Mr. Peter Osborne:

I thank the members of this committee for their contributions and the support they have shown. I would not underestimate the importance of that, in their capacity as individuals and as representatives. When people, like Ms Gordon and many others, within communities are taking on such a significant amount of work, sometimes at personal risk, and having to deal with the stress of that and the difficulties that come with it, we must not underestimate the importance of providing that verbal and moral support. It is important that people feel that the work they are doing is valued, and that will help them to continue with that work, so I thank the members for that.
I will return to a couple of issues before summing up with two or three other points, as the Chair has suggested. The City of Culture is an important event to look at. People in that city will say there is no model, but that they have a number of underlying principles that have driven the success of what has happened up there. It is very impressive when one sees what has happened. For example, loyalist bands have taken part in various festivals in the South as well as in the North, and the police band received a standing ovation coming into Guildhall Square during the City of Culture year. It was a transformative experience in that city. The underlying principles are underlying principles for any area where there is dispute or where there is contention, whether over parades, flags, or anything else. People were motivated in that city to do it. They wanted to come to an agreement, they wanted to reach resolutions and the motivation existed. In other areas, the motivation still does not exist. The relationships were developed over many years. It was not an overnight success. Some of the groundwork was carried out in the 1980s and the 1990s and it led to something over recent years where the relationships and trust were built. There was also leadership. That leadership was very impressive across the community divide. It is one of the reasons the Community Relations Council, for example, gave a civic leadership award to Willie Hay, a DUP MLA in that city, who is the current Speaker of the Assembly. That award could also have been given to other elected representatives from other parties in that city, but it was business leadership as well as community leadership, law and order leadership and residents. Combining those three elements led to success. Those three elements are lacking in other areas, but when they are present, one tends to get results. They have achieved a huge amount in that city, and it is important to reflect on it.
Someone raised the issue of the civic voice. We have been considering this question for some time now, because the feedback we get on the ground is that people feel they are not being listened to and that their voice is not heard as strongly as it should be. This is one of the reasons that for the recently drafted racial equality strategy, for example, the Community Relations Council brought together a range of black, minority and ethnic groups. We agreed a common platform with them, which was the first time that has happened. Sixty organisations have signed up to that so far, and it is hoped there will be more over the next few weeks as well. That is civil society getting together, agreeing the critical issues that must go into a new strategy, which it is to be hoped will result in their voice being heard. We need to reflect on how that sort of vehicle is used, because at the moment there is no vehicle for civil society to be heard as well as it could be.
It is important for the committee to continue to engage in this process. It may be important for others to re-engage with it because the point was made, correctly, that this will take a generation. Political agreement is one thing, and although it is very important, political agreement does not build the peace. The peace is built on the ground by organisations doing that work. This will take 20, 30, 40 or 50 years to do before we can say that Northern Ireland is at that reconciled stage we want it to reach. This committee may well be meeting in 20, 30 or 40 years time to continue to consider these issues. That is the reality and we must get our minds around that. This is a long-term process.
It is useful to raise the issue of shared and integrated education. It is a complex issue, as people have said. Shared education is important, but shared education must mean that children are brought together, not just that buildings are used by two different schools. People within the movement understand this, and integrated education is the maximum outworking of that, but there are huge complexities around it. For me, the underlying issue is something that Mr. Kennedy mentioned, and that is mentioned in the peace monitoring report. Shared and integrated education are components of reconciliation work and we want to see peace with reconciliation. The peace monitoring report says quite clearly that at the minute we have peace without reconciliation. We want to move to peace with reconciliation. Reconciliation is a key component of the Good Friday Agreement. It is right up there in paragraph 2 and paragraph 3 in no uncertain terms and in a very visionary way. The underlying issue is more important in some ways than the specifics, important as they are, of shared and integrated education or other aspects. We must take reconciliation seriously. We need peace with reconciliation.
In looking at reconciliation, one cannot get away from issues around, for example, resources and funding. The sector that does the work on the ground, the people who must at times deal with pressures, stresses and intimidation because they are trying to move us into a different place, needs resources and support. I will put it in context. The Office of the First Minister and the Deputy First Minister, OFMDFM, the body that is primarily tasked with promoting good relations and reconciliation, has a budget of £13 or £14 million for this, and £2 million is allocated by the Community Relations Council on a regional basis. I hope I got my zeros right, but I think that amounts to 0.001% of total spend in Northern Ireland. If we want peace with reconciliation, if we want to support the Good Friday Agreement, the investment in reconciliation must be significantly more than that. It must be long-term and it must be outcome-focused.
One must ask whether the commitment in the Government and elsewhere is significant enough when that is the amount of funding that is allocated. At the minute it is ad hocand piecemeal. The Governments have done tremendous work recently, for example, the visit of the Queen to Ireland or President Higgins to London. Those were incredibly positive things and symbolically important events which sent out critical messages. They showed that peace building and reconciliation are taking place across the islands.

The really important part of that is ensuring we get it right in Northern Ireland, because that is where relationships are critical to this process and where relationships could sour everything else. Funding and resourcing in the North for reconciliation is an issue on which we need to refocus.

I thank the committee for giving us this hearing and for its continuing interest in our work. I reiterate the need for peace with reconciliation, and ask members to continue to consider whether we are adequately resourcing it and supporting the groups involved in it. As I said, the Northern Ireland Community Relations Council will organise for the committee to take evidence in Belfast from these groups. That will give members an opportunity to hear from the horse's mouth about the critical work of building the peace and the issues arising in that regard in Belfast and elsewhere in the North.