Ms Avila Kilmurray:

I thank the committee for its invitation to attend the meeting and the Chairman for taking the time to attend our conference.

Before introducing my colleagues, I assure members they are not witnessing an attempted invasion. I am joined by Mr. Paul Gallagher and Ms Teresa Steward from Teach na Fáilte, an organisation which supports former INLA prisoners; Mr. John Howcroft from the North Belfast Community Development and Transition Group; Mr. Philip Deane from the Lisburn People's Support Project which supports former UDA prisoners; Ms Seanna Walsh and Mr. Kevin Mulgrew of Coiste na nIarchimí, an organisation which supports former IRA prisoners; Mr. Noel Large and Mr. Nigel Gardiner of EPIC which supports former UVF prisoners; Mr. Roderic Dunbar and Mr. Sean Curry from An Eochair, a body which offers support to former Official IRA prisoners; and Mr. Ciaran de Baroid, the Community Foundation for Northern Ireland's co-ordinator for the PEACE III programme. This broad representation reflects the membership of the Prison to Peace consortium. In addition, the Community Foundation for Northern Ireland is the lead partner in the conflict transformation programme with the bottom-up consortium, a range of groups north and south of the Border which comprise former IRA prisoners.

The Community Foundation for Northern Ireland has been engaged in its work for many years. We began engaging with political ex-prisoners in 1995 with support from the European Union PEACE I programme and, subsequently, its successor programmes. One of the reasons we are very keen to link this work with the implementation of the Good Friday Agreement is the provision within the Agreement for proactive reintegration of former prisoners. We are also very conscious of the important role played by ex-prisoners in achieving and selling the Agreement before and at the time of the referenda, within their particular constituencies and broader communities.

One of our concerns is that we seem to be going backwards to some extent since 2000, in the aftermath of the rollercoaster that was the drive to achieve and implement a peace agreement. We have seen the introduction of the historical inquiries team and other important measures, but, just as significantly, we have also seen an increased stereotyping of ex-prisoners as the ones solely at fault for the Troubles. We have tried in our work during the years with former prisoners, one the one hand, and, on the other, victims and survivors of the Troubles to emphasise that they are not two distinct categories. In fact, throughout Northern Ireland there are many people who were in prison and also were victims and survivors of political violence. The notion of positing one group against the other is misguided.

We began with the aim of reintegration of former prisoners into society, in accordance with the wording of the Good Friday Agreement. In practice, however, the various groups have gone further than this and have been proactively involved in interface work and other aspects of peace-building. The impact of their efforts can be seen in the cross-constituency, cross-community contact made between groups.

Another area of work that has always been very much to the fore is our engagement with young people, our message being that there is nothing glamorous about a return to the Troubles. One of the projects the group has undertaken, with the support of the department of education at Queen's University and the subsequent endorsement of the Northern Ireland Department of Education, is the production of an education pack for schools exploring why people became involved in violence, what life was like for prisoners and why they now support the peace process. The objective is to discourage another generation from becoming involved in violence.

There are two issues that remain of major concern to us. The first is that one of the issues preventing the reintegration of political ex-prisoners as full members of society is the retention of their criminal record which excludes them, for example, from employment in some instances, from obtaining insurance and consideration as adoptive parents. We have campaigned to put legislation in place to address this issue. In the meantime, people are being increasingly excluded by the unconscious application of legislation and policies on criminalisation. This is having a serious impact on former prisoners.

The second point of concern relates to funding. The Community Foundation for Northern Ireland is an independent charitable trust which does not receive any statutory funding. In fact, since its establishment in 1995, we have been left to negotiate funding from the European Union, the support of which has been very generous but not the most appropriate to the work engaged in by the ex-prisoner groups. We are asking where the evidence is of any effort by the government to mainstream some of this work.