Mr. Kenny Donaldson:

I would like to pick up on Deputy Seán Conlan's question. Deputy Conlan is a neighbour of mine. I am in south Armagh and, as such, am just over the road from him. I note what we are trying to do to broaden awareness around issues in those areas. We have developed three Border trail routes in Fermanagh which brings out groupings and re-examines the issues in those particular areas. We have engaged with schools, faith groups and a range of other organisations. An example is the Cavan Inter-Faith Group, and there are other groupings, including a gardening and allotments group, believe it or not, which came down. We are very conscious of the issue of young people being pulled back into these problems and, as such, are trying to reach 13, 14 and 15 year olds in particular to bring them out and give them in cold and stark terms the consequences in reality of what they may have in mind. We talked about the agreement and the absolute insistence people had at that time around decommissioning. I was only a young fellow of 16 or 17 and I always believed that decommissioning of the weaponry was not the issue. The issue was the decommissioning of the mindset that wanted to use that weaponry. The problem is that, 20 years on, that still has not been fully decommissioned. That is the problem, because guns and bombs can be obtained within a very short timespan. It is the willingness to use them that is the problem. We take those issues very seriously in terms of trying to break the cycle.

There is goodwill among people south of the Border to engage with these issues. When we bring folk out, there is no politics and no glamorisation around what happened. There is no beefing it up, and it is told in very stark terms. Our organisation comes from a position that whomever was murdered, it was wrong. There is no justification for taking the life of another. That leads me on to the point Mr. Ian Bothwell made earlier. Until we get to a point at which minorities within communities are viewed as valued neighbours, as opposed to tolerated guests, we are going nowhere. That is the problem right across society, whether one is in a majority Protestant or a majority Roman Catholic community. Until the minority is valued by that majority community as having a place and adding to the area, one is going nowhere. Balkanisation will be rued by a majority on the day it happens.