Ms Eileen Weir:

We need our trade apprenticeships back up and running again because you cannot get an electrician or a joiner. All these trades have gone. All the industries we had prior to the Good Friday Agreement - the shipyards, the ropeworks, the Sirocco Works - have disappeared. We have lost all those trades. My nieces and nephews, who are educated, are crying out for jobs. Some of them are not academics but they are great with their hands. There is no opportunity for them to become anything other than unemployed or working stacking shelves in a supermarket. There is a lot of talent out there in our supermarkets. There is a lot of talent out there in jobs that are ancillary jobs that people could be doing while doing an apprenticeship and bettering their outcome in life. Ms Malone will say more on this but the statistics in particular for our young people are scary. It is not just in employment.

It is also about in education because the education system is letting so many of our young people down. There is a lot that we can share on this island, including education and trades. We did a civic initiative not so long ago. The two highest things that came out were housing and education. That ran for over a year across the island. It did not matter whether someone was in the North or the South. Those were the two issues that came out of that civic initiative.