Thomas Pringle (Donegal South West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank the witnesses for their presentations. It has been a very interesting discussion. The one thing that probably many people have not realised is that making peace is a generational issue. Many of us have not come to terms with the fact that it is probably going to take another 20, 30 or 40 years for it to work its way completely through all of society in Northern Ireland. The one thing that would worry me slightly about getting the two governments involved in the process again is that at previous stages when the two governments and the US have been involved, it has always been to get concessions from republicans to move things forward. I fear that during the current phase, it will be more a case of Unionists getting concessions that move things back. There has always been a trade-off that Unionists have got something, be it decommissioning or the IRA saying it had gone off the field, to progress things. When one looks at how the lines are drawn now in terms of flag protests and the fear of the undermining of the Unionist identity, the only thing they can do to get concessions is to move back in terms of political developments so I would be a bit worried about that.

It is interesting that of the ten points of interest in the peace monitoring report, three or four of them apply to loyalist working-class communities and the difficulties they have. That is where the real crux of the problem is. There is no political leadership for working-class loyalists or Protestants. The DUP and the UUP have traditionally viewed them as cannon fodder over the years and have given succour to the loyalist paramilitaries by attempting to distance themselves from them but at the same time, everything they are doing is inflaming and stirring up the situation. I do not know if this is something for the witnesses and the Community Relations Council but work needs to be done in working-class loyalist communities in building political leadership that looks at the conditions they are in, the source of those conditions and how to grow out of them. I do not know whether this is something that can be part of the witnesses' work, whether anybody is doing this work or whether it is down to trying to get fledgling political organisations up and running within those communities. It does not necessarily always have to be around reconciliation. When one sees the levels of educational attainment and everything else, one can see that there are serious problems. Unless those problems are addressed, we will always been be on the brink of something going badly wrong.