Ms Louise Malone:

I will speak now. I thank the committee for having me. I work for Youth Action Northern Ireland. We are delighted to be part of the Peace Summit Partnership. It is vitally important that a youth voice is represented and that we continue to strive for the wants and needs of young people. I will be as brief as I can and take the committee through some of the difficulties facing young people at the moment. Our organisation works right across Northern Ireland and we have strong links in the Border counties due to our peace funding. We have many partners in a cross-Border context.

The consultations we have held and continue to have, involve young people in Northern Ireland and the Border counties. One of the key things that came out of the consultations with young people was the 12 calls to action. In two weeks' time, the week of Hallowe'en, we are having a festival of peace. This will bring together more than 100 young people to look at those calls to action and to youth-proof them, for want of a better term. We want to ensure that they feel relevant to young people and that young people understand their role in helping to deliver the calls to action and strengthen the voice of the partnership.

A big thing that came out of our consultations was that young people feel the weight of the past on them and that they are the future and the fixers of all the issues that we have had to deal with in our conflict in the North. Although they are keen to get involved in politics and have their voice, they feel that weight and pressure. They also feel that peace building is bigger than Northern Ireland. Young people are very aware of all the global issues - as we all are - but they are constantly influenced through social media, news outlets and conversations with friends. There is a feeling of helplessness about what is happening across the world. They are committed to making a change in that and being more active in what they can do here.

Throughout our consultations with young people, one of the key issues was that young people have a strong sense of the importance of relationships, tolerance and working with people from other backgrounds. Young people are way past issues of green and orange in Northern Ireland and are looking very much, as Mr. Holloway said, at inclusion and diversity. They are very concerned about young people who do not identify as one side or the other. Lots of young people are moving from that but when they return home or to their communities, they feel that they need to pick a side when things are not going well in society.

Young people really want to contribute to political life but feel they are totally held back by these restrictions. They believe they lack a voice and have a distrust of the political system to meet their needs. They believe the agreement needs to reflect their needs in a changed and ever-changing society. They think that some new strands need to be included in it because it is outdated, old and has not considered lots of different things, such as new communities moving to Northern Ireland and living with the legacy and impact of the conflict.

Young people talk about trauma and the mental health issues their community, families and friends are feeling and that the weight of these relates back to the conflict and its legacy. Paramilitarism is still a massive problem for young people in our society. We know that at times it can be glamourised and there can be manipulation and intimidation to get involved. The legacy of the past is not just about the impact on ordinary life but also on the larger question of truth and justice. Young people value new communities and diversity but they worry about racism as a new form of sectarianism in our society and that some political views are quite narrow and do not consider this. Continued segregation of young people, whether through education or lack of opportunities in their local communities, continues to impact on young people's lives. Poverty, homelessness and socioeconomic and mental health issues are also massive issues for young people.

We know all the issues young people are facing and at the heart of it all is peace-building and living with the legacy of the conflict. If young people want to be educated or seek employment or new opportunities, they still have to proof themselves by questioning whether they are safe to go to a particular area or if a job is suitable for them. The things people had to consider a number of decades ago are still relevant to young people.

On a positive note, all the consultations we have had, and will continue to have, with young people are led by them and focused on them. We do not just organise these events hoping that young people will engage in them. They still have a voice in how we conduct our consultations. They are part of the process of reporting and analysing the findings. It is important that they are with us from the very start of the journey. Those are some of the key highlights we have collated as part of the Peace Summit Partnership.