Mr. Thomas Quigley:

One of the main barriers is legislative. It is through an employment treatment order and that can be amended via the Executive. It would be a positive move if something similar to the Stormont working group was set up in the South. We would see that as a step forward. Even that working group has not changed a great deal. We were able to introduce the employers' guidance, which is still voluntary in the private business sector. It allows people to join the civil service. The guidance is implemented in the service. That was one of the victories of the Stormont working group. However, anybody in prison is deemed a supporter of violence and does not have the same protections under the fair employment order or under section 75, which is supposed to protect everyone in employment.

We would like to see something written into the legislation that specifically addresses equality for ex-prisoners. It does not just affect the prisoner, it also affects the family. We are getting more and more people presenting at our offices saying that their child has been asked if anyone in the home has a criminal record when they apply for jobs, mortgages or insurance. What ex-prisoners used to do, and many still do, is they will not say they have a prison record. They will not say they were in prison during the conflict for fear of not being able to get insurance, a loan, a mortgage or whatever. Many people will also not apply for jobs across vast sectors of employment. They believe there is no point in people applying because they are at a disadvantage once it comes out that they were in prison during the conflict. They would have more chance of getting most of those jobs if their offence was not political. If you were imprisoned for some form of criminality, it is easier to get a job. It is easier to state that you were in prison for those reasons, but if you state you were in prison for the conflict, section 2.4 of the fair employment treatment order allows employers not to give you that job. We would like to see a similar working group set up in the South. The working group in the North has had some successes but it has not addressed the vast majority of those barriers.

We are coming up to the introduction of the PEACE PLUS programme. In the past, we were successful in what we were able to achieve under PEACE III. Under PEACE IV, all those advancements were lost because the PEACE IV programme only addressed good relations programmes. We raised these issues at every level of government we could before the PEACE IV programme was introduced. We told people what was happening and that ex-prisoners would be excluded from the resources of the peace programme. We warned it would happen and it did. It will happen again with PEACE PLUS. The same programme, more or less, as PEACE IV will be introduced. It is a good relations programme and exactly matches the good relations programmes already running in the North. We do not need more good relations programmes. We have many of them. They are well used and well resourced. There was nothing in PEACE IV and it looks like there will be nothing in PEACE PLUS to support ex-prisoners or the services, including advocacy services, they need. That is a problem we see quickly coming down the road. If it is not addressed now, we will end up with another peace programme that does nothing to address the issues of supporting ex-prisoners.