Mr. Pat Hynes:

We see our role and function as being to win the trust and confidence of what we might see as marginalised and hard-to-reach communities who are fearful and unwilling to come into spaces like this. We see our job as to quietly provide opportunities where the legislators can hear them first-hand. It takes a bit of time and they are not going to simply present everything in the first couple of conversations. These are communities emerging from decades of violence. I agree with the Senator that the greatest obligation we have as human beings is to be good ancestors and to think about what we might leave beyond ourselves. In that respect, it is in those quiet conversations that we are much more informed about what the real fears and concerns are. We will read the public statements and the policy positions but it is about creating opportunities for conversations that get behind the public rhetoric and trying to discover what is underneath the rhetoric, including the fears and concerns and so on. That will take a while, however. We see our role and function as providing those opportunities where we can go into those areas, and these senses of uncertainty are in both sections of the community. The peace walls do not look like they are coming down any time soon and there are fears on both sides.

From our perspective it is a two-way street. We appreciate the support we get from members of the committee and from the wider Oireachtas but it is also an opportunity and obligation for us to provide opportunities to support legislators in any understanding or opportunities to go a little bit deeper with communities. Although it is 25 years ago, in the context of the conflict we have had it is the blink of an eye. I have appeared at this committee before and in the sense of harm, loss and everything else, those years can be reduced to minutes in the minds of those who were impacted negatively or who might have lost loved ones or anything else. There is quite a lot to work through in terms of how they have emerged from the conflict, never mind about how they might then begin to focus or see what the future might look like. From our sense of where we are, the challenges are almost in two parts as well. How do communities emerge from this sense of trauma and from the reality of trauma? How can they then be able to focus on what a future might look like?