Dr. Neil Jarman:

I will also briefly touch on education but from a slightly different perspective. There are indications from some of the statistics on education of an increasingly consolidated class divide, where our top pupils at top schools are above the levels of performance in Britain. There are very high levels of qualification and very good quality schools. The bottom cohort, however, have performance levels that are worse than those in Britain. There is a very polarised system, not only in terms of community background, but by quality of service delivery. I elaborated in my first piece about the need to address socioeconomic issues and education and training are key factors in that regard.

The CRC peace monitoring report yesterday pointed out the divide is also emerging between girls and boys. Girls are much better performers at school, while boys are much poorer. That is not necessarily along sectarian lines between boys, although it has been highlighted recently that there is poor educational attainment in Protestant working class areas. Catholic working class boys, however are doing worse in school than Protestant working class boys. There is a real need to grapple with the integration of education and the overall quality of its delivery. That will feed into any potential transformation of the economy. We have comparable levels of unemployment to those in Britain but there are lower levels of people working. Unemployment plus other forms of not working mean a higher proportion of our population are not contributing to the economy and we must address that through a variety of ways.

On the point Mr. Francie Molloy made, policing is an area where I am concerned about the progress being made. The issues surrounding the flag protests highlighted that because public order policing is one of those areas where policing takes place in the public domain, it can be seen and people form their opinions about it quickly. Views on policing are largely based on policing in the public domain. I was part of a team that carried out research for the PSNI on community attitudes to public order policing that was completed and given to the service at the end of November prior to the start of the flag protests and which will be discussed at next week's meeting of the policing board. That found real concerns about some elements of public order policing, particularly the roles of TSGs. It raised concerns there is a two-tier policing system in place between community-based policing on one hand, which was seen as a child of Patten, and the TSGs and public order policing, which were seen as remnants of the RUC and, in some cases, the B-Specials were cited as the model. That crossed the sectarian divide.

The attitudes in the Protestant community were no different from those in the Catholic community. It did not matter whether one was in the Ardoyne, where there were high levels of conflict over public order, or in areas in which there was no policing, it was just a general view of policing. I think that will have been only exacerbated by the flags protest and the sense of the police facilitating these protests.

There is a concern that some of the gains that have been made in policing from 2001 to 2009 have started to slip back. That emphasises the point of the Agreement as being a work in progress. Let me comment on the point made by Deputy Joe O'Reilly on the civic forum. I see the potential for the civic forum to play two slightly contradictory roles. One of the challenges of the Agreement that we had not thought through at the time - that is becoming more evident - is the lack of a political opposition as every party is in government. One never knows exactly what set of policies will be voted on because it depends on the particular Ministries that each party holds. One cannot vote for the opposition as one cannot vote the government out. The civic forum could provide a platform for alternative views; for raising issues outside the structures of government and holding the government to account in some way. I would not see it necessarily as being an opposition function, I think it could also bring some of the expertise required to work with government to address some of the deficit in developing policy and thinking through some of the issues in civil society. I see the civic forum in the role of a partner that could help to address some of the deficits that we highlighted earlier in terms of lack of policy development and long-term thinking. These are two elements of a role for the civic forum. I do not see the way the civic forum functioned in the early years after the Agreement as necessarily being the model. We need to rethink how it was done but it has the potential to play a constructive role in taking the Agreement forward.

I will hand over to Peter Sheridan to deal with the remaining issues.