Mr. Paul Maskey:

Go raibh maith agaibh for the meeting today and I thank Mr. McCann, Ms Diver and Mr. Quinn for their contributions today. My constituency has been mentioned a number of times today. Obviously, there is a great deal of interest in it and I appreciate that. My constituency is in west Belfast and, obviously, we were on the streets last week when some of the issues broke out on the interface. If we are honest with ourselves, violence took place at the interfaces last week, including in north Belfast, because protests took place at the interface, which was completely and utterly crazy.

A protest at an interface such as at Lanark Way will lead to a riot and mayhem and that is exactly what we saw last week. We must ensure we work closely together. I commend the community activists, the residents associations and youth workers who stood shoulder to shoulder with some of us last week to prevent some of the riots.

We removed some of the barricades from the Springfield Road and we stood in Lanark Way to stop people coming down to have a riot. Trouble still went on further up the Springfield Road but it was further away from the interface. It was great leadership from the local community groups, youth groups and the residents associations who all live around that area. They are fearful of what last week meant and what it means for the future, so they are working hard.

I have had a number of meetings with community representatives this week as well as last week. While there is significant interest in west Belfast and on a community basis, we must to do more. I refer to the people at this meeting and members of the Good Friday Agreement committee.

While there is great interest and mentions on a number of occasions, the only person living outside west Belfast to contact me last week, party colleagues aside, was the Rev. Karen Sutherman, who came and stood with us on the line to prevent people from rioting. That is proper leadership. However, as the MP for west Belfast, nobody apart from my party colleagues lifted the phone to ask if he or she could assist in any way. No one.

We must look at ourselves and ask ourselves if we can do more. The answer is every single one of us must do more and ensure we engage because I have seen better leadership coming from some of the sporting organisations. They have organised football matches between some of the soccer teams from the Falls Road and Village areas and they have reached out to people in the Shankill.

I was engaging with loyalism. I was engaging with unionism. I was engaging with many different aspects of life last week because what we witnessed on our streets was not good. I am very thankful that no one was seriously injured or killed because that could have been the consequence of what we saw on our streets last week. The point is we need to see implementation of the Good Friday Agreement in its entirety because, as was mentioned earlier, it makes our society a better place. We need to make sure we are engaging.

I have some questions for Mr. McCann, Mr. Quinn and Ms Diver. Any proposals that could assist have to be taken on board, looked at and carefully studied. What type of engagement took place with the communities when these proposals were being drawn up? Who were the witnesses talking to? Were they talking to local community groups, local residents associations and local political parties when these proposals were being drafted? It is very important to talk to communities and with communities, and it is more important to do those two things than to talk about communities. That is where we have to get to. If we can come together and engage, while making sure we are singing from the same hymn sheet in moving forward, we will move to a much better place in a much speedier fashion. That is where all of our focus needs to be. We need to engage.

In addition, and this could be part of the engagement, we also have to look at some of the work the PSNI was doing last week. I was critical. I was engaging and met with them on a number of occasions last week, and I spoke to them to probably 20 times a day and 20 times every night last week. Some of the local neighbourhood policing officers were off duty. We have to ask why they were not called back sooner. Some of the policing operations we saw on Wednesday and Thursday evening left a lot to be desired. I can only speak for west Belfast and there are other parts of the city. However, when local neighbourhood police officers came back, we saw police engaging with some of the young people who were involved in the trouble on the previous two nights. We saw the local neighbourhood police teams getting out of their jeeps and talking to young people for many hours. One officer told me that he spoke to them for four hours solid. There were no riots on Friday or Saturday evening. Why? It is because there was proper community policing. That did not happen on Wednesday and Thursday night, and even though we demanded that the PSNI come in to do that proper policing, they did not do it. There is a template already set out for policing in Belfast, the interface template, which involves moving resources into those areas at a very early stage to engage with local community groups, local youth groups and anybody they think may have the potential to cause trouble. That is exactly what they did on the Friday and Saturday night but failed to do on the Wednesday and Thursday. As I said, I am very thankful that no one was seriously hurt or injured.

We need to make sure we are doing more on reconciliation. We need to ensure we are supporting the youth workers who stood for hours on end, engaging with some young people in society. Yet, we see some from the loyalist side of the community putting posts up on social media, blaming some of the youth workers for engaging in riotous activity, when they were in fact doing the opposite. They were there to keep the peace and that is exactly what they did. There are many people doing a massive amount of good work and others who will sit back and maybe put posts up on social media, and that amounts to their lot in regard to trying to keep the peace in areas like west Belfast.

The point I want to make is that very few people, outside of my own party colleagues, contacted me to ask how they could assist. We need to look at all of that. It is not just about contacting me but about contacting some of the community groups with whom they have built up some sort of rapport over the years. However, they failed to do that last week. We need to ensure, as does this committee, that we look closely at areas like that, at how riots like that last week start and at how we can prevent them as well.