Ms Eileen Weir:

I know. Due to my work over the years, I have built really good relationships with people in the South. I had a project in Tallaght 21 to 23 years ago and the relationships we built there within Tallaght are as lasting today as they were 21 years ago. We are still in touch with each other. We still know each other’s birthdays and we do things together. When the Good Friday Agreement came out at first there was an emphasis on cross-Border work, but what happened then was if you were not on the Border you did not get the funding. The areas I work in are urban. I do not have the same things in common with somebody from a rural community because rural communities have their own difficulties and a lot of those are not my difficulties. That is not to say I do not care about them because I do, but putting a group from the Shankill and Falls into a rural group from the South does not work. There needs to be more thinking about how we build those relationships North-South.

We also have to build those relationships within Northern Ireland itself. I think John Hume said one time that unless you unite the people you are not going to unite the country. We need to use what we have and do forward thinking and forward planning. All my jobs have been in peace building and good relations. I have done a job for 16 years on year-to-year funding. If I had been told 16 years ago I would have 16 years’ funding, think of what I could have done. It would have been tenfold or maybe more. There is the time you get your funding, the time to recruit for the programmes, the time you run down your funding and the time you are on your notice again. Out of that year’s funding, rightly or wrongly, only six months’ of work on peace building and good relations is being got out of me. There needs to be forward thinking.

I am on the All-Island Women's Forum, the National Women’s Council of Ireland and the Belfast Women’s Assembly. I am coming down to the assembly meeting next week. There is another one in November and another one in February. I am involved in all those because we need to build up those relationships up and not only with each other. There is no point in me telling the women I work with that we need to sit down together and talk together but I will not be party to it. Leadership has to be shown and there is great leadership across all the community organisations. In the women’s movement itself, every time we talk about the constitutional question, which we have done – we have done conferences on the Windsor framework, the protocol and Brexit – everything comes back to a bill of rights and what is not implemented in the Good Friday Agreement. People tell me that until we have our victims and survivors dealt with, a bill of rights and a civic forum that is representative of everybody in our society we cannot be serious about talking about the constitutional question. It is there, it is in the Good Friday Agreement, but it will be one of the last things that will be done within that agreement. I voted for the Good Friday Agreement with my hand on my heart while not agreeing with everything in it. The 20% I did not agree with has all happened. The 80% I voted for, I have got nothing out of.

There is peace and there is peace. People are saying we live in a peaceful society. Peace does not necessarily always have to mean violence. Where is the cost of living hitting? It is hitting the ordinary, working-class, grassroots people on the ground. There needs to be more forward thinking. There are funding streams out at the minute where people are told they have got their funding and they should continue working, but we do not know how much they are going to get. We are in October and that funding should have come out in April. It is not the fault of those down here, but if members want the Good Friday Agreement to work and to make those changes within it, there is a need to put the resources into the people who can deliver that on the ground.

When we look at the Good Friday Agreement, it has been changed. I did not vote for any of the changes that were done in the Stormont House Agreement. I did not get a chance to say why I wanted or did not want those changes. It can be changed when it suits political parties but the changes do not always suit civic society. Civic society needs to have a stronger voice. The way of getting that stronger voice is having the civic forum up and running again, which is in the Good Friday Agreement.