Ms Barbara Walshe:

The legacy of the past is really about our future together on this island and how we can learn to live well together as good neighbours, having a decent relationship in which we get to know each other. We do not, generally speaking, know much about each other. We have turned our backs on each other for a long time. While things are difficult at the moment, this committee, our Government and our State should double their efforts to enable us to try to get along together so that we can do more than co-exist.

I am thinking of my grandchildren at the moment. To answer Senator Black's question, inter-generational trauma is no surprise. Parents and grandparents have been traumatised and hurt, and children have seen more than any children should see. New evidence that has been presented recently has shown that trauma that is experienced in earlier generations can cause changes in DNA. It is not just the experience of it and recovery from it. At some level we are fundamentally seeing the world, and the way our bodies and our minds operate. I am not a psychologist, but I do know that.

There is nothing to be gained from throwing two people into a room and asking them to talk to each other. That is a restorative process. There are sometimes too many expectations around something like this. It is not about people reconciling with each other, but rather that questions that people really want answers to are answered. If reconciliation happens as a result of it then that is fair enough, but sometimes it is about the process. It is something that must be managed, resourced and facilitated properly.

The point was made that Glencree should look at restoring the discussions that enabled people to tease out particular problems and issues in a space where not everything has to be attacked and defended. We will take that idea back. We are doing some of the things mentioned already. We only started investigating political stuff recently, but we will think about it.