Mr. Francie Molloy:

I thank the witnesses for their presentations. It renews again the same issues we have been dealing with without much being resolved. The concern we met in Belfast that alarmed people was how families and family members are being treated because of the way a grandfather or grandmother was involved in the conflict or had been in prison. This was affecting three and four generations. The fact that they were related to an ex-prisoner affected travelling and the prices of getting insurance and so on. Prices were hiked up for them. What way would the representatives here today see around those issues and how could they be resolved?

I have concerns about the funding for Peace IV and especially the special EU programmes body, SEUPB. It is supposed to be resolving the issues of the conflict. This is what the EU money was supposed to be for. Was this conflict not old enough? When one considers the amount of money that went into the Orange Order to try to bring it on board - the SEUPB went after it to give it money - is there a case for getting some sort of correspondence between the two situations? Billions of pounds were thrown at the Orange Order to get it involved in it. It seems to be in contrast to what is being said here around ex-prisoners and bodies that work with ex-prisoners. The state has provided for ex-RUC and ex-UDR aspects in various different ways. I believe this committee has a role to play in trying to move this on and out of a conflict situation with some sort of parity right across the board. It is to be hoped we can do this.

What we need is some type of pointer to what we need to do to resolve the situation and to come out of this with some sort of resolution. We keep talking about the same issues and problems but we are not getting resolutions to them. Pointers would be useful.