Mr. David Barlow:

I thank the Senator for his kind words about our work. I touched on his final point in my few words at the beginning of the meeting. Our place in London has changed. From talking to people who have been involved in the organisation throughout the decades and reading our archives, I get a real sense of how people on both sides of the divide found refuge in the London Irish Centre, particularly in the 1970s. We now proudly fly the tricolour outside our building. It was not until President Robinson visited in the mid-1990s that there was a tricolour near the building because it was not the thing to do in those challenging times. I read that one was hastily stuck to the wall minutes before her car arrived.

We have moved on a long way. There were people from all the United Kingdom and Northern Ireland parties in particular with the Taoiseach and leading politicians in Westminster yesterday with a bright green London Eye opposite on the banks of the Thames. That proves how our work has moved from being a place of refuge and ghetto to a place that is far more dynamic and active as part of the wider community. That links to the work as a black, minority, ethnic - BME - organisation. We work locally and across London with other ethnic minority organisations and we have shared work regarding the storing of information on ethnicity with other ethnic organisations. We host the main group of London Somalis at the London Irish Centre, and they have conferences and regular meetings there. We are diverse, although we are very proudly first and foremost Irish. Our doors are open as part of the community sharing everything that is good about being Irish with the rest of the London community. We also welcome the rest of the community interested in us. It is a different place which is very dynamic, innovative and refreshing in which to work. Much of that is thanks to the cross-Border co-operation and developing issues over the past decade and a half.

Some 48% of our income is from an emigrant support programme and that is very valuable to us. The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade has told us it must be spread further as more Irish organisations set up to support waves of emigration to places like Australia, Canada and New Zealand. The vast majority of the money comes to organisations in Britain, and although the pot is not diminishing, it must do more work for more people across more parts of the world. Much of our income used to emanate from UK local authorities, particularly around north London, where we are based. As a result of very tough funding cuts in the past three or four years in the UK, much of that money has dried up and it is much harder to get funding for services.

As an example, we used to get a grant from our local authority, the London borough of Camden, to provide a day service for vulnerable and elderly Irish people, but that no longer comes to us for two reasons. The funding system has changed, so people who need support from the local authority must have personal payments. Individuals, through their social workers, must buy services, so we no longer get a grant to provide a service, as individuals must buy the service at a rate per day. That makes it very difficult to plan services. As a result of the manner in which funding is legislated for in the UK, asking for specific funding for the Irish community is impossible when dealing with local authorities. Bodies must provide services to the entire community, which makes the provision of culturally specific services much more difficult. That is where our co-operation with other ethnic minorities in London works, and we can put in joint bids for issues affecting the community.

The funding issue is difficult. Like most charitable organisations in Britain, we must consider every penny or cent we are spending, and we have cut costs by approximately 12% in the current financial year. It is very tough to keep up with reductions in income generation none the less. For our 60th anniversary this year we are trying to pull out all the stops to promote what we are doing across London and in Ireland to let people know the importance of the services we are trying to offer. We want to let people know the reality of the work we are doing. Although certain people know what we are doing, there is a majority with the wrong perception of what we do. They may think we are a big social club or stuck in decades gone by in providing a specific type of service that does not appeal to people coming to London now. We cannot be complacent and much of our work must be innovative. We need to show people what we are doing and how efficient and effective are our services, as well as the value for the people using them.