Mr. Alan Bracknell:

Transgenerational trauma is starting to get a degree of traction in so far as people are actually acknowledging that it is happening now. Dramatic events that happened within families have not been talked about for years then suddenly a grandparent dies and it all comes back to people and they have that opportunity to talk where they had not talked before. We have to be very cognisant of what is actually happening there. We often hear regarding the likes of mental health and the health budget for the North, that it has to be an line with health budgets within the other parts of the UK. That takes away from the fact that we actually went through 25 to 30 years of conflict. One can call it a conflict or the Troubles. To me it does not matter what one calls it. At the end of the day it was an abnormal way of living for 25 to 30 years. Therefore, that has to have a knock-on effect. We have to acknowledge that knock-on effect. Whether that is putting money into the regional trauma network which I think is the best way of moving forward. We have had discussions with the people who are doing that. Sorry, when I say “we” I meant within the victims’ forum. From that perspective that has to be dealt with.

As regards getting the Governments involved, unfortunately Deputy Breathnach is right - a lot of people pay lip service to these issues. That is not good enough because it is actually something that has impacted massively on people’s lives, whether they live south of the Border or north of the Border or as I said earlier, whether they live in Great Britain. It is not about money. It should not be about money. If money needs to be found to build a nuclear power station it can be found. If it needs to be found to fight a war somewhere it can be found. For me personally that is not an issue. What is important is that we actually start to deal with this. It is 21 years on as everyone said yesterday from the Good Friday Agreement. We do not have many opportunities left. We have gone through numerous different consultations, Eames-Bradley and even before that. There is nothing new in the Stormont House Agreement proposals that were not in Eames-Bradley. We lost ten to 12 years there. We have to do it now. I do not want to make this personal, but my mother is 86 years of age. Thank God she is in the fullness of her health but there are other people who are not. We cannot allow this to drag on for another generation. I do want my children having to deal with what I have dealt with. I know I am personalising that but I am only personalising it to make that point that we should not allow this to move on to another generation.