Ms Eileen Weir:

There are two answers to that. I will answer from the perspective of the communities I work in. I work right across them. I am an outreach worker, so I do not just work on the Shankill Road. Much of my work is outside on an outreach basis. In some communities, women will not speak out or get involved because of the so-called paramilitaries. We call them "so-called paramilitaries". We also call them "gatekeepers", "gangs" and "drug dealers" but they are all the same people. It just depends on the slant. Women in those communities are fearful of speaking out to have their voices heard. That is one of the reasons the network was set up, because it was a conduit. They brought the issues to the network and when I got the opportunity I allowed their voices to be heard through me so their families were not at risk, their houses would not be attacked and their children were safe and not being intimidated. It is the case that women in those areas are afraid to speak out because of what happens in those communities.

On getting women involved, this is where women's centres and the network I co-ordinate play a vital role in encouraging those women to have a voice and making it safe for them to say what they need to say and put their trust in someone to help them. We are getting better at it and more and more women are coming to the fold, but politics in Northern Ireland does not make women very comfortable and never has. Women have more sense in some cases than to get involved in the political arena because of what we have seen in the past 26 years of non-government. The Assembly has been down more than it has been up.

However, we are getting there and Michelle O'Neill and Emma Little-Pengelly are doing a great job. We see it in communities. When they are fighting at the top, we have the problem on the ground. When there is harmony at the top, we have a better harmony on the ground. The better our politicians behave and the more inclusive they are, the easier it is for community workers to go about our business and do the work we are paid to do, but not if we are constantly in battles, in parks separating youth or standing at an interface at the weekends. I am talking about women at 73 years of age going out at the weekends to stop interface violence. They are the grassroots of the politics. They see they are not getting anything from being in power. No matter what, you can be the best person in the world, but you have to stick to your party and if your party line says something, you do it.

Women do engage and there are new programmes coming out. Shankill Women's Centre is running a fantastic programme at the moment called Change Makers and it is all about the political system. It goes right back to why we vote and the different types of voting. The participants were brought to Westminster and are coming to the Dáil. Change Makers is funded by the Department of Foreign Affairs, oddly enough, and it is all about trying to encourage women into the political system. We now give those who want it a pathway to do that through doing this course in the Shankill Women's Centre and it has been very successful. Every time it is advertised there are waiting lists. We are doing stuff about it but we still have an awful lot of trauma and transference of trauma and no one seems to be doing anything about that. We need something in the bill of rights that we are entitled to treatment for that trauma and to mental health and not only a sticking plaster to hold things together. All it does is hold it together. It does not cure it or get to the root of it. We need to look at trauma more seriously rather than label it mental health.