Ms Avila Kilmurray:

I will wrap up with a few points. Essentially, the political ex-prisoners have fallen through the fault line in terms of the inability to deal with the past. As a result, they have taken the predominance of the blame. The inability to deal with the past comes down to something this committee can take up between the British and Irish governments. There is a conflicting narrative whereby on the one hand it was described as an aggravated crime wave, while on the other hand it was described as a political struggle or war. Until that is dealt with, everything else falls captive to our inability to look at that.

As regards dealing with the past, the Community Foundation for Northern Ireland is trying to look at some sort of shared history through prisoners' eyes. We have interviewed a lot of them. One of the things that comes out strongly is that they say their involvement was not over a particular incident or ideology, but was due to the circumstances they found themselves in. Particularly on the loyalist side, people said that political speeches created the conditions they found themselves in.

As regards criminal records, I attended meetings from 2002 with the direct rule minister, Mr. David Hanson. We were seeking legislation and it was argued that we should go for a voluntary code of practice. Since 2007, we have been meeting with the head of the Northern Ireland civil service and have made some small gains, but there are still outstanding issues. Something has to be done about that.

Mainstream government core funding is needed for essential office and running costs, as well as essential co-ordination. The Peace IV programme comes in with broader programmatic costs. Because of a lack of funding this time last year, we had two groups - one from the republican side and the other from the loyalist side - working voluntarily without wages. They were in danger of losing their houses. I went up to the civil service to say that we would erect a cross-community tent on the grounds of Stormont to shelter those who had been made homeless due to the lack of continuity in funding. That remains a major issue and will certainly come up again.

It has taken many years of work and courage to get the Prison to Peace group working together. It is a model of what we hoped would emerge from the Good Friday Agreement. Ex-prisoners who had previously set out to kill each other were actually working together to maintain the peace process. I was talking to Jackie McDonald yesterday and he said that, given the current sensitivities and tensions, there are people within their communities who, if this work does not continue and is not more robustly supported, will say: "We told you. You took the risks. You put your necks out but they let you fall by the wayside." There are dangers involved in the practical situation on the ground, as well as in how communities will respond if this sort of work is not maintained somehow.