Ms Bronagh Hinds:

It is gatekeeping by certain organisations and often by paramilitaries. To be fair, the Department of Foreign Affairs has picked it up with me. When it goes to meet people in communities, who are the gatekeepers letting through? Often they are not the women who are working on the ground and other people. We need to look at this more clearly and be much more strategic about it. Let me add to that. I am serious about this. People prioritise economic investment. It is important. It is really important to turn around the Northern Ireland economy. They prioritise attention on the politicians and political process, investing money and keeping the Assembly running. Even if you added all the investment up, and people think you would get a lot, in maintaining the active citizenship and those civil society organisations, particularly women's organisations, there is not enough money to go around. I believe the money should be accounted for and should be for the right things but the pools of money are not sufficient for that activity. There is an imbalance. There are those who are lesser in this despite the contributions they have made. That is the point I would make. We need to deal with criminality and invest in the others, build them up and make sure they do not go into the hands of other people who are masquerading.

In terms of language and behaviour, I am sorry to say that it only came from the unionist side of the house and primarily from the DUP. It was obviously part of its strategy but it was a strategy that backfired. When we had the Northern Ireland Forum for Political Dialogue running alongside the talks, Sinn Féin did not go into the forum for political dialogue. I believe it was wrong; it had a different view. The SDLP went into the forum and after the first summer, with a very egregious marching season, it left because it was getting the brunt of the abuse. When the SDLP left, the abuse then transferred primarily to the women's forum. We got a lot of abuse at that time. We came under an awful lot of pressure from Sinn Féin and the SDLP to leave the forum because we were upholding a unionist forum because all the nationalists had left. We came under pressure from other people, including women in the Northern Ireland Women's Coalition, to leave. Monica broke down in tears at times. We said we could not stay here and take this abuse. The brilliant Baroness May Blood, who was from the Shankill, came to me and said "Bronagh, please don't let them leave the forum." Abstentionism was seen as something that nationalists do. As soon as we left the forum, we would immediately be identified in the unionist community as being a nationalist women's coalition. We were not a nationalist coalition. We were a party of all issues. The Alliance Party says the same but we had a completely different policy in terms of inclusion. Baroness Blood was right.

When we developed the principles for the Northern Ireland Women's Coalition, I developed the one on inclusion. We were arguing about the inclusion of Sinn Féin because it went in for the first year of the talks. When we were running for election, I argued that. I remember a meeting in a loyalist community. The only broadcaster there was RTÉ. Annie Campbell, May Blood and I were there. I was talking about how Sinn Féin needed to be included. The ceasefire had broken down. The RTÉ people were amazed. They came up to me afterwards and asked how I could get away with this discussion in a loyalist community. I replied that it was very clear and that people in that area understood. This is the point that is linked to language and behaviour. I have been in private meetings in unionist and loyalist areas as well as others but I am thinking of one closed meeting in a loyalist area. It involved people who had moved from paramilitarism and were represented those groups politically and who were challenging groups like the DUP and saying "but it was your language and your behaviour and we thought we were doing what you were telling us to do" and then they were being left to the side and accused of being gunmen etc. I said that these are communities where people have suffered from lifting guns so they understand the issues. It is not acceptable but they understand the issues of including everybody. May Blood said to me that we could not leave. It was important because if we had the policy of inclusion, we had to include ourselves. When we challenged that language and behaviour, the public responded and those parties, particularly, the DUP, started getting bad press about it. We turned the victimhood of women into the power of women to make change. That is what was done. It also meant that we were the only party that could go out when the DUP left and say we argued for the inclusion of everyone, we thought the DUP should continue to include itself and we wanted it back.