Joe McHugh (Donegal North East, Fine Gael)
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I am delighted to welcome the very Reverend Dr. Norman Hamilton from the Presbyterian Church, accompanied by Reverend Trevor Gribben and Reverend Dr. Roy Patten. This time last year this committee met in Belfast. We all know what happened a number of weeks later but it was nothing to do with us. We are very aware of the challenges that present in urban Belfast and want to have an open conversation about them. I invite the witnesses to make their presentation and then the committee members will respond with observations and questions. Hopefully we will have a good, open and frank discussion.

Very Rev. Dr. Norman Hamilton:

Thank you very much indeed. It is great to be here. The coffee we had upstairs was wonderful. Like many others, we had a very high-octane political education from the taxi driver from Connolly Station, in language that was neither parliamentary nor church.

I thank the committee for the invitation and I do not say that in a clichéd way. We really are delighted to be here because we belong to an all-Ireland church. There is sometimes a perception that the Presbyterian Church is largely a northern church. That may be true in a strictly numerical sense but we do have congregations in Cork, Galway, Limerick and Dublin. We are an all-Ireland church and the all-Ireland dimension matters a lot to us. It is in our DNA, so to speak. This is not simply a case of some northerners coming to Dublin. We are an all-Ireland church and therefore the engagement with folks here is very important to us.

We will try to be relatively brief on the topic before us today and then we can have a discussion, in parliamentary language. The challenges in urban Belfast are numerous. The issues facing the city are, at times, acute but they are not confined to the city. One of the issues we are particularly keen to tease out is that some of the issues that present themselves most acutely in the city are actually part of a set of wider needs within Northern Ireland.

As a church delegation we come to the challenges of the city with a pastoral and compassionate heart. Although it is blindingly obvious, it is worth saying that we are not political analysts or social commentators. We are not even politicians. We leave that work to the people here. While we are happy to offer comment on political matters, even tricky ones, we are not in the business of telling political leaders what to do. Politicians are mandated, within their parties and by their constituents, to take decisions. We are not going to tell them what to do. We might say that we would love them to do this, that and the other, lobby them and lean on them but it is important to us, both theologically and practically, to acknowledge the vocation which political leaders have.

It is also worth saying that the Presbyterian Church is the largest Protestant church in the North and as part of that wider faith community, plays a major part in the life of both urban and rural communities. There is a mountain of research which shows that, for example, at least 75% of the total youth work in our communities, including the statutory youth work, is done directly by the churches, through youth clubs, organisations like the Guide movement or the Boys' Brigade and so forth. We make a similar contribution to work with mothers and toddlers and the elderly. Crucially, the work we seek to do within our communities is not dependent on people coming to church or being connected with our local church. We do it for the welfare of the whole community, whoever they are and wherever they come from. The basic point I am making is that church life plays as important a role in the life of the urban communities of Belfast as it does in other parishes throughout Ireland, irrespective of whether people have religious views or Christian commitment. We are quite close to the ground and it is from that perspective that we are making our comments today.

This committee has had discussions with many groups and individuals over the last few years. Indeed, we have even read some of the transcripts of previous meetings and are grateful to those who make those transcripts available. With that in mind, we are not going to repeat what members already know. Perhaps I can set out some parts of the scene in parts of loyalist /Unionist Belfast. I have lived with my family on the interface of the Ardoyne for over 25 years. Therefore, what I am saying and sharing with this committee is not a mere textbook or academic perspective but a lived one. It may surprise members to hear me say that the experience of living on the interface has been and continues to be an immensely satisfying and worthwhile one.

There are many good news stories from in and around Belfast.

While we must talk about difficult things, we recognise that many good things happen in urban Belfast. Just in case members are ever tempted to become a tourist and come to Belfast, I can do no better than to quote from the "Lonely Planet" guide
states:

Once lumped with Beirut, Baghdad and Bosnia as one of the four 'B' s for travellers to avoid, Belfast has pulled off a remarkable transformation from bombs-and bullets pariah to hip-hotels and hedonism party town.

The city's skyline is in a constant state f flux as redevelopment continues apace. The old shipyards are giving way to the luxury waterfront apartments of the Titanic Quarter, and Victoria Sq, Europe's biggest regeneration project, has added a massive city-centre shopping mall to a list of tourist attractions that includes Victorian architecture, a glittering waterfront lined with modern art, foot-stomping music ... [which my colleagues know well] in packed out pubs and the UK's second-biggest arts festival.

If an individual perceives that he or she does not matter, and I am sure this has happened to us or in our families, depression or worse is likely to set in. Likewise if a community feels it is regarded as worthless or feels ignored or that others have been or are still being treated better than they are, then inevitably there is a cost to the whole of society for that perceived disaffection and disillusionment. This is important. Everybody pays for the disaffection of the few. This is arguably the biggest single challenge facing the areas in which we work across urban Belfast. We might talk about what can be done and who might help. While disaffection is being played out on the streets of urban Belfast, that disaffection with the outcomes of the Good Friday Agreement is shared across the province much more widely than we might like to think. That connects with the point I made earlier that we are as a church in every parish in the land and whilst we are talking about the challenge of the city we have our radar right across the province. Inevitably the general picture of community relations in the city has worsened in recent months. Much good work is being done across the communities on the ground but the environment in which community relations work is taking place seems to us to be steadily deteriorating. A good example of this wider context was given by Willie Hay, the speaker of the legislative assembly in Stormont on Tuesday.

I just cannot allow Members to make a contribution and to be so offensive that, coming from senior politicians, it is unbelievable.

I am sure members are well aware of the annual peace monitoring report published each year by the community relations council. The 2012 report showed that the highest achieving group educationally in the North were rural Catholic girls, whereas the lowest achieving group was urban Protestant boys. This is on page 107 of the 2012 Peace Monitoring Report. There is a significant educational challenge to help this group of disillusioned, disempowered Protestant boys but that cannot be done in isolation from the wider educational framework, which is complex. My colleague, Rev. Trevor Gribben is the expert on educational matters and he will take the issue further. It is easy to make the assumption there is an educational fix that can be pulled out of somewhere for these things. I do not think we would share that view.

Rev. Trevor Gribben:

I am a minister of the church. I have served in the inner city in Belfast. My first parish was in Strabane in the far west and then I served in north Belfast and Newtownabbey. I now work and lead up, together with others, the central secretariat. I have key responsibility for education, both north and south of the Border. I interact with governments in both jurisdictions.

I will give a perspective on the unique educational challenge for what has been coined in many reports as "Protestant working class boys". To use that shorthand could appear out of context to be offensive, to describe a person as Protestant, could be seen as sectarian, working class as an old fashioned term and boys as a gender issue but every report that has been done objectively by academics and other educationalist over the past number of years , as Very Rev. Dr. Norman Hamilton has hinted, that for whatever reason the most challenging educational environment in the North is in the inner city among Protestant working class boys. What is the reason for that? Much research has been conducted and many of the conclusions when drawn together bring two key factors into play, first the decline, as happened in many cities of traditional industry such as shipyards, the rope works and so on. They were located in the city and for a whole variety of reasons, which I hope are now in our past and from which we have on, tended to provide employment for one section of the community. They tended to be Protestant working class from east Belfast and such areas. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, as across the western world, those traditional industries began to decline. One might say quite rightly that has happened all over the place, but other places in the United Kingdom, Ireland and throughout Europe have moved on and people have coped with that decline of traditional manufacturing industry. Why are the Protestant working class boys the most educationally disadvantaged in inner city Belfast? The reason is that as those industries were in their steepest decline during what we euphemistically call the Troubles began in the late 1960s. Communities that needed 15 to 25 years to turn around from a focus on traditional industry did not have the same opportunities as other parts of the United Kingdom.

There should have been investment in those communities, along with other working-class deprived areas in Belfast. Much of the money in question was used to deal with the Troubles and the impact of the Troubles. Those communities never got a chance to reinvent themselves. There was a low level of respect for education. Many people knew they would get a job in the shipyard at the age of 14 because their fathers and grandfathers had worked there. The educational aspirations in such inner-city communities were low. The nature of the sectarian issues in Belfast meant that such communities tended to be in working-class Protestant areas.

What has happened since then? We went through a period of ceasefires which led to the Good Friday Agreement 15 years ago. The communities to which I refer, which were affected by low self-esteem, massive unemployment and a lack of value being placed on education, also suffered from the blight of loyalist paramilitaries allegedly defending them against republicans but in practice oppressing them in many ways. This meant that those communities could not develop. As a result, 30 or 40 years after the decline of traditional industry, there was still massive unemployment, a lack of self-esteem and low levels of desire for education. When the Good Friday Agreement came along, it offered hope and a new beginning. Where are we, some 15 years later? As Dr. Hamilton said, there is a sense in those communities that the hope I have mentioned has not been delivered on. There is a sense in working-class Protestant communities in inner-city Belfast that the Good Friday Agreement did lots for "them" - middle-class Protestant communities further up the road and Nationalist Catholic communities - but little for "us". The Good Friday Agreement is seen by those people as not having delivered.

I would like to refer the committee to two recent reports. In 2004, a task force of the Northern Ireland Department for Social Development published a survey, Renewing Communities, which drew attention to the fact that Protestant working-class areas of inner-city Belfast had been diagnosed as having low educational attainment, low aspiration and apparent acceptance of economic inactivity. That was especially true among young Protestant males. In March 2011, Dawn Purvis, who was an MLA for East Belfast at the time, brought together a group that produced an excellent report on educational disadvantage in Protestant working-class communities. The report, which was published in March 2011, contained many recommendations and was well received. It emphasised the need to invest in early years education in order to increase the level of educational aspiration. It recommended that schools be given a greater degree of flexibility to allow them to move away from an enforced common curriculum at secondary level, if necessary, and develop vocational courses. It called for the issue of academic selection to be dealt with in some kind of working compromise. To put it bluntly, there has been a lack of delivery of some of those practical things.

The level of educational aspiration among the Protestant community in some areas of inner-city Belfast means that education is not valued. This is reflected in some parts of the Catholic community as well. There is a need for a massive investment in early years education so that this can be turned around. I will give an example. The 2011 report recommended that a co-ordinating group be established. Most Protestants in Northern Ireland tend to go to controlled schools. That sector has never had a sectoral group to share good practice, to build ethos and to build identity. The Council for Catholic Maintained Schools has worked to build ethos and share identity in that sector, but there has not been an equivalent group in the controlled sector. Two or three years after the establishment of such a group was recommended, it is still not in place.

Joe McHugh (Donegal North East, Fine Gael)
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I apologise for rudely interrupting Rev. Gribben, but I need to suspend the meeting for approximately ten minutes because members have been called to vote in the Chamber. As Ms Michelle Gildernew, MP is not required to leave, the witnesses can stay here and have an audience with her. The suspension will give them a chance to reflect. We will be back.

Joe McHugh (Donegal North East, Fine Gael)
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I apologise for the interruption.

Rev. Trevor Gribben:

The report in 2011 which is seminal has not, sadly, been delivered on the ground. One of the factors that leads to what can almost be described as depression in certain loyalist-Protestant working class communities in Belfast is that they do not see a difference. They do not see the so-called peace dividend affecting them. The reality is that it has affected all of the community and working class communities have benefited but on the ground they do not see this. Because I work in education I am illustrating from that point of view. For instance, some of the big ideological disputes ongoing in education over academic selection, a common funding formula and a definition of shared education are at a level where accommodations and agreements are not being made between politicians that can be delivered on the ground. Politicians have every right to have their party political viewpoints, but the art of politics involves accommodation, compromise and bringing solutions that work on the ground. There are too many pieces of legislation blocked in ongoing debates in the Executive by whoever it might be. Where co-ordinated intervention between Departments is needed on behalf of ordinary communities in the inner city, it is not happening. While politicians will debate and discuss accommodations, compromises are not arrived at quickly enough to actually make an impact. There is a generation of young people, 15 years on from the Good Friday Agreement, who had hope held out to them, but it is not being delivered on in reality. I could tell the committee in great detail about some of the things that need to happen in education, but I will not go any further.

I wish to touch very briefly on the issue of shared education. The concept of shared education is being developed in the North and all of the churches are very supportive. I am sure committee members have followed the debate. It is different from integrated education which takes place in one school in which people from two communities are educated together in a proportion of 60:40 proportion either way. The concept of shared education recognises the reality that most people in the North are educated either in schools that are predominantly populated by Protestant or Catholic children. It helps those schools begin to journey together. I illustrate two small rural primary schools in a small village which has been scarred by the Troubles where every Friday all classes are taught as if they are in one school and children mix naturally in the classroom. One might say, "So what? That is not a big step forward." For that community, it is massive. That new concept has a big part to play in Belfast. Why? The answer is because people still tend to live in single identity communities. By definition, the local primary school is predominantly Protestant because all of the houses around it are lived in by people who are predominantly Protestant or Catholic. How can we move forward in developing the concept of shared education? Again, I have to say it has not been rolled out quickly enough. Shared education projects in Northern Ireland are funded by the American Ireland Fund and American philanthropies. They are not mainstream and not funded from the budged for the Northern Ireland Executive. Developing the idea of sitting together in a classroom with people from the other side and seeing their humanity will be a big factor in stopping the behaviour that results in throwing stones at the other side. These initiatives need to be rolled out. Education is the key, although it is not the magic solution to everything. Schools are not to blame for where we are in Northern Ireland, but schools and good policy can be part of delivering for the future.

Joe McHugh (Donegal North East, Fine Gael)
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I thank Rev. Trevor Gribben for those words.

Rev. Dr. Roy Patton:

Like the Very Rev. Dr. Hamilton and Rev. Gribben, I thank the committee for the invitation to appear before it. We appreciate the opportunity to be here.

Last year I was Moderator of the church. I have ministered in north Belfast and Newry and now minister in north Down, but unlike my colleagues, I am a Southerner as I am originally from Monaghan. My family roots are still there; my mother, brothers and so on still live in Monaghan. I have a real concern, from the Southern perspective, that people here continue to engage with the issues of the North. It is very important that they do so. I am a little concerned that there is a sense that apart from a few issues, everything is okay, as people are not killing each other. I am concerned that, at whatever level, the eye will be taken off the ball and in regard to reconciliation and developing real peace in our communities, that people will fail to see that this still needs to be a priority in so far as the Government in the South is concerned. I am concerned about this but appreciate that what the committee is doing is a source of real encouragement to the process in terms of the need to continue to engage.

From my personal background, in so far as implementation of the Good Friday Agreement is concerned and how it impacts on legislation and in so far as minorities in the Republic are concerned, there should be a real concern to cherish all the children of the nation, if I can put it that way. Sometimes in the past - perhaps, it is still the case today - Presbyterians and Protestants felt it was best to keep quiet and not to cause particular problems. One needs to be very aware to make sure that is not happening and that people really feel they are part of the State. In counties Donegal and Monaghan and other places there has been concern about how educational funding will be rolled out.

We fully appreciate the need for rationalisation in the delivery of school and similar processes. I do not think there is any intentional discrimination, but sometimes in the outworking, it seems that at the point of delivery people do not believe they are receiving the support they need. I want all of us to reflect on how minorities can always be appreciated and valued equally within the State. This has an impact on how reconciliation takes place in Northern Ireland. As we know, things can roll over and, perhaps, be misused or misunderstood.

I appreciate the opportunity to be here and I am happy to continue the discussion.

Joe McHugh (Donegal North East, Fine Gael)
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With their agreement, we will now take questions from membes. I ask them to keep their contributions brief because time has gone against us. I ask the three reverend gentlemen to be conscious of the need to keep their answers brief and share the questions between them.

Very Rev. Dr. Norman Hamilton:

That would be good.

Joe McHugh (Donegal North East, Fine Gael)
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It would be helpful. We will begin with Deputy Frank Feighan who will be followed by Deputy Jack Wall.

Frank Feighan (Roscommon-South Leitrim, Fine Gael)
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I welcome our guests and will try to be as brief as possible. Somebody said, "If you don't know your history, you don't know anything." Last Sunday week I attended a remembrance service in Boyle, a ceremony that has been celebrated for the past ten years. I come from a town of 3,000 people; some126 young men from it died in the First World War. These young men were never remembered until this remembrance service began. Some 400 people from County Roscommon and 50,000 from the island of Ireland died in the First World War. Some 700 Nationalists from west Belfast joined the Connacht Rangers in Boyle for obvious reasons. Those who died were forgotten, but they are part of a shared history we should remember. My family comes from Cullyhanna, a Nationalist area in south Armagh, but those who participated in the First World War are part of our history.

I wish to raise two issues. First, there is a huge clamour to have a truth commission in Northern Ireland. What are the delegates' views on the proposal that there be a truth commission? Do they see it as positive, or are there issues with which they have a difficulty in that regard? Second, when we were in Northern Ireland last year, we visited the Skainos centre on the Newtownards Road where we witnessed an address by Mr. Martin McGuinness and Mr. Peter Robinson. Nothing could have been more perfect on the day, but less than one week later the flags protest broke out. I understand, as the delegates have pointed out, that there is an underlying issue. However, could the flags protest have been managed in a better way? What caused it to manifest on the streets of Northern Ireland? Is there an urban-rural divide with the Orange Order?

Joe McHugh (Donegal North East, Fine Gael)
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I call Deputy Jack Wal, who will be followed by Ms Michelle Gildernew, MLA

Jack Wall (Kildare South, Labour)
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I welcome the reverend gentlemen. In my town of Athy, County Kildare we have a Presbyterian church and there is a good active community there.

Many matters need to be addressed in Belfast and throughout Northern Ireland, but I see the main issue as education. I was delighted to hear the three reverend gentlemen talk about education here. I would see it as a lost opportunity in the North for generations if all of the other issues in the North had to be fixed before education became a priority. It is a priority for all the young people of Belfast. I have visited the city on numerous occasions and been disappointed to learn of the state of education services within the city. Perhaps the reverend gentlemen might be able to give us an overview of the attitude of families to education. In the South the strength of the education system comes from the family seeking the best for their sons and daughters. This follows through in the mechanisms of parents councils, parents associations and everything else. What is the position in Belfast in that regard? Irrespective of the obstacles and problems in society, one would imagine that the strength of families in seeking the best for their children would overcome these issues.

Another factor that comes across strongly in visits to Belfast is the lack of public representation in areas in which there are poor education services. These areas seem to lack public representation; there are no representatives in the Northern Irish Assembly residing in areas in which these educational problems are to be found. Is this an issue? How strong is family support in these areas to ensure young people will have an equal opportunity to do the best for themselves? That is the key issue. If we can ensure education is the priority, many of the problems will be overcome. Education will improve many aspects of life in Northern Ireland.

Joe McHugh (Donegal North East, Fine Gael)
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I call Ms Michelle Gildernew who will be followed by Deputy Brendan Smith.

Ms Michelle Gildernew:

Fáilte romhaibh go léir. I am delighted to welcome the reverend gentlemen. It is nice to see them again and follow on the discussions we have had in the past 12 months. I listened attentively to their contributions and believe there must be recognition that disadvantage does not just affect young Protestants. There are social and economic problems across Belfast which affect people of all persuasions. Part of the problem for working class unionist or Protestant communities is that for years their political leaders have been telling them that their life is shite and that they are worse off than others. If one looks at the deprivation statistics, the most deprived areas in the North are Nationalist, but there are other ways to monitor disadvantage.

I am very concerned also. I know that there are young people who are growing up not just in dysfunctional families but also in communities that need help and support. I was glad when the Reverend Trevor Gribben mentioned children's early years which are critical. We tried to get Unionist leaders in the Northern Ireland Assembly to understand it was far too late to wait until a child was five years old for early intervention to start, but we could not persuade them. It was very frustrating to hear Unionist leaders say intervening at the age of five years was time enough. It is not. Early intervention starts before a baby is born, in supporting the family unit, whatever form it takes, and giving people the skills to be good parents and to help prepare their children for an educational environment. If a child can never learn to play, it cannot learn how to learn. We have schemes such as Sure Start and Home-Start, but I could not persuade the Health Minister to understand the validity and importance of schemes such as these. The problem of social disadvantage will never be fixed unless we start at a very early age.

The 11+ transfer test is another issue. Unionists wish to see this test remain and the figures were cited. How do we square the circle? As the examination did not work for hundreds and thousands of young people, why is there a fixation with maintaining the system? For young people who have struggled through seven years in primary school, to be branded a failure before they move on to post-primary level does not help the perception of their place in society. Reverend Gribben said he had significant details. If there is a written submission on the issue, I would like to see it.

Disadvantage runs across communities. In this regard, we would like to hear the ideas of the Presbyterian Church. The Very Reverend Dr. Hamilton said they were not here to tell us what to do, but we would like to hear their ideas on how the Executive should act to tackle disadvantage, including their proposals to target on the basis of objective need.

I agree 100% that if a person gets off to a bad start, not only does it affect possible educational attainment, it also has an ongoing impact on mental health. It is very difficult for a person to take his or her place in society if his or her educational attainment is so low that he or she cannot find a job, of which the mental health impact can be very damaging.

I would like to make a suggestion that we invite representatives of the Fermanagh Trust because the work it has done is far above that done in any other area, of which I can give an example. There were protests outside a school a decade ago because it had a Catholic dinner lady, but the school is now involved in shared education with its neighbouring schools. It has been an absolutely huge success. The Fermanagh Trust is leading the way, but it has received good support from the bishops and others. The trust tells a brilliant story. We must understand that unless we get the right policies in place to help the children coming through, they will not be able to go to school and learn. I would love to see the figures the delegates have for the level of achievement at school, particularly Protestant boys in rural areas. The relationship any of us has with education is key to how we attain it. That seems to be lacking; when people are told for years that they are never going to come to anything, it is a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Joe McHugh (Donegal North East, Fine Gael)
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As five more committee members are offering, I make another appeal for brevity. I call Deputy Brendan Smith who will be followed by Deputy Seán Conlon.

Brendan Smith (Cavan-Monaghan, Fianna Fail)
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I welcome the reverend gentlemen and thank them for their presentation, even though it presents a grim picture, as has been said by colleagues. The same message was given to us in east Belfast 12 months ago. Listening to Reverend Hamilton in particular, the situation seems to have deteriorated rather than improved in the meantime. He has mentioned that 75% of youth work is organised by the churches. Is there a difference in participation levels, depending on the areas involved? Is there a particular difference between more affluent and less advantaged areas? I presume the state provides some support for these programmes of youth activities that the churches organise. I compliment the churches on doing what is very necessary and important work.

I wholeheartedly agree with Deputy Jack Wall on the difference education can make. He made these points forcefully when we were in east Belfast. Up until the late 1990s, the State had very poor provision for early and preschool education. From the late 1990s onwards, there has been massive investment in the preschool sector which is now run both by community-based organisations and private providers and it is working extremely well and very effective. When one speaks to teachers at primary and second level, they will always refer to advantage in terms of a child having an opportunity to participate in early childhood education. Reverend Gribben mentioned the report by Dawn Purvis in 2011 and a specific set of recommendations on what needed to be done. We can have all the policies in the world and the best of intentions and reports, but we need intervention. Have the Assembly, the Ministers with responsibility for education - there are two - and the Executive undertaken any pilot project providing for a new method of education and training? Has anything happened to try to tackle the particular problems in these areas? In the past we had the RAPID programme that was targeted at some particularly disadvantaged areas to try to bring together the local authorities and health and education services. My knowledge of it is that it depended on who provided the leadership, but in areas in which there is an all-government or all-agency approach to the issues facing young people, there has been a good outcome, depending on the leadership given by the statutory agencies or the lead agency involved. Has any such project been undertaken in Belfast or other disadvantaged areas?

I compliment the delegates once again on their presentation.

Seán Conlan (Cavan-Monaghan, Fine Gael)
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I welcome all of the delegates. Like Reverend Patton, I am from County Monaghan and fascinated by what he has said about the experiences of rural communities. On the deprivation experienced by people in east Belfast, the lack of a connection between young people and their political leaders and the lack of economic opportunities which is probably based on a lack of educational attainment, what can be done to address this problem?

On what Reverend Gribben said about shared education, I would like to share our experiences in the past 20 years south of the Border. Many years ago we had a Reverend Turtle in Ballybay, County Monaghan who thought it was very important for minorities in communities to have their own schools and a strong sense of community in order to give them a strong sense of identity. In the past 25 years, through sport and education through the VECs, the communities concerned have come together. We have a very strong Presbyterian community in Ballybay and the mid-Monaghan area and church numbers are growing. That is a positive sign that it does not matter in which jurisdiction people are; their church can be strong regardless. As Reverend Hamilton pointed out, it is a very strong all-Ireland church. Just like in Belfast, the members of the Presbyterian community in County Monaghan are strongly involved in community activities which are valued by all members of the community.

What can be done about the lack of connectivity between the political classes in Belfast and the young urban Protestant community? In terms of the peace dividend, what can be done to develop economic opportunities for everyone across Northern Ireland and in the Border counties? It is not just about a disconnection in Belfast; it also happens in peripheral rural areas north and south of the Border. What can be done to make sure people feel connected to the peace process in order that they can believe it is of benefit to them and their families and that they can be worthwhile members of society?

Joe McHugh (Donegal North East, Fine Gael)
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I call Deputy Michael P. Kitt who will be followed by Deputy Martin Ferris.

Michael Kitt (Galway East, Fianna Fail)
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I welcome our visitors and thank them for their comments on the issues of disadvantage and equal opportunities that should be available. We raised these issues during our visit to Belfast.

The church has been very strong in the pastin Ireland but huge changes have taken place. There are now more stakeholders involved in education such as community schools, vocational education schools and so on. What concerns many here are the rationalisations, as Reverend Patton mentioned, but I often think that if something is not broken, there is no reason to try to fix it. In that respect, minority education services are very important in order that all children can be cherished equally. This will be very important when it comes to making major changes in schools, particularly smaller schools.

Reverend Hamilton referred to Catholic girls in rural areas and Protestant boys in urban areas. If we take out the words "rural" and "urban", in the past girls have done very well in education when compared with boys, but perhaps this has not been shown in the levels of attainment, promotion and advancement. In this state there are a large number of female teachers in the primary education system. When it came to the points system for third level education, we devised a system, HPAT, as the procedure to be used where someone wants to study medicine.

There have been arguments for and against that and whether it discriminates against girls and so on. Whether one argues for or against changes to the education system, the bottom line is that the disadvantage exists. My query relates to how the witnesses can deal with that. How can the witnesses involve more people in the way that, for example, the vocational education system or community schools do, more so than in the past, when the church had a strong involvement in education?

I like the concept of shared education, to which the witnesses referred. Will the witnesses explain how they see the roll-out of that proceeding from now on?

Martin Ferris (Kerry North-West Limerick, Sinn Fein)
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I thank each of the witnesses for the presentations, which were informative, measured and well put. The witnesses referred to the consequences of social deprivation. I maintain that we have social deprivation in the South and that it is equally bad and, in many instances, possibly worse. I believe the problem is sectarianism added to social deprivation. That becomes an excuse or the reason for anger or expressions of anger and so forth.

If we are to deal with the problem, several issues must be dealt with. We need to break down sectarian divisions and so forth. Education is of major importance in generating a tolerance, an understanding and a methodology for being able to argue and debate a given point. Employment or a lack of employment is a major problem. People without jobs or education have major difficulties and they should have the opportunity to get the necessary employment. All of that is a contributing factor.

The witnesses referred to the disconnect between working-class Protestant areas and the Good Friday Agreement or the Assembly or whatever. The disconnect can take many dimensions but the most important dimension is a lack of political leadership. There is a problem if there is no political leadership or representation. This committee had an excellent meeting in the Andy Tyrie Interpretive Centre on the Newtownards Road approximately one year ago. It was an excellent meeting with the leadership of one section of the UDA. The four brigadiers from Belfast were at the meeting. It was a progressive meeting but one thing that came across clearly was that, in the Protestant working-class or loyalist areas, there are what are described as former combatants, but they do not represent their communities in an electoral sense. However, across the divide in the nationalist areas former combatants are now Sinn Féin activists who are embedded and ingrained in their communities. They are giving leadership and representation to their communities. This was described in the committee once by Jackie McDonald. He noted that he was before this committee looking at MPs, Deputies and MLAs, all elected representatives from the nationalist communities and many of them former combatants. However, they do not have that on the other side. It seems to me that that deficit must be addressed, but the only people who can address it are the people within the community prepared to give the necessary leadership. These people need to have the opportunity to become representatives for the common good. That needs to be looked at but it can only come from within.

I have always had the view that the role of the churches in generating and sustaining sectarianism has been questionable. That is my personal view. I note in latter years the fantastic efforts being made to break that down, and that is to be welcomed and encouraged. However, the role of the church should not be underestimated when it comes to mitigating sectarianism in a community or communities which have become victims of a sectarian system that has prevailed for a long time. We need to address that.

I welcome the commitment and the efforts of the witnesses. I do not have a gloomy picture because there are many positives in what the witnesses have said. It is easy to be critical and gloomy but we should be challenging instead. We should challenge where we believe things are not going right. We are in a far better place - indeed, a very good place - compared to where we have come from. There are still difficulties to be resolved and those difficulties are resolvable.

There is a role for people from within working-class communities in representing those communities, but I do not detect it at present in the light of our visit to the Newtownards Road or the several occasions on which people have come from those working-class areas to appear before the committee. They did not have an electoral mandate but it is essential that they work and get an electoral mandate. This is because along with having an electoral mandate comes responsibility and with that responsibility comes an opportunity to address the grievances and perceived wrongs, whether real or otherwise, in the Protestant community. That is the way out of it.

Seán Crowe (Dublin South West, Sinn Fein)
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I am pleased that the witnesses started their contribution by referring to the positive things going on and in particular the statement about how it was immensely satisfying and encouraging to live in an interface area. It is a positive message that needs to be sent out. It is part of all that is going on in the background which people throughout the island do not hear about, but it is going on every hour of every day.

The witnesses referred to disillusion. Part of the difficulty has to do with perception. A Queen's University of Belfast professor gave us results from a survey on the perceptions of Nationalists and Unionists, especially young people and their perceptions of the Good Friday Agreement and what had come out of it. On the Unionist side there was disillusionment. People took the view that things were going backwards and not improving, while on the Nationalist side people believed there had been improvements. The reality was rather different in terms of jobs, poverty and so on. The greater amount of disadvantage was still in the Nationalist rather than the Protestant areas, but the perception was rather different. Part of the difficulty is that people were talking it down in their own community and talking down the potential of change.

The witnesses referred to the Good Friday Agreement and the potential for a new beginning and the hope that came out of it. However, part of the difficulty in the process is that there are parties within the process that are in government at the moment that did not agree with the Good Friday Agreement or with change. To some extent, they are still fighting the battles from earlier years. The are still trying to stop change.

In terms of politics and politicians, how do we find a compromise between people who want things to stay the same and those who have a rosy view of a utopian past and about how great things were and who want things to go back to the way they were? We know from talking to people that things were not rosy or great in the past. There is potential in the future for things to change.

Reference was made to disadvantage and the traditional industries and so on. I could bring the witnesses around areas of this city where things are a good deal worse than Belfast in terms of disadvantage, poverty, drugs, crime and inequality. These are problems throughout the island, not only in the North. The sectarian nature of the state needs to be tackled by all of us. Collectively, we need to come together and come up with ideas. It is about these things.

There is also a need for role models. It struck me when I went into these Protestant, working class, Loyalist areas that they did not have the role models other areas had.

People talk about the lack of leadership. There is leadership, but, unfortunately, it is not a collective political leadership and it seems to come from one community and one political persuasion. I apologise for going on for so long.

Joe McHugh (Donegal North East, Fine Gael)
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Our final speaker is Senator Mary White.

Mary White (Fianna Fail)
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I thank the three delegates for coming. It is not long since a particular Moderator of the Presbyterian Church thought all of us down here had horns or that we were all chancers. I will not mention his name. It says a great deal that the delegates are here today.

Very Rev. Dr. Norman Hamilton:

committee members absolutely do not have horns.

Mary White (Fianna Fail)
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Thank you, Reverend Hamilton. I agree with Deputy Martin Ferris that the Loyalist side needs political leadership. In the past there was stronger leadership on the Loyalist side, but it did not grow.

I have never been more impressed by a picture in The Irish Times than I am by the picture of the Lord Mayor of Belfast, Mairtín Ó Muilleoir, carrying out his civic duty, standing shoulder to shoulder with his Unionist colleagues to commemorate Remembrance Day. I am overwhelmed. I rang him to say we were quite ambiguous here about Poppy Day, even though probably all of us had family members who had participated in the two world wars, some of whom had died. He inspired me. I will never hesitate again on the issue of commemoration of the two world wars. My husband and I have visited the Somme. My husband is from County Leitrim and many people from his village died at the Somme. I compliment the Lord Mayor because he did his civic duty and did not back off. He gave personal example to me. I thought it was an example of what a good politician should do, not to be afraid of the people who might not be enthusiastic about what one was doing.

Joe McHugh (Donegal North East, Fine Gael)
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I thank members of the committee. I failed miserably in calling for brevity, but there was a reason for this. We go to Northern Ireland and do a lot of outreach work. People are interested and members of the committee are passionate about making the North and the South better places in which to live. The delegates will have detected from members' contributions that they have thought about them and want to be part of this process.

Very Rev. Dr. Norman Hamilton:

There are approximately 20 big items in the questions and if I were to spend ten seconds on each, no part of our response would be adequate. We would be very happy to write a paper on particular issues members have raised and to develop our thinking, we invite members to come and have a working lunch with us. We are not trying to generate work for the committee or ingratiate ourselves, but the complexity and importance of these issues are such that we cannot deal with them in 30 seconds. If it is acceptable to the committee, we would like to have an ongoing conversation in which we could explore some of these tricky issues in a more orderly way. We would even feed the members and be nice to them over lunch if that would entice them to engage in an ongoing conversation. On the basis that we could do this better over a period of time, I will make a few specific comments. Reverend Gibbon may comment on the issue of education, while Reverend Patton may also have something to say briefly.

Research shows that across the province, over a long time, at least 75% of youth work has been done in Protestant communities within the church sector. In recent years there have been other very important contributors to youth work. Even in my own congregation in north Belfast, 150 young people will come through our doors this week. It has longevity and scale, but it is by no means exclusive.

The flags issue is immensely complex, which is why I hesitate to make any real comment on it. Identity is at the heart of the flags protest. Does anybody care who we are? I am not justifying any action; I am just trying to give a perspective to understand the action. It is fundamentally about a sense of identity being rubbished or set aside. There is a very important conversation to be had about how both identities are properly reflected across the island. It is only fair to say a large section of the loyalist and Unionist community believe its identity is being set aside and not being replaced by something that is equally valuable to it. Perhaps our colleagues will have something to say on this.

The question of political leadership came up several times. I take Deputy Martin Ferris’s point-----

Joe McHugh (Donegal North East, Fine Gael)
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I apologise to Reverend Hamilton, but there is about five minutes to go before the vote takes place. Would it be possible for him to sum up? We will meet again after the next session. We will meet informally and have an opportunity to talk then.

Very Rev. Dr. Norman Hamilton:

I will speak for two minutes. There is a huge difficulty in getting people from these communities elected because the weight of votes does not lie in a constituency in these areas; it lies in what one might call the more suburban areas. There is a significant demographic and constituency boundary challenge to make what Deputy Martin Ferris wants happen. I agree that we need to elect people from the urban areas to the political leadership.

Dealing with the past has come up in a variety of forms, whether the historic role of the churches or the involvement of competence in the political process. Specifically, we are not at all persuaded of the need for an international commission for truth and reconciliation because truth, or the search for it, can easily become a weapon to be used against others rather than as a mechanism for healing. Our preference is for an international commission for community healing, which is prospective, rather than a commission for truth, which is primarily retrospective. I know the argument about not heading into the future without having dealt with the past, but we think an emphasis on truth would prevent community healing, which is the future for our kids. I will leave it at that, having made the offer to pursue these issues with the committee in more detail.

Joe McHugh (Donegal North East, Fine Gael)
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We will take Reverend Hamilton up on that offer. Reverend Gribben has approximately two minutes.

Reverend Trevor Gribben:

People traditionally walk out when I speak. We are used to this in the North also.

It would be great if there were shared education practitioners down here. Michelle Gildernew would point towards the Fermanagh Trust for particular reasons. I commend the trust and encourage the committee to listen to it. The other two big providers in the area of shared education are the Queen's University shared education programme under Professor Tony Gallagher and the North-Eastern Education and Library Board PIEE scheme which deals with primary schools. These three together will give the committee a brilliant picture of the potential of shared education to change education and build reconciliation in Northern Ireland, if the committee takes cognisance of their work.

Deputy Martin Ferris referred to areas in Dublin which were equally deprived as those in Belfast. I accept that fully. The point I wish to make is that owing to the impact of the Troubles, the opportunities to rebuild and rejuvenate whole communities following the decline of traditional industries were not seized and put back by 30 years. The work that should have been done in the 1970s and 1980s to rebuild communities could not happen and did not happen because of the Troubles. Therefore, they are much further behind.

I fully accept that the churches have shown sectarian attitudes and that they have got it wrong. We share this with most people in society in Northern Ireland. As Dr. Hamilton said, as we try to move forward we need to be honest about this fact.

Early years education is vital. The Dawn Purvis report contains super recommendations. People like Dawn Purvis, Pete Shirlow and Mark Langhammer are the experts and we are happy to listen to them. It is most important to build and incentivise leadership in education in inner city schools. It is much better to be a principal in a grammar school in the suburbs than it is to be a principal in a difficult secondary school in the inner city. We need to incentivise leadership in education in schools. The CCMS and our Catholic colleagues have been good at doing this, but it tends not to have happened in the controlled schools. We need to build capacity in schools in order that pupils and parents will want to go to these schools and will not want to flee them to go to schools in the suburbs. The issue of academic selection needs to be dealt with, but it will not be dealt with by confrontation. Sadly, I do not see a solution to the dispute coming in Northern Ireland in the next few years. We need to find ways of living with the reality and for both sides to stop the aggressive confrontational attitudes towards each other. We need to find a way forward to live with the reality of academic selection until we can get rid of it.

Joe McHugh (Donegal North East, Fine Gael)
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I thank all three delegates; their attendance is much appreciated. This is the beginning of the conversation and we will take up their invitation.