Mr. Noel Large:

I am from EPIC Belfast which supports former UVF prisoners. There are a couple of points to be made.

In terms of what should have been implemented under section 10 of the Good Friday Agreement, on a personal level, I was released under the terms of the Agreement in October 1998. A few months after I was released, I received a letter from the tax office stating if I paid £9,000, I would be entitled to a bigger percentage of my old age pension when I reached pension age. As I had only been out a few months, I did not have £9,000 and there was not a hole in the wall from which I would get it. Even if I had had £9,000, I would only have been entitled to a pension of approximately 40% or 50%. That is what that means. I have been out 15 years, all but six months of which have been spent in full-time employment. Somebody could leave school at years of age and through no fault of his or her own might not be able to find a job and remain unemployed throughout his or her working life. At 65 years of age he or she would be entitled to a full old age pension, yet I could work - God willing - for the next ten years until I was near retirement age and still not be entitled to receive even a figure of 50%. Is there anybody in this room who would see this as anywhere close to being fair? That is only one aspect.

In 2007 I was invited to Indonesia to work in its peace process after the 2005 tsunami. It was funded by US Aid and I worked in Banda Aceh. It was a great learning experience and eye-opener, but as those who funded it were part of an arm of government, I was not let travel to Miami, Florida to visit Disney World. I could help to build peace in Indonesia, but I could not go to Florida for a fortnight with my daughter to see Mickey Mouse. These are small issues that might not mean a great deal to members of the committee.

Ms Kilmurray made a point on core funding. It is no mistake that much of the peace-building work, particularly in connection with ex-prisoners and ex-combatants, is not core-funded. It is not done by chance but by design. I worked on a cross-community project - Interaction - that used be called the Springfield Inter-Community Development Project, SICDP. Its work was of vital importance.

It was particularly vital in the new millennium when politicians were unable to agree a way forward in terms of power-sharing in the Assembly. Many ex-prisoners and ex-combatants engaged in what we would call the real peace-building work on the ground. We filled the vacuum that would have been filled by people who wanted to take us backwards instead of forwards. That was never recognised. I am not here with a begging bowl by any means; I will wash cars if I have to. The point is that we do not know what will happen this time next year because we always have to look over our shoulders. Part of the problem is that one is not able to focus fully on what one should be focusing, namely, on how we can have positive impacts, especially on the young, in order to take people away from a road that many of us felt we had to go down years ago.