Ms Michelle Gildernew:

I welcome the witnesses. We have visited Reverend Dr. Mason in the Skainos Centre previously. This is the first time Professor McBride has appeared before this committee and he is very welcome. His contribution to the discussion today has been very helpful. Like Deputy Smith, the reference to transgenerational trauma struck a chord with me. As I listened to the witnesses speak I was reminded of a couple of issues we have been dealing with over the last number of years. They are not necessarily related directly to the conflict but they are part of the package of problems we face.

One of them was the debate in the Assembly a couple of years ago about early intervention and the argument about when early intervention starts. One of the MLAs made the point that early intervention must happen as soon as the child goes to school, but I made that point that if one leaves it until a child is five years old, one will have missed his or her formative years and a huge opportunity to make a positive difference in the child's life. If one waits until the child is five years old, it is too late. One will never fix some of the problems or build a resilience for that child for further down the line, be it social, economic or whatever. There was a lack of genuine understanding within the chamber about how that early intervention makes a difference to a child's life and helps to put the right building blocks in place for them to cope later in life.

Another issue that has arisen in this committee is the bill of rights. Again, there is a lack of understanding of the concept. Nobody should be afraid of rights or of equality. There is resistance to the bill of rights. We heard about the bill of rights from the trade unions and from others in the North who appeared before this committee months ago, but 15 years after the Good Friday Agreement we are still in a position where a bill of rights is considered a bad thing in certain circles. If people do not accept that we all have rights and entitlements and we should all accept and enjoy equality, that transgenerational trauma will be perpetuated into the future. My question to Reverend Dr. Mason is how do we persuade people that nobody should be afraid of rights and that we should start building a society that can cope - I am deliberately not using the word "normal" - and build acceptance and understanding of each other?

The churches have not put their hands up, said they did X, Y and Z and are sorry. We have to accept that people have rights and entitlements.

My question to Professor McBride is how we build that resilience within the next generation so that whatever stories are encompassed in a child's understanding he or she is able to look, as Deputy Ferris said, at the wider picture, the reasons for the conflicts, why people did what they did while others chose another path and how he or she contextualises that as part of his or her history as well as building his or her future.