Mr. Neil McCann:

I will proceed now. There has been a year and a half of work called Dialogue Forum, of which I am chair. It is a cross-community, cross-party and slightly cross-Border series of monthly dialogue meetings. I am also part of community dialogue in the Duncairn community centre in north Belfast. I am a mediator there and I am part of a series of engagements that is being launched in the coming weeks which will run over the next 18 months. The funding only came in for that recently. I have been involved with Dylan Quinn in Conversations NI and with Keith McNair who is, in turn, involved with youth education groups and is now located in the Clinton Centre in Enniskillen.

That is the background material. This came into being reasonably quickly. An additional process of consultation is in progress and we have gained from that. David Holloway, who is the director of Community Dialogue, has been very valuable to the production of this, to give one example. I appreciate that that has to deepen.

When I came to live in Belfast for work and because I did not know my way around or know many people, I chose to live in a reasonably safe area, where I am right now. I will be located in east Belfast and I am engaged with some of the groups there already. This is a work in progress and is designed to be completely participative and open to all and to be fed into. It is designed in part to be simply a reflection so that people's own ideas can develop and it may in time disappear. Its work would be done then.

In our discussions in recent months, some of us felt that a paper of this kind would be extremely useful, if only as an addition to the dialogues that are taking place, which must become much more meaningful and straight-talking. I will be happy to engage further with Mr. Maskey and the Chairman and others in all this work.

I have been around west Belfast a fair bit. I got lost on Lanark Way about a year ago but found my way out. I must confess, I hailed a taxi and I know in Belfast one does not usually hail taxis; one telephones for them. I was following a satnav that was not giving me fair directions. It indicated I had approximately three miles to go to the Crumlin Road when it was only half a mile. This is a delightful city and part of the world. I have made it my home in recent years so that deepens. I thank the committee for the challenge in that because if this does not change us as we are going through it, it will not be worth it. It changes us; we are part of the change.