Frank Feighan (Sligo-Leitrim, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

There were a few questions I wanted to ask that have been asked regarding a civic forum, the bill of rights, integrated education and shared housing. I am delighted that the witnesses raised the Irish Government's funding from the shared island unit. There are a lot of good funders. While we recognise Stormont and the United Kingdom, Europe has been a huge funder for the Good Friday Agreement, but we also have our colleagues here from Georgia in the United States. The United States has certainly stepped up and helped and its interventions are very welcome. I want to put that on the record as well.

I am familiar with the work the work of the witnesses, in particular Ms McCrory, who I understand is a constituent of mine in Sligo-Leitrim, including north Roscommon and south Donegal, and she is very welcome. Any time I am in west Belfast, I always call into the Cultúrlann and the Falls Women's Centre is only down the street from it.

I have been very involved in shared and integrated education. I was on the Good Friday Agreement committee and the British-Irish Parliamentary Assembly with Baroness May Blood, who was a friend of mine. She was a formidable lady who certainly spearheaded it. She did not suffer fools gladly, for want of a better term. A lot of great work has been done.

Ms Weir spoke of working on the interfaces and this time last year, I was invited to the Belfast Boys' Model School, Ballysillan. Its principal, Mary Montgomery, did great work there in working to take her students away from the interfaces.

The Civic Forum is something that is often talked about but it has not been delivered. The bill of rghts is an issue. On the extension of equal marriage for LGBT people, a great friend of mine who is a Northern Ireland man and MP for St Helens North, Conor McGinn, was influential on that. It is amazing what can be done when there is persistence in pursuing certain issues.

The Good Friday Agreement is not perfect but has brought peace to the North. Brexit caused huge damage to North-South relations and east-west relations and we are beginning to get over that through the various frameworks that have been brought in. Whenever I go to the North and talk to people, it certainly is challenging and there are issues that are bubbling under the surface that you are dealing with at all times.

We now have family resource centres. When I started out in politics, we had one in my home town of Boyle and they now are all over, doing work in less challenging places. They give advice to politicians like me and when people come into the office and when we do not have the answers, we can tell people to try the family resource centre.

As those centres are based in areas that are less challenging then where our guests are from, the work you have done for 38 or 40 years is incredible. Ms McCrory spoke of mental health and intergenerational trauma and that issue needs to be looked at much more.

As I said, I very much enjoyed my visit to the Belfast Boys' Model School. Two colleagues of mine from Anglo-Irish Friendships- Frank Shivers and Mark Lindsay - brought me to other places on the Shankill Road as well. As somebody from a nationalist background-----