province where this is happening; where there has not been the manifestation of disorder on the streets, but yet there is an underlying problem with resources —

Ms Jones: Rural communities will say to us, "You're the first group or first people who've ever asked us what we think about the conflict, how it affected us and how it's still affecting us". I am sure that it is the same up round this way as well. Even in my work over the last six months, a large number of people are coming forward with trauma-related problems who have never tapped into any resources. They are maybe in an area that you think had not been affected at all. They are starting to slowly drip feed into our programmes, and we then have to redirect them to further support. If there is one message that I can get out today, it is equality and fairness for all. We would like to see rural getting its fair share as well. Thirty per cent of the population live in Derry/Londonderry and Belfast. The other 70% live outside of that. Sometimes, that is forgotten about. The whole of Ireland was affected by this. I am an advocate for ensuring that resources are given to rural areas. We find that groups get funded a lot less for that type of work because there are no overt issues.

Mr Sandy Wilson: I keep coming back to what I said earlier about focusing on areas rather than groups. There is a great opportunity for that sense of ownership. We are talking about community relations and issues related to that. As the Chair said, different places are different. Obviously, the credibility of people in certain areas is important as well. I am a volunteer as well as being here today in a paid capacity. We must not forget that the volunteers will make the difference for people who live in those areas. They are the people who have that credibility.

Thankfully, as I see it, in times of austerity, there are vast opportunities in my council area of Ballymena and other council areas. The new councils will want to help people who want to help themselves. That is very important. Through that sense of ownership, it is very important to look at community relations. As part of that process, there are other issues that are more important to some people in those communities than community relations. I am not saying that it should be ignored, but there is lower educational attainment, the whole environment of the area and so on. There are other issues that need to be looked at alongside community relations that, equally, can build relationships with people. Those are the most important things for them. That is why you need to focus on areas, get the people working together and a sense of ownership. Relationships build when you start to look at the needs, identify them and tackle all the needs in the area. They are the things that are most important to individuals. When you get trust and respect, you can begin to do other things. It is not a short-term solution, but it is important for government in these times of austerity and so on that people are supported to help themselves and that the communities are showing that they are fitting in with policies in government. There are opportunities coming along that way as well.

The Chairperson (Mr Nesbitt): That is the point that I was trying to make earlier, Sandy. A witness from Ulster University who had been working up in Belfast said that you bring people together because there are issues that concern them. For example, they want to be better parents in terms of being able to encourage their children who are educationally underachieving. That was the bond that brought them together rather than saying, "We want you to come into a room 'cause you're different".

Mr Sandy Wilson: There are other issues. We talked about young people. I have experience of working with young people. One of the reasons why parents are now encouraging their young people to come along is because of the difficulty in the educational system of getting to university and so on. It is good for them to have done a Duke of Edinburgh's Award or to have done work in the community sector environment or something like that. We have also researched elderly people, who still feel undervalued and ignored to some extent. We talk to the young people and they say that they are totally ignored, but when you bring them together, as we have done, and those young people can sit down with grandparents or elderly people and contact people around the world using FaceTime, they begin to share each other's skills. The older people share their skills and teach the younger ones how to cook and to do so healthily —

The Chairperson (Mr Nesbitt): Or how to read.

Mr Sandy Wilson: — on a budget and so on. It is a matter of getting the relationships built, not always on the community relations side, although that should not be ignored. To me, that is all good community relations work, particularly when you are working in local areas. It works in local areas because it is the same as the Localism Act 2011 that was passed by the United Kingdom Government and it is why there has been a change in attitudes in Scotland and England and so on. Localism works. It is the same for the leading voluntary organisation in Ireland, which is the GAA. There is local passion for playing for the jersey and the club, the townland and the parish, whatever it might be. That happens in all our communities across barriers and so on. It is about the place where people live, the sense of place and the identity. That identity needs to be progressed to ownership. The opportunities are there through community planning and all sorts of things in government in times of austerity at the moment. There are great opportunities there, but they must be grasped. I go back to saying that local people need to make the changes. There also has to be visibility, because visibility creates credibility. One of the difficulties in communities is that there is sometimes a perception that there is not much credibility. However, there is greater credibility when you are working together as an area, across urban and rural divides that even some Departments have not bridged yet in government. When that is happening, you can begin to go places.

The Chairperson (Mr Nesbitt): Thank you.

Ms McGahan: Thank you for your presentations. I come from a rural area, and I can very much identify with what you are saying regarding the farming community. I come from a farming family, and we all share equipment, whether it is balers or whatever. We socialise at marts, maybe more so than going there to buy cattle, and that all helps to break down barriers and build relationships, but it is not done in a contrived way; it is done in a very natural way. It is those social settings that help to build confidence. When you build confidence, then comes trust. I see cycling clubs taking off in rural areas; they are very cross-community, but they do not get a penny of funding. That is something that needs to be looked at as well.

My daughter uses Translink buses. Up our way, we have two Translink buses coming from rural areas: there is one for the Protestant kids and one for the Catholic kids. I think that is incredible; indirectly, those barriers between our young people are being sustained. Maybe we need to have those conversations with Translink to see how we get our kids to mix even at that level. Even if my daughter missed the bus for whatever reason, she would not get onto the other bus, which is completely daft, but that mentality is there and that is where we are. I have also seen that, when you scratch the surface, the sectarianism is there. I saw that recently in Moygashel, where someone was sitting at a polling booth —

Ms McGahan: — yes, and we had to get reinforcements in to remove them.

Ms Jones: That school is not going to be used in the running of the election now.

Ms McGahan: That is unfortunate for the people who live in that area, but we are where we are. In Fivemiletown, which is a predominantly Protestant/unionist area, there is a Catholic primary school at the edge of the town. Following from the stuff coming from Belfast, a Union Jack was put up outside the school, but through the local contacts on the ground, also involving the PSNI, there was a negotiation not to remove the flag but to move it away from the school, which was to everybody's satisfaction. That was all down to the local contacts.

I suppose, in terms of funding, this seems very much Belfast-based to me. I do not see a big focus on rural areas. Someone mentioned that the war did not really impact on rural areas, but that is not the case where I am from. It had an impact. Read the Anne Cadwallader book; it is all there. There are people who would not even make use of the VSS; they do not go to groups; they just sit there. They do not talk about it. It is buried deep, but it is running down from generation to generation. I know a family who had three members and an unborn baby murdered with a bomb that exploded in a house. They do not engage with anybody or anything, but they are there, very isolated.

What recommendations would you like to see coming out of the inquiry?

Ms Jones: I would like to see a couple of things, maybe hundreds of things. You talk about the likes of funding and resourcing, and I can give you an example of that as well. I was approached by a couple of rural women, two years ago, who wanted to start a women's project in County Armagh area. They felt that there was nothing really there for women, from a rural perspective. So I started that project or initiative, and it has been running for two years now. The amount of money that the project had assigned to it was only £250. That is £250 for a cross-community, intergenerational project covering Armagh, Banbridge and Craigavon. We are still going, two years later, because we use the skills of the local rural women. We try to get free venues and speakers, and we tap into other organisations. That is how we have managed; and we are still going. Thankfully, Craigavon Borough Council's good relations team has come on board now and has seen the merit of two years of hard work with those women across a wide rural district. That is what we are talking about with funding. If I were to place that group in a very urban setting or Belfast, I would probably have thousands of pounds thrown at me.

Ms McGahan: Do you think that the policies coming from government discriminate against people living in rural areas?

Ms Jones: From our perspective, though the strategy itself was rural proofed, the seven headline actions coming out of it are not seen as having been rural proofed. That is why, with the summer camps, we advocate that you make sure that it is a regional programme, not just urban-centric, and it is in hotspots. Our director is a part of the Housing Executive shared neighbourhood scheme, and she advocates very strongly that, when it comes to shared housing, it should also operate in a rural context. She came back from a meeting to say that Cookstown and Newry city were the west of the Bann, but nothing other than those locations, so she is advocating that as well. We would like to see all the headline actions rural proofed, to make sure that we get a slice of that pie and that the west of the Bann is not forgotten about. It is a large geographical area and not everything is concentrated in the east. Does that answer your question?

Ms Moffett: Bronwyn, I was very struck by what you said about the family who do not leave their house or engage in wider society following the bomb. I feel that that is another area that might deserve more resourcing and should be more heavily included in the strategy: the legacy of the past and dealing with the past. Certainly, we have been involved recently with the WAVE Trauma Centre, working on the subject of intimidation. That is an area that we have been doing a lot of work in recently. Our recent conference was called the 'Hidden Menace', because that is exactly what we feel it is. It happens in rural areas. Charmain actually presented at the conference on the rural areas.

Resourcing in this sector is such a big issue. I know that this might be close to your heart from your former positions. If the building of community relations is resourced in a proper manner, savings will be made everywhere else. If we can start to build relationships and address division, you can start to reduce the policing budget. You can also start to reduce the health budget, because incidence of mental health problems will start to decline. A report came out just recently — last week or the week before — claiming that 40% of people presenting with mental health issues are doing so as a result of Troubles-related experiences. There are so many different areas in which savings could be made, if this area was well-resourced. There are people in this room who have probably heard me make that statement before, but we believe that, if this is properly resourced, it will make a difference across the board.

Mr Burns: Bronwyn mentioned something about discrimination against rural areas, but there has been particular discrimination in interface areas like ours. It is a mixed area, and we have been abandoned. There have been no Housing Executive houses built for 35 years. In the catchment area, we used to have 246 houses, but lots of those were sold off, and then we wonder why our Catholic school and our Protestant school are short of numbers. Within the area, there has been an 18·7% increase. It is OK if you have money or access to a mortgage. Social need, in terms of housing, is discriminating against mixed areas like Armoy. The standard of housing repair in the village is abominable. It has been abandoned. There has been no voice in putting forward that case. I do not know what you think about it, but what message is it sending to the people who live there? What message is it sending to a mixed community? In a survey in 2009, 49% of the people thought that there was a need for more housing. The area plan says that there was no case presented for social housing. Land was de-zoned in the area, which is mixed 50:50 and has been mixed for 100 years. The area is peaceful, and it had CRISP investment. Since that, what has been happening?

The Chairperson (Mr Nesbitt): Gerry, surely the Housing Executive should have conducted a latent stress test.

Mr Burns: Yes, and let me explain this to you. They promote it as demand. Who wants to live in Armoy? It is put in as demand. Then they do an assessment of need. If anyone in Armoy was in need of housing, they would go to the Housing Executive and would be treated very fairly. However, what they do is promote it as demand, then they do an assessment on it, and there is no one in housing stress. The people are being treated terribly unfairly in terms of equality and not having access to a mortgage or money. They are being discriminated against. I have had this argument as recently as last week.

Mr Sandy Wilson: I just want to mention one thing. The opportunity of taking forward and developing good relations lies within the new councils as we move into them on 1 April. The fact is that communities, for far too long, have been working on their own, to a certain extent, at building relationships. It must be the communities — when I talk about communities, I am talking about an area, rather than a group — that work with the democratically elected councillors. In most areas, there is quite a breadth and depth of political parties involved. It is very important, in developing good relations from now on, that leadership is shown by community leaders, working alongside political leaders of all perspectives.

Ms Smyth: Although I do a lot of single identity work, and you touched on it earlier, it needs to be mapped and measured. It is acceptable, in certain cases, to start with some single identity work, especially with young people who have been very insular and inward-looking. In some of the areas I have worked in, there are multiple funders. There is a lot going on. Part of the reason we were not part of the consultation is that we are not funded through CRC and are maybe not that connected. We have found ways to work effectively, but it is not mapped or measured. You should look at where resources are going and at some kind of outputs — for example, although we do single identity work, we tie all the work to achievable qualifications. I have worked for the past couple of years with bonfire builders and young guys in bands. We developed an OCN based on public event management, where we could go in and talk about risk assessments, customer service, disability awareness and managing crowd control, and we could bring in environmental health officers to go to the bonfires.

We were instrumental in that. Much of the work that we did in that area was around health and well-being outcomes. We talked about everything to do with the well-being of the community, and we made really good strides. They were all run out on OCN level 1 and level 2, so there were concrete figures. We achieved 431 OCN qualifications in three months last year.

The Chairperson (Mr Nesbitt): Just for the record, can you spell out for us what OCN is?

Ms Smyth: The qualifications are Open College Network-accredited. I brought the workbook along to show the Committee. We have a level-1 qualification developed for low-literacy communities. We tie it to child protection training, basic first aid and basic food hygiene. When we work with young people and talk about building resilience, we go out there and base it all on their own culture. We have cultural education, history of bonfires and history of parading. What I am saying is that that is where you build your resilience but that it is also mappable. If you give funding in and you can see something concrete coming along, there is a big lead-in point to this, but it is still able to be mapped.

That also leads on when you are talking about moving to cross-community work. At some point, if it all seems to be about single identity, there is a conversation to be had there about maybe my project is done, maybe mine is stale and maybe someone else can come in. There has to be an impetus around moving on. My point is looking at this as being about how to measure and how to map and also seeing what other resources are going into communities. There are certain communities that get an awful lot of resource, and I think about what the gentleman at the other end said about Armoy, which seems to be getting very little. There has to be a balance. If you are putting thousands and thousands of pounds in and nothing seems to be happening there, you need to look at it. I say that as someone who delivers single identity work.

The Chairperson (Mr Nesbitt): It is an absolutely fair point.

Mr D McIlveen: Thank you for all of your inputs today. Whilst I congratulate all of you on the work that you do, I want to turn my attention particularly towards Gerry. Armoy, potentially, should be more divided than it actually is if we look at other villages in this area. I am very curious, Gerry, to tease out what you identify as that kind of crossroads moment where a conscious decision was made — it must have been taken at some stage — to say that Armoy will not be another Rasharkin or another Bellaghy or another Dunloy. When was it decided that, as two separate communities, rather than tearing ourselves asunder over sectarian division, we will try to make a go of this, try to accommodate each other and try to build a village and an area that we can be absolutely proud of?

As an elected representative in this area, I dread July because, although 90% of north Antrim is a peaceful, wonderful place in July, 10%, for various reasons, implodes on itself. It is high-pressure and high-stress, and you are just waiting for the worst to happen. At what stage did the people in Armoy, particularly in the nationalist community, say that they have a choice to make here? One choice was to go in the same direction as perhaps some of the neighbouring villages have gone and decide to protest, at certain times of the year, against certain things that they do not necessarily agree with. For the greater good, they decided to try to find an accommodation there. That is what, I think, sets Armoy apart not only from other villages in this area. I think that we could look at every county in the whole of Northern Ireland and find that, in many ways, Armoy is a trailblazer in that regard. It had the potential for things to explode quite unpleasantly. What happened? How did you do it?

Mr Burns: I will explain why I got involved. I am a Catholic and have been involved in the GAA all my life. I still am. Last year, I was chairman of the juvenile club. I have always mentored eight- to 16-year-olds, where we want to get them stuck in. In 1994, I was asked to go along by the Church of Ireland minister. Because he had asked me, I felt some sort of obligation to go along.

In 1995, we had a community meeting chaired by Niall Fitzduff, the then director of the Rural Community Network, in a Protestant school. We did not know how to handle it because there was a Sinn Féin councillor and a DUP councillor who might have come, and, at that time, they were walking in and out of councils. We thought, if they sit at the same table, this will all be a disaster. Both those people came in, one a loyalist and the other a republican, and, before they left, they said to my wife, who is from Donegal and was the secretary, "You should buy the derelict building in Armoy". That was in 1995, and it is an inspiration to me today. It is also an inspiration when I see people sitting around the table here and asking sensible questions.

It worked because we got in what was needed; for example, the playgroup. I talked to the playgroup leader yesterday, and she said, "We came in here to space. In the school, we had to put everything away every day. We were annoying people." That worked. Sure Start came in, and I hope that T:BUC can retain the Sure Start presence in the office in Armoy. We battled for years for a community pharmacy, and it was delivered. We ran summer schemes and all that sort of thing.

How did we get buy-in from the nationalist community? I did not take them with me. I think that, at times, they thought that I had abandoned them. That is why we need government to support this sort of thing. However, they then started to see the benefit of the playgroup and the benefit of Sure Start. Sure Start has helped mothers who were rearing children on their own. The men around Armoy were not interested. There are things that I had to do that I would not like to be recorded in Hansard. They were very tough and very hard, and risks were taken where you could never have said, "These are the outcomes". We did not know whether that community building would be supported or destroyed and by whom, but it has been a resounding success.

The Mayor of Ballymoney, Bill Kennedy, runs a business and is most supportive. People now look forward to the parades on the Twelfth in Armoy, because they bring business and life and are of no threat. Sure Start, the playgroup, the community pharmacy and all those things are of no threat. I am still who I am, and they are who they are. We are more confident. There has been a transformation, particularly in recent times. I have read part of the inquiry report, and Roisin McGlone said that the last stage was empathy. We now get a crossover at funerals. There is a project with Sands, the stillbirth and neonatal death charity. We are doing that sort of thing.

It is cross-community. It is normal. I do not think that we have ever really done community relations. We have done things that are needed. We need houses. We need a footpath. I have written to the Minister about a footpath. The Armoy women attending Sure Start had to go to Ballycastle to walk because the roads and footpaths were not safe and there were so few footpaths. There is so little shared space.

The Chairperson (Mr Nesbitt): That is very passionate, Gerry. If we crack empathy, we have won.

Mr Attwood: Thank you very much for everything that you have said. As I said at one of the previous sessions, in terms of the overall shape and character of our society, we are very clearly and powerfully in a much better place than we were in the days of conflict. You have given a lot of powerful evidence to that effect, be it in Armoy, Corrymeela or across all your groups, including what you just said about the management of bonfires. It has had a very powerful impact on lives in the communities that you represent, and that can be replicated across the North. I hope that this is wrong, but it is my view that we are now into a very prolonged period where what we are doing is managing our conflict in a non-violent way —

The Chairperson (Mr Nesbitt): Alex, I am very sorry to interrupt, but Stephen has to go. If everybody is content, I am now going to formally close the meeting — with only three people we are not quorate — but continue in an informal setting. I adjourn the meeting until next Wednesday at 2.00 pm in Room 30 at Parliament Buildings.