Mr. Mickey Brady:

I thank Ms Montague for her presentation. I appreciate and I am aware of the work her organisation has done for many years. One of her comments was very telling, that the legacy affects everyone, including children. I am lucky in the sense that I come from Newry where we never had the sectarian issues other areas such as Portadown and Lurgan had. Sometimes it is difficult to understand. I am not saying we did not have issues, but they were few and far between, certainly on a personal level growing up in a mixed community but which was predominantly Nationalist. We played football and other sports and had friends in the Unionist and Protestant community. I have to say it was never a problem, coming from a mixed background and having Protestant grandparents on both sides of the family. As my father was from Markethill and I came from a very mixed community, perhaps that helped.

One of the difficulties in terms of what happens in the North concerns the media. I was talking to Mr. Osborne and Mr. McCallum about this beforehand. I sat on committees at Stormont for eight years and there is a lot of constructive work being done there and a lot of consensus that is never portrayed. If I meet an objective journalist, it will probably be for the first time, in the North certainly and I have to say it does not seem to be much better in the South. There is work being done which really is not appreciated. One only has to listen to know this. We have five hours of comment, starting at 6.30 a.m., apart from some music between 10.30 a.m. and noon. We have comment in which the Assembly and the peace process are constantly criticised. We need to have a broader discussion with people, including the members of this committee who are on the ground.

As someone with a background in dealing with welfare rights, I was struck by the welfare cuts. In speaking to loyalist communities in east Belfast, for instance, on the Newtownards Road and in the Woodburn Church, it was clear that they had exactly the same problems as those encountered in my community. The difficulty is that in talking to people who are, to use Ms Montague's own word, galvanising to mobilise against the cuts, the flag protest took over and became a bigger issue.

I was listening to the radio this morning before this meeting. Again, the issues raised were what people term the bread-and-butter issues. Average disposable income per household in the North is almost £100 less than it is in Britain, yet these cuts will be imposed and will affect everybody. It will make the committee’s and our work that much harder because we are not dealing with practicalities but with ideology that is being forced upon people.

Generationally, sectarian issues are being broken down. The father of one of my son’s best friends is a Free Presbyterian minister. His son spends a lot of time in our house and vice versa. It has not become an issue. They would never discuss religion or politics. Maybe there is some light at the end of the tunnel and we are getting away from the sectarian and racism issues that we come across almost daily. The work of the committee is bringing forward reality and is based on common sense. It is about people accepting that we need to move forward and not to be constantly looking over our shoulders. That is an important issue.