Mr. Raymond McCord:

The committee should grasp what it is like in Belfast when people try to bring people together. Just over a week ago I was able to organise, with the help of people in Dublin, a cross-community football match with a Protestant and Catholic football team from Belfast in the interface area of Tiger's Bay, where my family is originally from. One street separates it from the Catholic community. The football team is Limestone United and the people in Stormont should bring the team up there and recognise what it is doing. It would not suit certain politicians that young Protestants and Catholics are on the same team. We based the match on the team I played for in 1969, the Star of the Sea team, where Bobby Sands and I played on the same team. People have asked me what I thought of Bobby Sands, the hunger striker. I say I did not know Bobby Sands as the hunger striker.

I knew Bobby Sands, the 16 year old footballer, as I was. The match was played in a Protestant area on the Shore Road in north Belfast at Crusaders Football Club, which has done much good work for community relations. The match was sponsored not by political people or funding from groups, but by a man from west Belfast and the Catholic community, and Sean Donnelly, who owns the bus company, City Tours. He paid for the bus to bring people up from Dublin. We did not ask politicians in Stormont or Dublin to put their hand in their pocket. We know the people who really care and who are not afraid to put their hand in their pocket. Sean Donnelly is one of those people. At the end of the day, I have to give him credit for that. If we had more like him in Belfast and Dublin, we would get the young people together.

On the funding, Ms McIlvenny and I are from the unionist community. Over the past few years, we have seen photographs, including one of several senior members of the DUP at an office on the Shankill Road which receives huge amounts of funding. That is wrong. The west Belfast UDA, according to the police, are heavily involved in drugs in the west and unionist areas. These politicians support them with funding applications. According to the police, the UVF is the biggest criminal gang in east Belfast, it is the biggest drug dealer and it is poisoning the children in the unionist community. We have rallies in Belfast and not one person speaks at these rallies about the protocol, what is happening in the unionist community or the drugs. They are more interested in telling lies about a document that was signed up to by the British. I say to them "If you have a problem with it, go to Westminster and protest." Prime Minister Boris Johnson signed the document on behalf of the British people and the people of Northern Ireland, but it will not happen because of the sectarianism of it. I contacted a newspaper, which would be deemed to be linked to the unionist community. I submitted complaints about what is being said, why there are political people on the platform and unelected people at the rallies trying to tell the unionist people to come out? These are unelected people, people with no votes. Those who have votes refuse to talk about what is happening within our community. They refuse to talk about victims' issues, to address victims' issues and these proposals or to speak at these rallies. They refuse to condemn the UVF for selling drugs in the communities they are elected to represent. This is what unionist people have to deal with. They are afraid to complain about it or to speak out. They are afraid to go to a politician because they do not know if they can trust that politician not to tell the paramilitaries who is complaining about the local paramilitaries. Unionist politicians are helping them to do their funding applications, knowing they are paramilitaries. According to the law, the UDA and UVF are terrorist organisations. They are proscribed organisations and yet our politicians have no problem working with them, but they have a problem working with victims. We question whose corner they are in. It is not hard to guess the answer to that question.