Very Rev. Dr. Norman Hamilton:

Thank you very much indeed. It is great to be here. The coffee we had upstairs was wonderful. Like many others, we had a very high-octane political education from the taxi driver from Connolly Station, in language that was neither parliamentary nor church.

I thank the committee for the invitation and I do not say that in a clichéd way. We really are delighted to be here because we belong to an all-Ireland church. There is sometimes a perception that the Presbyterian Church is largely a northern church. That may be true in a strictly numerical sense but we do have congregations in Cork, Galway, Limerick and Dublin. We are an all-Ireland church and the all-Ireland dimension matters a lot to us. It is in our DNA, so to speak. This is not simply a case of some northerners coming to Dublin. We are an all-Ireland church and therefore the engagement with folks here is very important to us.

We will try to be relatively brief on the topic before us today and then we can have a discussion, in parliamentary language. The challenges in urban Belfast are numerous. The issues facing the city are, at times, acute but they are not confined to the city. One of the issues we are particularly keen to tease out is that some of the issues that present themselves most acutely in the city are actually part of a set of wider needs within Northern Ireland.

As a church delegation we come to the challenges of the city with a pastoral and compassionate heart. Although it is blindingly obvious, it is worth saying that we are not political analysts or social commentators. We are not even politicians. We leave that work to the people here. While we are happy to offer comment on political matters, even tricky ones, we are not in the business of telling political leaders what to do. Politicians are mandated, within their parties and by their constituents, to take decisions. We are not going to tell them what to do. We might say that we would love them to do this, that and the other, lobby them and lean on them but it is important to us, both theologically and practically, to acknowledge the vocation which political leaders have.

It is also worth saying that the Presbyterian Church is the largest Protestant church in the North and as part of that wider faith community, plays a major part in the life of both urban and rural communities. There is a mountain of research which shows that, for example, at least 75% of the total youth work in our communities, including the statutory youth work, is done directly by the churches, through youth clubs, organisations like the Guide movement or the Boys' Brigade and so forth. We make a similar contribution to work with mothers and toddlers and the elderly. Crucially, the work we seek to do within our communities is not dependent on people coming to church or being connected with our local church. We do it for the welfare of the whole community, whoever they are and wherever they come from. The basic point I am making is that church life plays as important a role in the life of the urban communities of Belfast as it does in other parishes throughout Ireland, irrespective of whether people have religious views or Christian commitment. We are quite close to the ground and it is from that perspective that we are making our comments today.

This committee has had discussions with many groups and individuals over the last few years. Indeed, we have even read some of the transcripts of previous meetings and are grateful to those who make those transcripts available. With that in mind, we are not going to repeat what members already know. Perhaps I can set out some parts of the scene in parts of loyalist /Unionist Belfast. I have lived with my family on the interface of the Ardoyne for over 25 years. Therefore, what I am saying and sharing with this committee is not a mere textbook or academic perspective but a lived one. It may surprise members to hear me say that the experience of living on the interface has been and continues to be an immensely satisfying and worthwhile one.

There are many good news stories from in and around Belfast.

While we must talk about difficult things, we recognise that many good things happen in urban Belfast. Just in case members are ever tempted to become a tourist and come to Belfast, I can do no better than to quote from the "Lonely Planet" guide
states:

Once lumped with Beirut, Baghdad and Bosnia as one of the four 'B' s for travellers to avoid, Belfast has pulled off a remarkable transformation from bombs-and bullets pariah to hip-hotels and hedonism party town.

The sort of place that Members of the Oireachtas would want to come to.

The city's skyline is in a constant state f flux as redevelopment continues apace. The old shipyards are giving way to the luxury waterfront apartments of the Titanic Quarter, and Victoria Sq, Europe's biggest regeneration project, has added a massive city-centre shopping mall to a list of tourist attractions that includes Victorian architecture, a glittering waterfront lined with modern art, foot-stomping music ... [which my colleagues know well] in packed out pubs and the UK's second-biggest arts festival.

In discussing the challenges of urban Belfast we would not like members to think that we live in some sort of war weary downtrodden area. That is not the case, however one cannot miss the constant media coverage of protests, flags and an increasingly disillusioned urban population in the traditional Unionist heartlands of east Belfast, the Shankill Road and other parts of the city. Three hundred yards from my front door there have been and continue to be daily parades and protests since mid July, which must be policed at a cost of approximately €50,000 per day. The bill to date this year totals more than €6 million. A further €50,000 will be spent today and another €50,000 will be spent tomorrow and so on. It is all too easy to wish that this would simply go away and normal life would resume as soon as possible. That is to fundamentally misunderstand the underlying issues that are symbolised in these events at the interface areas. Members will hear more of that later on this morning. Central to this disaffection is a deeply perceived loss of identify in these communities as a result of the political developments of the past 15 years since the signing of the Good Friday Agreement.

If an individual perceives that he or she does not matter, and I am sure this has happened to us or in our families, depression or worse is likely to set in. Likewise if a community feels it is regarded as worthless or feels ignored or that others have been or are still being treated better than they are, then inevitably there is a cost to the whole of society for that perceived disaffection and disillusionment. This is important. Everybody pays for the disaffection of the few. This is arguably the biggest single challenge facing the areas in which we work across urban Belfast. We might talk about what can be done and who might help. While disaffection is being played out on the streets of urban Belfast, that disaffection with the outcomes of the Good Friday Agreement is shared across the province much more widely than we might like to think. That connects with the point I made earlier that we are as a church in every parish in the land and whilst we are talking about the challenge of the city we have our radar right across the province. Inevitably the general picture of community relations in the city has worsened in recent months. Much good work is being done across the communities on the ground but the environment in which community relations work is taking place seems to us to be steadily deteriorating. A good example of this wider context was given by Willie Hay, the speaker of the legislative assembly in Stormont on Tuesday.

I just cannot allow Members to make a contribution and to be so offensive that, coming from senior politicians, it is unbelievable.

The point I make is that the quality of public discourse seriously impacts on what happens on the streets. If there is aggravation at the most senior levels of political debate, one cannot expect local communities to be hugging each other. That is a point that members might want to pursue and we would be happy to do so. There is a very important role for members of this committee to help raise the standard of public discourse in the North.

I am sure members are well aware of the annual peace monitoring report published each year by the community relations council. The 2012 report showed that the highest achieving group educationally in the North were rural Catholic girls, whereas the lowest achieving group was urban Protestant boys. This is on page 107 of the 2012 Peace Monitoring Report. There is a significant educational challenge to help this group of disillusioned, disempowered Protestant boys but that cannot be done in isolation from the wider educational framework, which is complex. My colleague, Rev. Trevor Gribben is the expert on educational matters and he will take the issue further. It is easy to make the assumption there is an educational fix that can be pulled out of somewhere for these things. I do not think we would share that view.