Ms Barbara Walshe:

We are grateful to the Joint Committee on Foreign Affairs, Trade and Defence for meeting with us today and for giving us an opportunity to detail the work of the Glencree Centre for Peace and Reconciliation in Northern Ireland as well as some of the international work we are engaged in.

The Glencree Centre for Peace and Reconciliation is almost 50 years old and was set up in 1974 as a response to the Northern Ireland conflict. However, it was born out of the Civil War. One of the people who set up the Glencree Centre for Peace and Reconciliation was Una O'Higgins O'Malley, whose father was Kevin O'Higgins, the Minister for Justice in the first Government after partition. She described the assassination of her father as being difficult, even though she was a small child at that time. Her entire life was devoted to bringing North and South together in a sense of reconciliation. Her life was devoted to bringing people from different traditions in Northern Ireland together and to engaging them in the work of the Republic of Ireland. When the Northern Ireland conflict started in the early 1970s, she responded to that and that is how the Glencree Centre for Peace and Reconciliation came about in the first place. As I said, it has been nearly 50 years and for most of its life the Glencree Centre for Peace and Reconciliation has brought warring sides together and has created a safe space that enabled people to work out complex ideas. There were often heated discussions and there are heated discussions on different matters but we encourage people to listen to each other respectfully, something that is difficult in a world that is dominated by social media and the immediacy of communication challenges but we continue to do that.

Over the years, the scope of our work has evolved and continues to play a vital role. I mention the threat of Brexit and the political impasse in Stormont and the hope that the talks that are ongoing will come to fruition. We continue to facilitate meetings with political leaders in the North at the request of the Irish Government. We engage with political, religious and community leaders; paramilitary groups; victims and survivors of the Troubles. We partner with individuals and groups working in peace building. At the same time, we recognise Ireland is changing and that 17% of our population is born outside of the country now. In recent years, we have opened an integration and intercultural programme, which brings people from different cultures together and engages them in conversations with Irish people in the Republic of Ireland in the interests of developing relationships between people. That was always core to the work of the Glencree Centre for Peace and Reconciliation.

The other interesting matter from a foreign affairs perspective is we see that women who come from conflict-laden areas and who have suffered greatly as a result of what has happened in their countries arrive in our country still suffering from the legacy of that conflict. Increasingly, we see that people coming from abroad who are suffering from the legacy of such conflicts and women who have been disproportionately affected by the conflict in Northern Ireland find they have a great deal in common.

The global Ireland strategy, which was launched in 2018, recognises the need to increase Ireland’s influence and footprint in a globalised world in the areas of diplomacy; peace; tourism; culture; business; overseas aid; and trade through greater investment and by leveraging relationships with a scattered but influential diaspora. Through its foreign policy, the global Ireland strategy also supports the global goals of the United Nations, particularly in the areas of international development; peace; education; climate change; disarmament and; security through programmes such as: Irish aid, a better world; UN Resolution 1325, recognising women as important actors in the negotiation and mediation of conflict; and the national development plan.

Glencree strongly supports Ireland’s quest for a non-permanent seat on the UN Security Council in 2021 and the work that is undertaken by our UN peacekeepers as part of the Defence Forces. The UN Secretary-General, António Guterres's, report on peacebuilding and sustaining peace of 2018 stated that sustaining peace in the current climate was a shared task, a responsibility of government with national and regional stakeholders, civil society including women’s and youth groups and the private sector. The secretary-general also stated that there was a need for a "more predictable and sustained financing" of peace actors and emphasised the need to grow a cohort of skilled peace-builders and facilitators who can respond when needed at different levels when conflict arises throughout the world. Glencree's current work to feed in to the Global Ireland strategy includes supporting the Good Friday Agreement; community and political dialogue, tracks 1 to 3; facilitated negotiation and mediation; women's leadership; future young leadership and peace education, and also sharing the lessons of the peace process. Mr. Hynes will talk a bit to the international work we have been engaged with so far.