Ms Mary Montague:

May I add to those remarks? Deputy Brendan Smith mentioned the RAPID programme, which helped areas where educational attainment was low. The European Social Fund has a programme for young people who are not in employment, education or training, NEETs. We did not receive funding from this fund, but we challenged the decision and were told the reason we were not eligible for funding was that we were offering the young people a qualification at too high a level. If one is trying to support young people who are in the NEETs group, how can one ever offer them education that is at too high a level, when one wants to give them every single opportunity to achieve something?

Deputy Seán Crowe mentioned the division of funding. From our point of view the funding should not merely be divided out as all organisations in this sector have to meet the strict criteria of the Community Relations Council, CRC andother funders, that call those they have funded to account for what we have done with their funding. That is very important. Decisions on funding must be based on need and the work of the groups in the area and must be judged by the outputs from those who have been funded. People like us must be supported and be given funding for our work. This is an aspect of the work that has become particularly difficult.

On the issue of policing, some of us would have been involved in the training of new recruits to the PSNI. They would have come to our organisation for three days before ever putting on a uniform. All of that has been reduced. The 40 weeks of training has been reduced to 20 weeks. Our concern is the preparation of the new recruit to step out onto the street, and his or her understanding of the context in which they are placed and being aware of the triggers from their social background and experience in the past number of years. If we are talking about a police force that can go into any community and belong and be able to work together with a community, we have to have time to work on the issues that we are all carrying from the legacy of the Troubles.

We, the practitioners, have all agreed that there is no shared vision of what the police will look like in the future. We do not have political leadership on that. As part of a process of galvanising peace we would like to get people to talk about what the future looks like for them. What do they want to see and what is their vision of what the North of Ireland will look like in the future.