Official Report: Minutes of Evidence

The Chairperson (Ms Bradshaw): From TEO, I welcome Orla McStravick, director of race relations and integration; Paul Naylor, head of race relations development and delivery; and Julie Cuming, head of migration and integration policy branch. I apologise for the delay today. This is our first proper meeting since the Easter recess, and we had quite a bit to get through. Thank you for coming to the Committee and for the papers that you submitted in advance. I invite you to make some opening remarks.

Mrs Orla McStravick (The Executive Office): Good afternoon, Chair and Committee members. First, thank you for the opportunity to brief you on the draft framework for race relations and its associated two-year delivery plan, which are currently subject to public consultation. Members received the documents when they were provided, along with advance notice of the consultation. Hopefully, those will help to inform your consideration of and input into what we see as an important process. I intend to offer a brief overview of those documents and leave most of the time today for discussion and input.

First, I am pleased that we are at the stage of seeking views on such an important area of work. That reflects the importance that is placed on this work and acknowledges the challenges that communities here continue to face. The draft framework intends to build on the progress that has been made in the delivery of the racial equality strategy 2015-2025, but it also seeks to enhance the agility and flexibility to meet emerging needs and issues as they arise. The draft framework therefore adopts learning from other public health approach strategies across the Executive and sets out a renewed and strategic commitment to addressing key issues. It has been developed through engagement with minority ethnic communities, our thematic stakeholder groups and wider civic society, as well as with officials from across Departments.

The framework's vision is to build a society that is strengthened by its diversity: where we can live together free from racism, racial inequality and unlawful racial discrimination; where we can share a common sense of belonging; and where human rights are enjoyed by all. It is centred on four key outcomes: eliminating racial inequality; combating racism and race hate crime; ensuring equality of service provision; and strengthening community cohesion. Those outcomes are supported by a layered set of primary, secondary and tertiary interventions, recognising the need to tackle root causes, intervene early and provide strong support where inequalities persist.

The associated delivery plan sets out nine priority actions for the first two years, each shaped by what stakeholders have told us matters most. The intention is to build on those with further priority actions beyond the two-year period. The strategic planning group (SPG) will monitor and drive forward delivery to enhance cross-departmental working, exploit opportunities to align delivery with other key work areas such as the refugee integration strategy and wider good relations policies and to maximise the associated outcomes.

We recognise that tackling race relations issues and supporting community cohesion is a long-term and challenging endeavour that government cannot accomplish alone. Success depends on the voices, expertise and lived experience of our communities, on the statutory, local government and voluntary and community partners who work tirelessly to support people on the ground and on sustained collaboration across all sectors. The draft framework is intended to provide the overarching collective basis for that work. It is, however, very much a draft, and we are keen to hear from as many people as possible to help to shape the final framework, its outcomes and the associated interventions.

The public consultation commenced on 11 March and will run for 12 weeks, closing on 3 June. We will analyse carefully all the responses to ensure that all perspectives are fully considered. An analysis report will be prepared, and a final version of the framework and the delivery plan will be considered by Ministers and the Executive.

I will not say much more. We very much welcome the Committee's scrutiny, insight and support as we take this important area of work forward. We are keen to hear your views and to answer any questions.

The Chairperson (Ms Bradshaw): OK. Thank you very much. I am conscious that we are already into 2026 and the new financial year. The consultation will end on 3 June, the responses will then be analysed, and a report will be made to the Executive Office before sign-off at the Executive. Is two years a wee bit short to deliver what you have in the framework, or is there a plan to treat the time frame more as 2026 to 2029 so that you can get it all delivered?

Mrs McStravick: The draft framework is what is being consulted on. When we bring a final framework, our two-year delivery plan will be two years from the final framework. Obviously, we will then look at subsequent delivery plans as well.

The Chairperson (Ms Bradshaw): OK. That makes sense. Thank you.

The framework includes a refreshed minority ethnic development fund (MEDF) as one of the actions, and you know that that sector is in dire circumstances, as is the community and voluntary sector, which is a wider issue. Will there be a commitment to additional funding and fresh money coming forward to drive the delivery of the action plan?

Mrs McStravick: The intervention in the delivery plan is about looking at the MEDF and how we can maximise its use and refresh it to align with whatever the final framework will look like. It was aligned with the previous racial equality strategy and the four outcomes. At this stage, it is not that there is necessarily a commitment to secure more money; rather, it is about looking at how we maximise the money that is available and how we make sure that it addresses the key issues that we set out in the framework. At this stage, we do not have an end view of what that will look like, and we will very much want to engage with the racial equality subgroup and others to help to shape what a revised MEDF might look like. We will also want to look at the wider good relations funding and how we can align with that and maximise our opportunities through it. There will be a process with a racial equality subgroup as we scope out how the MEDF should be shaped to best deliver on the framework.

The Chairperson (Ms Bradshaw): OK. Thank you. As a Committee, we still await the race relations order. Will you give us an update on that? Secondly, in the draft framework, you have talked about building on:

and you will be aware that that has been promised to the sector since, I think, 2005. Where is the order, and will ethnic equality monitoring feature in the new order?

Mrs McStravick: A review of the Race Relations (Northern Ireland) Order 1997 was conducted as part of the racial equality strategy 2015-2025. We had a 12-week public consultation on that, which concluded in 2023, and an analysis report was published in August 2024. Proposals for the amended legislation are under consideration by Ministers, with a view to bringing them to the Executive and introducing them to the Assembly. That will shape whatever the legislative updates will look like.

The Chairperson (Ms Bradshaw): OK. I am concerned to hear that. I appreciate the language that you have to use in relation to this, Orla, but we tried to do a lot of consultation on the Inquiry (Mother and Baby Institutions, Magdalene Laundries and Workhouses) and Redress Scheme Bill, and we are conscious that, if we get the race relations order before us for scrutiny, we will want even more engagement across the Northern Ireland-wide constituency. Is there any chance that it will be drafted before the summer? If it is not with us before the summer, there will not be time to give it the proper work that it requires within the mandate.

Mrs McStravick: It is under consideration. Policy proposals are under consideration by Ministers. They are substantial proposals, and they cover a wide range of areas, including employment, education, the provision of goods, facilities and services, enforcement and the Equality Commission. Ministers are giving those consideration, as I said, with a view to sharing them with the Executive. We have been engaging informally with the Office of the Legislative Counsel (OLC) in parallel, and with relevant Departments, to ensure that we are well positioned to advance draft legislation, subject, obviously, to the final consideration and agreement of Ministers.

The Chairperson (Ms Bradshaw): OK. Will you feed that back? As a Committee, we are concerned — certainly, I am — that we are marching close to the end of the mandate, and this will be really important legislation.

I will raise one last issue, and I will then bring in other members. I might come back in if there is time. In the draft framework, one of the interventions is:

As a Committee, and certainly at Question Time with the First Minister and deputy First Minister, we have been hearing for a long time that there will be, in some ways, an assimilation. However, that language looks more as though the race relations work will sit alongside good relations and that, where possible, there will be a bit of an overlap. Will anything tangible come forward in that space, or will we see race relations and good relations sitting as two separate streams?

Mrs McStravick: Ministers are looking at Together: Building a United Community (T:BUC) and at what the new approach to T:BUC should be. They are cognisant of the fact that our communities are changing and that T:BUC needs to be reflective of our wider communities. We work closely with the officials who lead on the wider good relations and T:BUC strategies. Yes, we will have this framework and, yes, there will be something that represents T:BUC, but it is about ensuring that they are aligned and complementary, and that, where there are opportunities to join up and make sure that the strategies are supporting the wider communities, they are taken. I know that the Department is keen to better make those links and have a joined-up approach to good relations in the widest sense, but, obviously, there may be specific things in the race relations space that we may do here. The timing of the two things is an opportunity for us to make sure that, whatever T:BUC is, it is reflective of the wider community and supplements and complements the work that we are doing here and aligns with it so that, where possible, we can deliver collectively.

The Chairperson (Ms Bradshaw): Thank you, Orla.

Mr Gaston: Thank you very much, Chair. Thank you, panel, for coming along this afternoon. I have read over a lot of the information that you provided, and it has been very helpful. We are dealing with the draft framework and consultation paper, which have been signed off by the First Minister and the deputy First Minister. That is right, is it not?

Mrs McStravick: Yes.

Mr Gaston: Page 4 of the race relations framework has Emma Little-Pengelly and Michelle O’Neill agreeing to what is in front of us today, essentially. Page 5 of the consultation document shows a nice diagram taking us through outcomes 1 to 4. Outcome 1 is the elimination of racial inequality; outcome 2 is combating racism and race hate crime; outcome 3 is equality of service provision; and outcome 4 — the final stage — is community cohesion. How that reads to me is that the Department wants people to accept newcomers, adapt to the community and, lastly, worry about the consequences and fallout from that. Why is community cohesion the last thought in your four outcomes? Should it not be the first? Look back at what happened in Ballymena last June — almost a year ago. Over a number of years, a community — I am referring to the Roma community — had come to and settled in Ballymena, and there was no community cohesion. That created many of the problems in Ballymena. I would have thought that any document should reflect what we have learned from experience. Should community cohesion not be our top priority instead of being outcome 4?

Mrs McStravick: The outcomes are not hierarchical. They are not one to four; they are equal. It is not necessarily about how they are presented in the document. Perhaps the way in which they are shown — going down the page — implies that it is number one, then two, then three and then four. That is not the intention. The intention is to show that those are the four collective outcomes that we want to see being delivered, rather than one being more important than the other.

Mr Gaston: Is today part of the consultation process?

Mrs McStravick: The Committee asked us to brief on this to inform its scrutiny of the framework. I am surmising that the Committee will want to send a response as part of the consultation.

The Chairperson (Ms Bradshaw): We are talking about possibly having a panel, or a couple of panels, made up of ethnic minority groups later in the consultation process. The Committee might take a view at that stage, but, at the minute, this is us holding officials to account on the drafting.

Mr Gaston: Hansard is here, so there will be a substantially verbatim report of discussions. I very much encourage that my comments feed into that consultation process. I want to see a change. You are saying that those are outcomes 1 to 4, but, when someone from Ballymena looks at that, it will look to them as if the problem that has existed in Ballymena for years and that was caused by a community that did not want to integrate was the final thought. Yes, you have said that that is, perhaps, not the case, but that is the way that it reads to me.

Page 6, under secondary interventions, states:

What does that look like, and what sort of budget will be attached to it?

Mrs McStravick: That is about making sure that those who work in the public sector are trained and that they are aware of and can deal effectively with people from all communities. That will be about working on some sort of training and cultural awareness material to make sure that public servants are armed with the information, skills and experience to be able to deliver services to all in our community. There is no specific budget for what that will look like. That will be developed, and only then will we know what it will cost.

Mr Gaston: That will take on board local concerns about communities being changed without any consultation.

Mr Paul Naylor (The Executive Office): If I might interject, to be fair, it is more about providing training for staff at the front end of public services so that they can make sure that the way in which they deal with all members of the public takes on board human rights, what they are entitled to and how they should best be dealt with, as opposed to getting into a broader conversation about race and racial equality.

Mr Gaston: There needs to be a broader conversation when training takes place. It would have helped if someone had listened to the voice of the person who contacted the office from the Clonavon area of Ballymena long before the trouble started last June. We have to learn from the problems and learn from what has caused issues in the past.

We talk about a minority ethnic development fund. How much money is associated with that?

Mrs McStravick: At the minute, it is about £1·1 million per annum.

Mr Gaston: Who is that open to?

Mrs McStravick: A public call went out initially for applications for 2022-25. As I said earlier, it is aligned with the four outcomes of the previous racial equality strategy. It is open to groups in the voluntary and community sector that submit applications demonstrating how they would contribute to those four specific outcomes.

Mr Gaston: So, that is open to minority groups and local community groups that work in areas that are being transformed.

Mrs McStravick: What the groups say that they will do and deliver has to align with the objectives of the previous racial equality strategy. It is not set that you have to be a certain group to apply for funding. It is about what you are intending to do with the money and how that will meet the four outcomes of the previous strategy.

Mr Gaston: On page 6, again, it mentions "embed cultural awareness". That seems to be a theme coming through. You gave your definition of that. The Northern Ireland Civil Service inclusive language guide states that people should not use the term "illegal immigrant", even though that might be the case, in that somebody has come here illegally. On the basis of that, would the embedding of "cultural awareness" turn into a witch-hunt if somebody in the Civil Service used the term "illegal immigrant"?

The Chairperson (Ms Bradshaw): Would you like to respond, Paul?

Mr Naylor: Going by some of the research that we have been doing on the concept of the training, the idea behind it is not to focus simply on race; it is to focus on the concept that all people are individuals and have a lot of various aspects that make up who they are. The training is more about teaching front-line staff how to take that on board and to look beyond things such as race etc. In the long run, that has benefits across the board for the public sector, as opposed to simply being focused on race. However, it is still about making sure to take that into consideration.

Mr Gaston: What you are saying is that we are not to expect any gaslighting, with politically correct language being foisted upon the Civil Service. If somebody is an illegal immigrant, there is no problem using that term, and there is nothing in the document stating that someone will go after them.

Mr Naylor: We will have to look at that as we work our way through the various training potentials. That would require the agreement of others. It would not be simply down to me.

Mr Gaston: I believe that Northern Ireland is a Christian country and that that should be taken on board first and foremost. There is an Islamic element coming into Northern Ireland, and if I, to respect our Christian culture, were to make that statement as a member of the Civil Service, there would be no issue with it. Is that right?

Mr Naylor: It is not my place to answer that, but I assure you that part of the cultural awareness idea is that part of your identity is your Christianity.

Mr Gaston: I am coming to the end here. On page 140, you look at —.

The Chairperson (Ms Bradshaw): Sorry. Before you go on, Timothy, did Julie or Orla, want to respond?

Mrs McStravick: The training is about services that the public sector is able to provide for people. Anybody who is entitled to access those services should be able to access those services, and the people who are delivering those services and the front-line staff need to have the training and experience to understand where there might be barriers for some people: for example, if English is not their first language. If people are entitled to access those services, they should be able to access those services, and they should be able to do so in a way that is respectful, as with any member of the population.

Mr Gaston: On page 140, you talk about collecting information.

Mrs McStravick: May I check what page you are on? I think that you are working off different pages from us.

Mr Gaston: Page 140 of our tabled pack.

The Chairperson (Ms Bradshaw): I think that that is one of the survey questions.

Mr Gaston: Yes. It talks about gathering information and collecting data. The options are "Male", "Female" and "Prefer not to say". I have long-standing concerns about how we collect data here and about inventing genders that do not exist. Where I am going with this question is that the BBC ran a story last week about asylum seekers identifying as gay to get to stay in this country. Are you encouraging that by the way that you are collecting your data?

Mrs McStravick: Immigration policy is not devolved and is not a matter for the NI Executive. Claims, asylum claims and decisions on asylum claims are not devolved and are an excepted matter that rests with the Home Office. Therefore, we have no remit whatsoever in that. The questions in this are part of our standard monitoring where we ask what people themselves identify as. We collect that data to make sure that we are covering a wide range of the population in who is responding to the consultation questions. It is not about anything to do with asylum, claims, decisions or anything like that, because none of that is devolved.

Mr Gaston: Given that that has been exposed as having taken place, do you see a large number of people coming through who identify under "Prefer not to say" because they simply do not want to say whether they are male or female, believing that that will help them to gain asylum in the UK?

Mrs McStravick: We have not closed the consultation. Until it closes, we will not know the answer to that. Secondly, I could not presume to know whether somebody has answered in that way for that particular reason. As I said, they are self-identifying, so I will not able to comment on whether, at the end of this, it is for a particular reason that somebody has done that.

Mr Gaston: That data will be shared with us once the consultation has closed.

Mrs McStravick: The consultation analysis report will cover who has responded to the consultation, the numbers and so on. The intention is that that will be considered by Ministers and then be subject to being published.

Mr Gaston: I have an ongoing concern that many of the policies that come forward from TEO are captured by wokery and ideology. I believe that yours, potentially, is one of them, from what we have seen in the consultation document. Thank you, Chair.

Ms Murphy: The Chair has asked one or two questions that I was going to ask you, Orla. I go back to the racial equality subgroup and the members who are appointed to it. First, how are those members appointed to that subgroup? Secondly, do any of the individuals appointed have any lived experience of the issues that they are dealing with?

Mrs McStravick: Membership of the racial equality subgroup was reviewed two years ago. Basically, it is looking at the demographics here, which communities we have here and whether they are represented. The subgroup is intended to be representative of the voices of minority ethnic communities here, so the reason why it was reviewed was to make sure that, given the changes in our communities, we did not have any gaps of particular communities that might not have been represented on it. That was done about two years ago. Ministers agree the organisations that are represented on that and formally invite them to be part of it. Obviously, they nominate somebody from their organisation to sit on that, but people can backfill as required. That was the process that took place two years ago to make sure that it was representative of the communities here whose voices we want to hear. That is the role of the subgroup.

Ms Murphy: As a follow-on question, Orla, roughly how many people will sit on that subgroup?

Mrs McStravick: The number was increased. Can you remember the number?

Mr Naylor: It was 16, and I think that it is now 23. We have guests who attend regularly from other areas, and we have a piece of work in the draft where we want to try to help the subgroup to reach out to the broader communities as well, maybe including newcomers and those that do not have groups already set up.

Mrs McStravick: We have working groups set up under the subgroup. In those, members and others look specifically at issues of priority for them, and those then feed in through the subgroup to us as well.

Ms Murphy: I assume that the subgroups' work will follow ongoing or new issues that may be emerging as time goes on.

My second question is about cohesion and the strategic planning group. The Department was carrying out a review of that unit or of those groups. Has there been any outcome?

Mrs McStravick: Do you mean a review of just the structures?

Ms Murphy: Yes, the structures.

Mrs McStravick: Yes. Work on refugees and asylum previously sat within one division in the Department, and the racial equality work sat within another. We brought those areas of work together into what is now our division. The strategic planning group was originally the oversight body for issues relating to refugees and asylum. That was widened to encompass wider race relations issues, given the importance of community cohesion. That stuff was brought together, meaning that the group was getting a better sense of the issues and that there was less risk of doing things in isolation by not having that joined-up approach.

We also brought in the tactical delivery group, which sits underneath that. Again, that involves other Departments, but it is more the operational bit where we look specifically at the issues that have been brought to the SPG and at where coordinated action is required. We had a number of groups underneath that. Obviously, we have the racial subgroup. We had the voluntary and community sector forum. One thing that we found when looking at our structures was duplication between the forum and the racial equality subgroup. A lot of it was the same people, so we were tending to have the same conversations with the same people under different forums. We have looked to bring that in as a working group of the racial equality subgroup to streamline that a bit.

We periodically add to or change the memberships where there is, we feel, the need to do so. One area where we noted that there is room for us to improve is in the flow of information to and engagement with the SPG and from the SPG to the racial equality subgroup. We want to avoid there being a gap in what we are working with the racial equality subgroup on. We want to ensure that that is actually feeding up to the SPG to inform issues, but, equally, that the information is coming back down to make sure that the subgroup and others are aware of what we are doing in that space. We want to ensure that there is that flow so that genuine engagement and participation help to inform the work that we are doing and the decisions that are made and to determine where there are particular issues that have to be looked at. There is then the implementation of this and the refugee integration strategy.

Ms Murphy: Some actions around that have already taken place, and then there are other developments.

Mrs McStravick: Yes. We feel that there is still a bit of work to do to get it right so that we are not duplicating or creating unnecessary work, particularly for our voluntary and community sector partners. We do not want them to have to sit in three different meetings on the same thing, so we are looking at how we can streamline that. We have the community cohesion group that came in as well. The longer-term view is that that work will merge with the wider delivery of the framework.

Ms Murphy: That is encouraging. A lot of the time, we hear from Departments that have 10 iterations of subgroups and other groups feeding in or umbrella groups where there is continuous duplication.

This is a broader question, but I ask it through the lens of gathering or collecting data. From a departmental point of view, how have the Department and others, even the voluntary and community sector and arm's-length bodies, encouraged ethnic minority engagement with statutory agencies and others?

Mrs McStravick: That is a key thing for us and is part of the role of the subgroup. Paul mentioned the action that is about widening how that works. There is also the approach that we have taken to the consultation. We engage with the subgroup before we finalise any draft, so it was involved in that process and had an opportunity to see the earlier versions that helped to shape the version that Ministers considered. Also as part of the consultation, our voluntary and community sector partners are almost running a consultation engagement on our behalf. We are there and facilitating them, but we very much feel that we get more engagement from minority ethnic communities and individuals rather than organisations when a local voluntary and community sector organisation is leading it, rather than our having a traditional hotel venue to which the normal organisations come but not necessarily the individual voices.

That is why we took that approach to the consultation. We had used it before, and we thought that it worked well in getting engagement from the people from whom we wanted to hear.

Ms Murphy: I suppose that the feedback from those events will be fed through to you in the form of data. Is that right?

Mrs McStravick: We attend the events, and we take that input away. Someone is there to record what is done, and that will all inform part of the consultation.

Mr Brett: Colleagues, thank you very much. I am relatively new to the Committee, so I want to get my head around some of the data that underlies some of the statements in the document.

I will start with page 18 of your document. One of the aims of outcome 1 is to:

for ethnic minorities. Is there a view in the Executive Office that opportunity for employment for ethnic minorities is lower in Northern Ireland?

Mrs McStravick: Can I check what page that is? Which document?

Mr Brett: It is on page 18 under "Framework Delivery".

Mr Naylor: I was going to say that our document does not have 18 pages. We were getting very confused.

Mrs McStravick: Is it the document on the framework itself?

Mr Brett: Yes, it is under:

It has sections on "Key Issues" and "Key Interventions".

Mrs McStravick: It might be page 21 in our pack. Go ahead. What was your question?

Mr Brett: It says:

I am looking for the underlying data on that issue. What is the disproportionate inequality in employment opportunities for ethnic minorities in Northern Ireland?

Mrs McStravick: As we said, a lot of the framework has been driven by our engagement on the wider issues. Time and time again, we hear from our sector partners that there is an under-representation of minority ethnic communities in employment and leadership and that there are challenges. In particular, take the asylum system, under which people are not allowed to work, and if they get —.

Mr Brett: Yes, but asylum and related issues are not a matter for the Northern Ireland Assembly, the Northern Ireland Executive or the document, but it says:

To make that statement, it must be the Executive Office's view that there is a lack of opportunity for employment for those from ethnic minority communities. What is the data on that?

Mrs McStravick: As we said at the start, some of it is driven by what stakeholders tell us. It comes through time and time again that their view is that there is a need for employment opportunities for those from minority ethnic communities. Yes, asylum is not a devolved matter, but if someone gets refugee status, they are entitled to work, and, sometimes, there are barriers in their ability to access employment.

Mr Brett: Such as?

Mrs McStravick: For example, if English is not someone's first language, that can sometimes be a barrier. They may need English for speakers of other languages provision to allow them to access employment. There are issues around the transfer of qualifications for people who have come here from elsewhere. They cannot readily take up employment in the sectors in which they may have been working elsewhere.

Mr Brett: Such as?

Mrs McStravick: It could be anything. They could be doctors, dentists or those in other regulated professions.

Mr Brett: What is the Executive Office doing about the transfer of qualifications for doctors who, as you said, have been granted asylum status?

Mrs McStravick: We are saying, "These are the issues, so these are the interventions that we want to develop throughout the lifetime of the framework to see what we can do in that space". Things have been done before. For example, the Department of Health provided an additional training course for Ukrainians to allow them to work in the health service as, I think, interpreters. Otherwise, they would not have been able to do that. We have done some things in the past.

We are not saying that we will be able to solve everything for everybody, but improving employment opportunities is in the framework because it has come through as an issue from all our engagement. Under work on the refugee integration strategy, we did a questionnaire on the skills, experience and qualifications of people who have arrived here and what area they are or are not working in, which may be relevant to that, to see what the barriers are. That can shape certain actions that we may need to take to address those issues.

Mr Brett: OK. One of the key issues under outcome 2 is:

What is the data on that?

Mrs McStravick: Minority ethnic communities regularly say that they are afraid to report crime or that they have a lack of trust not just in the justice system but in statutory organisations or the PSNI. It is about how we tackle that to make sure that, if you are the victim of a crime, regardless of who you are, you should report it and it should be dealt with. Again, it is one of the areas in which we are keen to see whether there is something that we can —.

Mr Brett: I think that it is a sweeping statement:

I represent North Belfast, which has very many minority ethnic communities, and it is very rare that they raise with me trust in the justice system. If you cannot provide any data to back that up, I would consider:

to be a sweeping statement.

Our police service and justice system do an excellent job in serving all sections of our community without fear or favour, and the inclusion of that statement in the document is an unfair characterisation of our justice system.

Mr Naylor: When we say "justice system", we are not referring to just the courts or just the PSNI. Many of our minority ethnic communities have a great deal of faith in the PSNI, but they sometimes have issues with how things work their way through the courts system, which is why the DOJ is producing legislation on hate crime. Much of what is in the framework comes from what we heard in feedback.

At the moment, research is being done on the census microdata. We will be the first ever to have gone into that level of detail with the census info. We have seen some drafts, although it is not yet ready for publication. In it, there is clear data pointing to issues that need to be addressed for different communities.

Mr Brett: The first key issue under outcome 3 on equality of service provision is:

Which public services does that refer to?

Mrs McStravick: Again, in our engagement with minority ethnic communities, they continually raise issues about — a lot of it comes down to this — accessing a GP. If you cannot use the automated telephone system, or if the receptionist does not speak your language when you get through, you cannot access a GP. It can affect a whole range of appointments, such as those at a jobs and benefits office, if there are language barriers, if you do not understand the adviser, or if there are cultural issues. It is not necessarily specific to one public service. We regularly hear feedback from stakeholders about the fact that there are challenges in accessing public services. It is about the training and cultural awareness approach that we talked about and the need to make sure that people have the support that may be required: an interpreter, for example, when trying to access public services because they face additional challenges.

Mr Brett: Yes, but the language barrier is covered under the second bullet point. If you went around this table or went around Northern Ireland and asked people about their experience of phoning a GP and not being able to get through, you would find that everyone experiences that, not just ethnic minorities. I just wonder why we have a different bullet point on that. I understand the language barrier — I 100% accept that — but I am not sure that I accept the point about not being able to get through to a doctor in the morning.

Mrs McStravick: It is not specific to getting a GP. As I say, it could be any sort of public service office. It could involve cultural issues if you have to be escorted by somebody, or if you need to have a family member there, but somebody needs to speak to you on a one-to-one basis. It could be a whole range of things. That is what feeds into the action on training and cultural awareness. The English language is one element, but there will be others.

Mr Brett: My last question is about outcome 4, which is community cohesion. I welcome that you said that there is no ranking. If we had put community cohesion at number one, some people might have had concerns about that. It is clear that all outcomes are equally important. The last paragraph says:

What is the Department's views of what the "root causes of hate" are?

Mrs McStravick: We are doing work at the minute through ICS —.

Mr Brett: Sorry, what is that?

Mrs McStravick: It is Innovation and Consultancy Services. It is part of the Department of Finance. It is doing work for us in south Belfast — it engaged in Ballymena as well — to get a sense of the root causes, people's views and concerns, and what is driving what we have seen over the past two years. We can use that to address the issue. It is about taking a whole-community approach to make sure that we understand everybody's views and concerns and can see how we can put in place interventions that might address those issues on a community-wide basis.

ICS is completing that work for us. We will also want to do the community-led reviews in the delivery plan to engage with communities to better understand their views. That is part of the public health approach. We cannot necessarily say that we always know what the causes are. We need to understand the problem and the issues and how we address them, and that will feed into the wider interventions.

Mrs Cameron: Thank you very much for your attendance today. At the outset, I want to say that I agree with my colleagues that community cohesion is vital. I am also glad to see that those outcomes are not numerically rated, because they are all very important. There are lessons to be learnt from the appalling scenes in Ballymena, which we all condemned, and rightly so. It is really important to ensure that communication is key throughout, whether that is about communicating because people are struggling with language barriers or because there are misunderstandings. It is even just for people to have confidence to speak out and voice their fears or ask questions and not be labelled as racist or far right. It is important that people can speak out in their own language

in how they speak. That ability has to be there, and that need must be met. It is very important for community cohesion.

How will the framework support public confidence and address the concerns about safety and behaviour? Clearly, there are different types of migration. We know that the Ballymena incident had nothing to do with asylum seekers. It was economic migrants — people who have been invited here to work and help us out with our economic needs. Those people are very welcome. Our NHS is full of people from all over the world, and we are very grateful for them and their expertise.

There is a hotel in my constituency of South Antrim that primarily houses male asylum seekers. There have been some very serious issues with that. I do not want to blow it out of proportion, but I have heard directly from the PSNI about lots of issues regarding safety, cultural differences and behavioural issues and even that there are some asylum seekers with mental health issues. We understand that migration is not devolved, but the fallout is on the ground here. As a community, and as elected reps, we have to be able to deal with that and answer those questions. Will the framework support public confidence in that? Will there be formal mechanisms in place for MLAs to raise concerns? It is important that everybody's voice be heard and that we can do something about it.

My other question is about education in general, as there is a great deal of confusion. If you say "asylum seeker" or "migrant", you will get a wide spectrum of responses from people with different thoughts and feelings, but we are not all necessarily talking about the same thing. What is happening with education in that regard?

Mrs McStravick: On your first question, I mentioned the community cohesion group, which reports to the SPG. In line with the draft framework and the intention to develop scalable interventions, one of the areas that has been flagged up — obviously, they will need to be considered by Ministers — is orientation for people who are newly arrived here. It is about understanding the different cultural norms and laws here and how we live and operate in Northern Ireland. We are looking at that with a view to developing something in that space, because there are vast differences in cultures and cultural norms from the various countries from which people arrive. That is one of the areas that we are looking at.

MLAs can ask the Department questions, and we are very happy for anybody to input into the consultation. If the Committee wants to raise specific issues, we are very happy to hear about them. I am not saying that we will be able to answer everything; the answer might sit slightly outside our remit. Part of our role is to understand the issues and feed them into our strategic planning group and tactical delivery group to see whether there is something else that we need to focus on.

The draft framework is framed to build in agility so that we are not sitting with a list of 15 actions to do over the next 10 years. Things might change; something might come up that we need to be able to react to. That is why we have tried to take a more flexible approach. Our delivery plans will change if we need to address new or emerging issues or if something does not work as we thought it should and we need to shift to make sure that we can deliver on the outcomes.

The education piece feeds more into the communications work. Everybody has a right to discuss and air their views on immigration and community cohesion. It is certainly not about limiting that. However, there is probably something that needs to be done to get information out so that people are armed with the facts about, as you said, the vast cultural differences and nuances.

Julie, it might be worth mentioning the comms work in that space, and how that will probably feed into one of the interventions that we are looking at.

Mrs Julie Cuming (The Executive Office): The community cohesion group is developing a communications strategy and campaign to encourage positive behaviours. I say that for the benefit of all members: positive behaviours on a whole-community basis, including by migrants. I do not want to suggest for a second that it is only local communities in which there has been negative behaviour. There has been negative behaviour on all sides. That is something that we need to address. The comms campaign is about positive behaviours that we, as a whole society, want to see. It is also about addressing the sort of situation that, unfortunately, we saw in Ballymena and other places, where we need to call for calm and set out clearly why such behaviour is detrimental to individuals and to society as a whole.

There is also a piece in the comms about setting the record straight. There are a lot of incidents on social media, in the papers and in casual conversations when people, with the best will in the world, have information that is not right. It is really important that we get people the right information so that they can make informed decisions. That is not about whitewashing or covering up; it is about setting the record straight. We need to be honest and open with people so that they have the right information.

Mrs McStravick: That is why we have put it under primary intervention No 3 about the communications strategy. It will have a number of different elements to it to make sure that people are informed and have a basic educational understanding right across the board.

Mrs Cameron: Thank you. That is really important because, with the best will in the world, the majority of people are perfectly reasonable, good individuals, who want to treat people the same as they want to be treated, but there is a nervousness about language and politically correct language. That leads to people not speaking at all and keeping their concerns to themselves or keeping them very private. That is risky when it can all get out of control.

Mrs McStravick: I met some groups before on the back of the initial unrest in 2024. They were open and said, "We did not know that", when we were talking about the different ways that people come here or "We did not know that" about different cultural norms. There was not that level of knowledge. How can they be expected to know if nobody has ever shown them? We are seeing that element coming through in some of the engagement that we had.

Mrs Cameron: People also feel that they cannot ask a question. There is no such thing as a silly question, but we all feel that pressure: we do not want to ask a silly question.

Mrs McStravick: To have that safe space as well.

Mrs Cameron: Yes. Absolutely. We need to be more open-minded about letting people speak out and not condemn them for what they are asking.

Ms Ní Chuilín: First, thank you for all the information. I have a couple of questions. We need to be sensitive when people come before us to tell us their experiences. We can tease out what they tell us, but we should not really question why they feel how they feel. We would not do it with any other sector, so we should certainly not do it with the ethnic minority sector.

Am I correct in saying that, at some stage, the consultation on good relations, the framework and T:BUC will all come together?

Mrs McStravick: This is a consultation. The previous racial equality strategy ended in December 2025; this is the new framework for race relations. There is the T:BUC strategy, which is the wider good relations piece. All of that sits as part of T:BUC, which is under review at the minute. Ministers are considering that, so there will be something in the T:BUC space. I do not know whether it will be called "T:BUC" or what it will be or what it will look like, but it will be part of the work that we are doing. We have this here and it will be a framework — hopefully, a final framework — that will be agreed by the Executive that will then be T:BUC.

The point is that T:BUC will take more cognisance of the fact that our communities are slightly different now from what they were when T:BUC was originally initiated. The work under T:BUC will be for all in our communities. Yes, there will be some sort of T:BUC strategy, whatever it ends up being called, and there will be this, but they will work together, albeit this may have some specific areas of work that we might have to do in a race relations space. However, essentially, there will be T:BUC as well, but they will try very hard to bring them together better and align them more closely so that we are working together to deliver for our communities as a whole.

Ms Ní Chuilín: I understand that. My concern, and I am sure that Phillip shares it, is that, certainly on interfaces, the work under T:BUC, building good relations and that, has been pivotal in keeping the peace. Maybe we need to wait to see what comes out of the review of T:BUC. I would like to put on the record that we do not want officials or anyone taken for granted. I am not saying that you are. That is the wrong term. However, I would like to state our appreciation, as without the work of people in the interfaces, there would be a lot more trouble. We do not want to lose sight of that. That is one point.

I have another question. Do you have any idea of where the race relations order is? In my opinion, all this other stuff is not meeting the growing gap.

Mrs McStravick: Paula asked about the race relations order. Policy proposals were developed on the back of the consultation on it, and they are under consideration by Ministers, with a view to bringing them to the Executive and then bringing legislation to the Assembly. Ministers are considering the policy proposals.

Ms Ní Chuilín: You talked about the panels. Do those include the people who are doing the work of T:BUC in building good relations? Are they separate panels or are they working together? That is where I am not clear at all.

Mrs McStravick: What panels are you referring to?

Ms Ní Chuilín: Are they maybe just reference groups?

Mrs McStravick: Do you mean the strategic planning group?

Ms Ní Chuilín: Yes.

Mrs McStravick: The strategic planning group is the strategic planning group for race relations, so it covers all that. It is chaired by Gareth Johnston in the Department, who is also chair of the good relations programme board. We sit on the good relations programme board, and they sit on our SPG to make sure that we are making the linkages across the two areas of work.

Ms Ní Chuilín: How have the people who have been involved in the good relations work in particular been central to the consultation?

Mrs McStravick: The public consultation?

Ms Ní Chuilín: Yes.

Mrs McStravick: The public consultation has been sent out to all stakeholders, and we have encouraged all to get involved, so good relations colleagues in the Department will have the list of stakeholders. It is open to anybody to take part, and we are encouraging as many people as possible to help to shape the consultation responses.

Ms Ní Chuilín: Will the Department be going out to areas as part of the consultation?

Mrs McStravick: I cannot remember the date of the first consultation event, but it was in March. A number of others are being led by organisations that we are part of as well. A range of events runs until the end of May that partner voluntary and community organisations are holding. They are organising them on our behalf, but we are there in partnership with them to do the consultation event.

Ms Ní Chuilín: OK, thank you.

The Chairperson (Ms Bradshaw): I think that everybody got to ask questions. Thank you to the panel. You have a lot of work ahead of you. I would really appreciate if you could keep the Committee updated, even if it is just written updates. That would be very good. As I say, we will be responding as a Committee but probably closer to when the consultation ends so that we have an opportunity to speak to stakeholders. Thank you for now.