Ms Deborah Watters:

I agree with everything that Mr. Maguire has said. I will start at the end and work backwards. As regards Deputy Feighan's question about returning to the past, from a Protestant and working-class loyalist perspective I feel there is a danger of that, especially with young people. Let me tell the committee a story concerning the very first young person I worked with in 1996 when Northern Ireland Alternatives opened its door to the first referral. We were talking about his aspirations and dreams and he said: "Debbie, do you know what I want to be? I want to be an ex-prisoner." It really took me aback. I said: "Albert, son, you know to be an ex-prisoner you have to have done something you maybe didn't want to do, and you have to have been in prison." For him, however, being an ex-political prisoner was about the power, status, sense of identity and comradeship that came with it within communities.

Working-class Protestant communities have not had the ability or structures to filter young people, or ex-prisoners and combatants, into a political party. That has not happened in Protestantism. The working class Protestant parties like the PUP and others were not successful. Middle Unionist parties like the DUP and UUP do not adequately represent our voice. Within Protestantism there is a real danger that while people will not want to go back to the past, young people will get caught up in gangs, criminality and other activities that are harmful for them. We need to work hard to guard against that.

Protestantism is at a whole different stage to where Nationalist or republican communities are. I am not saying that is right or wrong, but I am saying it is different. We need to realise there are differences and we need to address them in different ways. Restorative practices have a lot to offer in terms of helping young people to build a sense of confidence and skills, in addition to taking them beyond wanting to be involved in criminality and conflict, standing at interfaces throwing stones and bottles, and being in conflict with the police. We need to move beyond that and give our young people aspirations and dreams. As leaders, we need to hand that down to them. As someone who works in working-class Protestant communities, we really need to address that issue.

As regards streamlining and funding, I will be quite controversial and say that a lot of funding has been handed out in Northern Ireland but not all of it to the right places. Not all of it has been used wisely. We need to have safeguards and mechanisms in place to ensure that the limited funding put in is used wisely so that we are getting the best out of that money. Restorative programmes offer that. One of the reasons we do so is that it is not all about the money. Northern Ireland Alternatives currently has 300 volunteers. Mr. Maguire's organisation probably has the same amount. People do this work free of charge because they want to transform their communities. Restorative programmes need to build on that culture of volunteerism and citizenship. That is how we will move things forward.

Mr. Pat Doherty, MP, commented on sitting outside the system. For many years I was proud that we sat outside the system because I felt that was why people came to us. People used us because we were not part of the state system. We had to be there for the first ten years of our life cycle. We are now in a very different place. I like the way Mr. Maguire has described us. We are part of the wider criminal justice family but we are still independent and community-based. Our creative tension is that if we lose our community ethos we will have lost our community. Therefore, we are encouraging our government and the Assembly, as they give us funding, not to pull us away from our community roots. If they do so, we will lose young people who offend, victims knocking on our doors, and parties who come to us. We would become another statutory organisation but we need more grassroots organisations. Our attention is on how we can take government money yet retain our community ethos.

We would welcome the committee's thoughts on that because it will be a struggle for us on the way forward.

In terms of us being accredited by government and entering into a protocol with our government, the staff within Northern Ireland Alternatives resisted that move. We had to provide some leadership and say, "This is the way to go". They resisted that move because they said, "Debbie, we are going to sell out. We are going to lose our soul. We are going to be made like any other statutory agency." We need to keep the following high on the agenda - work with communities, put safeguards in place to ensure that the work is done well and there is quality assurance, but remain part of the community.

The only other matter on which I will comment is terms of early intervention. Deputy O'Reilly mentioned about Extern and early intervention. If we have learned anything it is that the earlier we intervene the more we keep out of the criminal justice system and the more we keep out of the prisons. I was speaking to a police officer from Scotland a few weeks ago in terms of early intervention. He made a presentation at the policing board. He told us at the policing board that he was going to speak at a breast-feeding conference in London and when we asked why he was doing that, he replied, "That is early intervention." It needs to go right back to that stage where people begin to understand that how they treat a child in the womb, at nursery and at primary schools, and those experiences, are what make the difference. More restorative resources and interventions at that end are what make a real impact on our society. In answer to Deputy O'Reilly's question, we work with agencies like Extern. We work with NIACRO, the government sector, statutory sector, voluntary sector and community sector. Our approach is to bring them all together in a holistic family where we are addressing all of these issues collectively.