Mr. William Devas:

It can. A lot of work is residential which provides time. One has perhaps a day and a half or two days where a group of 15 to 25 people, many of whom have very different views about the past, present and future, share meals together and have some drinks, sit in a room and have a dialogue. If it is facilitated well, relationships and understanding can, slowly, be built. Why we are a big advocate of taking time because having 20 minutes for a question and answer session at a conference does not allow one to even start or get to the humanity of a person. Someone has to give a statement and someone gives a brief answer and there is no chance of a follow-up discussion. In a residential approach, one gets a chance to do all of that. Often, what is said over coffee is just as important as what happens in the facilitated session. We argue that is vital for peace building and working with legacy issues. Legacy issues are a key strategic priority for us. We do not claim we can bring justice for people, but that dialogue approach is helpful and people find it so.

I do not think Deputy Pringle was really addressing his remarks to me. I was asking myself similar questions about there being a HIU in the South. Personally, I do not know the answer to that, but I was interested to hear the answers given. It was interesting that Austin Stack seemed unenthusiastic. However, if the Republic can in any way be proactive around legacy issues, I would absolutely encourage it as vital. I am afraid that we have in the South have been guilty of slightly washing our hands. There are exceptions, but we have done that. There are better people than me to comment on whether a HIU would address their particular needs, but proactiveness from the South would be very welcome.

I would say to Deputy Tuffy - I should have said this at the start - that my comments are based very much on what people tell us in our work. As such, what I was saying was not based on research. There are elements of research touching on a number of these issues, but I deliberately separated, although they are linked, mental health issues, dependency on prescription drugs, alcoholism and suicide from continuing violence. I know from the groups that work with us on a range of programmes that these issues come up. Domestic violence has come up a lot recently and if people feel brave enough to be able to talk about that in the safe space, they definitely link it, not solely, but in some ways to the Troubles, violence and the structures that were set up within communities. Whether that is factually correct is sort of irrelevant because if that is people's understanding of why this is happening and it is a growing problem, we have to deal with it.

On the issue of violence remaining, this is not based on research but on what we hear in our work. While I have not met anyone who disagrees that it is there, we do not speak about it publicly. How long can we be silent about it? Maybe we need to be silent. I do not know. It is very worrying.