Mr. David Barlow:

On Deputy Stanley's first point about the linking up of various organisations, the Federation of Irish Societies, which celebrated its 40th anniversary last year, was renamed and is now known as Irish in Britain. It is very much a leading force in terms of bringing all of the Irish organisations together. It has a challenging job because it represents welfare and arts organisations like the London Irish Centre as well as various Irish social clubs. It represents a very wide range of Irish organisations and is still very much to the fore in providing support across Britain.

In terms of the black and ethnic minority, BME, community, my personal opinion is that the Irish community is still not as recognised as other ethnic minority communities in London. While it is not one of our charitable objectives to be a campaigning organisation, we certainly need to get the message across to our funders about the importance of culturally-specific services, both in terms of welfare and well-being. When I refer to well-being services I mean things like ceilís, meet-up groups and so forth that improve peoples' social inclusion and general well being.

On the question of voting rights in the Irish presidential elections, as an organisation we do not have a view on that one way or the other but we have supported a number of organisations and groups by offering our premises for meetings, seminars and discussions on such topics. There are organisations which were specifically set up to address issues relating to votes but that would not be part of the remit of the London Irish Centre.