Mr. William Devas:

I thank the Chairman and the committee for the invitation to speak here today. I have been CEO of the Glencree Centre for Peace and Reconciliation for the past two years. For those who do not know it, the Glencree Centre for Peace and Reconciliation was founded in 1974 as a response by people from the Republic to the violence that was predominantly happening in Northern Ireland and seeking ways to help stop that violence.

As our name, Glencree Centre for Peace and Reconciliation, suggests, peace-building and reconciliation are things we believe in and which are core to our mission statement and our vision for the future of this island. Building a lasting peace, ensuring political violence can never return and having a reconciled society are very important to us. It is in that context that I am making my remarks. The role we have played for over 40 years is to act as an impartial, non-judgmental facilitator of dialogue, allowing difficult conversations to take place between people with very different views and opinions about the political situation on this island and how we deal with legacy issues of the past and whatever other contentious issues arise. That is still the role we play today.

I was able to rearrange my diary to spend all day here to listen to what other groups had to say. Now is the time - and we cannot delay any longer - to deal with legacy issues from our violent past. It has gone on too long. It is very difficult to do, both politically and for those who are involved, be they State or non-State actors, but we have to resolve issues from the past. That has been clear from listening to individual families and groups talking about the difficulties and the obstacles they face in dealing with the past and how they are making no progress. However, as a wider society across this island, North and South, we have to deal with the past, which also involves Britain.

Truth and justice are required. People require information, acknowledgement and recognition for the suffering they have experienced. Glencree has learned over 40 years that dealing with the past is fundamental to building peace. I suspect everyone in this room wishes for a lasting peace. Time will not be sufficient to heal the wounds and help reconciliation. Trauma is passed intergenerationally and, as other witnesses said earlier, even if we just wait for people to die, other generations will pick up the baton and ask for peace, justice, acknowledgement and recognition. We have to deal with this. It is difficult for all of us but we have to find the courage to make it happen.

A second point I want to make relates to hidden legacies. Quite rightly, we hear a bit - and perhaps not enough - about individual victims and how families and groups have suffered. However, we may not remind ourselves often enough of the hidden legacies, such as alcoholism, dependence on prescription drugs, suicide, mental health problems and so on. These affect a far wider group of people and effectively result in a collective trauma and in coping mechanisms that are not healthy for society. We cannot forget these hidden legacies. If someone commits suicide because of what he or she lived through in his or her community, not because he or she was directly affected by the violence but because he or she saw it around himself or herself, who is to say that his or her family has suffered any less than some other family that was directly affected? I cannot say that. These hidden legacies are part of the issues we need to deal with and which we cannot ignore.

The third point I want to make relates to a question of silence. Given the title, I am a bit nervous mentioning this. Another legacy we have from our violent past is violence. The position with regard to violence is considerably better and the level of violence is considerably less than it was. I do not wish to claim it is anything like the 1970s, 1980s or 1990s. However, there is still violence in communities. People are expelled, there are punishments, there is domestic abuse, there is sexual abuse - the list goes on. It is not acceptable. That is a legacy issue we are dealing with. The continuing violence is not named. Most people I speak to know this happens, know where it happens, probably know who is doing it and who is doing the threatening, but we do not name it. How can we, as a society, politically, name the unnameable without destabilising the massive progress we have made since 1998 and before? There is no doubt that we have made significant progress. This is also a very important legacy issue we have to grapple with. It makes it more difficult and more complicated, but we have to face up to it.

In whatever mechanisms are agreed upon to deal with the past, if that phrase is acceptable, or to deal with legacy issues, we would strongly argue that informal truth-recovery processes can be an important part of a jigsaw or a suite of options. What I mean by that is that, sadly in many cases, justice, in terms of a day in court and prosecutions, is not possible. Information recovery is catered for in the Stormont House Agreement but it would risk being soulless - "Here is a piece of paper after an investigation has been done that tells you some of what happened". It has been evident throughout the day that these issues are about emotions, soul, heart, suffering, people and human beings. Pieces of paper with lines in black do not really hit the mark. I am not saying everything needs to be informal, but informal truth recovery processes are an important part. Glencree has done some of this work in the past and we are committed to doing it in the future. I stress that it is all very much on a voluntary basis. If someone who has suffered wishes to engage with a group or someone who has caused harm then we would be very willing to help that happen in a humane way. The benefit of this is that it can allow for information and truth, or multiple truths, to emerge but it can also result in genuine acknowledgement, genuine understanding, hearing and recognition. Acknowledgement and recognition have been asked for quite a lot today. It can also potentially result in healing and reconciliation. I am not saying it is a silver bullet because this is by no means the case, but it is part of a suite of options that need to be pursued and, therefore, it must be supported, which requires resources.

I have two final points. I think Mr. Stack has already made this one for me and Ms Joly may also make it. The perception is out there that victims, or those who wish to call themselves victims, from the Republic and Great Britain are somehow less important, less well catered for or less supported than those in Northern Ireland. I do not know whether that is actually true but that perception exists and we need to be very wary of it. I wanted to raise that given that this is a predominantly Republic of Ireland committee.

My final point is a broader one. We are guilty in the Republic of Ireland of ignoring Northern Ireland. Perhaps the exceptions are some of the people in this room. We are guilty of saying "Nothing to do with us" or "I'm not interested". To Glencree, that is not good enough. The peace process is an all-island issue and an all-islands issue. It is an issue for these islands. We are a bit guilty down here of saying "This is not our issue. That is up to them and we should let them resolve it." That is not to say that we should be meddling in another state's affairs, but the Republic could play a much more supportive and encouraging role as guarantor of the peace process than it does. That would be just as relevant for legacy issues as it is for any other tricky matter in the peace process.