Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees
Thursday, 18 January 2024
Joint Oireachtas Committee on the Implementation of the Good Friday Agreement
PEACEPLUS Programme: Special EU Programmes Body
Ms Gina McIntyre:
Mr. Beattie may expand on this but we did some work just before the programme opened on how we could engage with those groups and what were the challenges as to why they were not coming forward. In the current round of calls and applications, we are making sure the applicants have used some of those tools to ensure they have some of the harder-to-reach groups involved, particularly in the youth sector. There are a lot of young people who, if left with no support, no network and no mechanisms to engage, can end up in anti-social and paramilitary activity. We try to focus on how we engage with the youth. As for activities for everything else, we look for new communities to be involved, as well as bringing forward the hard-to-reach-groups that have not become involved. In theme 1, under building peace, in some areas some single identity work is required to enable some groups to get to a position to be able to do cross-community work. We have allowed for some single identity work that leads onto cross-community work. Also, we have looked at community leadership because a lot of leaders within communities have reached an age where they are retiring or have moved on and we need to bring in and engage the younger people to ensure we are bringing forward those hard-to-reach groups. We have included all of these types of investment areas in theme 1. Does Mr. Beattie wish to add anything?
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