Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Thursday, 30 May 2024

Joint Oireachtas Committee on the Implementation of the Good Friday Agreement

Women and Constitutional Change: HERe NI

Ms Sophie Nelson:

I thank the committee for the opportunity to represent LGBTQIA+ women in the discussion today on women and constitutional change. I work for HERe NI as a policy development officer. HERe NI is an LGBTQIA+ women’s charity, the only such charity in the North. We work to support lesbian and bisexual women and their families through the provision of peer support groups, family groups, information on pathways to motherhood, and training and lobbying on key issues that affect LGBTQIA+ women. I speak today informed by my experience of working in policy and lobbying in the voluntary and community sector but also of working with service users within our organisation who have engaged in discussions on constitutional issues at a grassroots level.

I want to do three things today, namely identify the current situation for LGBTQIA+ women in the North; outline the barriers for LGBTQIA+ women in engaging in these discussions on constitutional change; and suggest what needs to be included in any new constitution to ensure all women are represented substantively within it. The thread of my argument throughout this discussion is that any constitutional changes following a border poll outlined in the terms of the Good Friday Agreement must not lock out marginalised women, including LGBTQIA+, migrant, and disabled women. We are at the beginning of the process of discussing what constitutional change on this island will look like and as such, the Governments both North and South must take a proactive approach to engaging with women themselves, particularly marginalised women at grassroots level who suffer from a lack of visibility and representation in public life. This is going to take investment, time and planning.

Our current society is failing many LGBTQIA+ women. Currently our organisations are stretched to capacity due to inadequate resources. Our organisation continues to see a high demand for mental health services among women who have experienced hate crime based upon their sexual orientation and-or gender identity, women who have been subject to conversion practices, on which new research was launched in Northern Ireland last week and which our organisation was involved in producing, women who encounter issues accessing fertility treatment due to high costs, as well as women who are unable to receive any form of gender-affirming care.

At the heart of all of these issues lies a lack of access. Our institutions and Governments have not taken the time to assess where there is need for support and devote adequate resources and funding to these areas. Herein lies an opportunity within any new constitution to restore this right of access for LGBTQIA+ women across these areas of health and justice, in particular. As a policy worker, trying to progress some of these issues within a Northern Ireland Assembly is difficult, and at times, feels impossible. Since the Good Friday Agreement we have seen a siloed approach to working on equality issues. Currently, the Department of Communities has the responsibility to deliver on the LGBTQIA+ strategy and the gender equality strategy. However, both strategies will be unable to progress within this mandate without the support of a co-operative Minister. This leaves the sector reliant on support from individual MLAs in drafting Private Member's Bills which may, or may not, make their way to the floor of the House. LGBTQIA+ women’s involvement should not be down to the sympathy of the minister. Instead, it should be enshrined in governance structures and, ultimately, within the constitution.

While we will continue to work with the limited resources we have, the solution has to be a new approach. Over the past eight months I have been involved in two projects working to strengthen civic voice. One is the Civic Initiative project where I sit as a member of the oversight committee. This project aims to empower civic voice and foster participation around shared issues. The second is a joint project between Ulster University and University College Cork on critical epistemologies across borders. My colleague, Jennifer McKinnon, and I took a group of older LGBTQIA+ women from our organisation to Dundalk in February to participate in the critical epistemologies project, where our organisation partnered with LGBT Ireland and engaged in discussions on what an all-island healthcare system would look like. We found that engaging women in decentralised, women-led spaces enabled discussions around shared socioeconomic issues such as healthcare, education, poverty, housing and culture was really effective. It led women to talk about the issue of constitutional change in a way that was not politicised to the same degree that it would be than if we asked women outright their views on constitutional change or how they would vote on a border poll. Discussions between groups who held shared identities, in this case a shared LGBTQIA+ identity, enabled an environment where women were able to find a common dialogue and developed clever and innovative solutions and recommendations for shared problems.

What has emerged through my discussions with women within these spaces is that there are chronic issues with distrust of political institutions.

For the LGBTQIA+ community, these are both historic and current. While there is some LGBTQIA+ representation within the Northern Ireland Assembly, LGBTQIA+ women are still largely invisible. Moreover, tight budgets and spending decisions that cut funds from the sector, rather than investing in the work we do, further harms these relationships. My recommendation to this committee is that the Governments, North and South, must invest in grassroots organisations working with marginalised women, in particular to nurture these projects in spaces that work to rebuild trust within communities. While I, like many other facilitators engaging with women in these discussions, are not constitutional experts, our expertise lies in our ability to know our communities and know our women.

Another unique barrier for LGBTQIA+ women to which it is worth drawing attention is the impact of a hostile and toxic political culture on women’s willingness to participate in public life. We know that both online and offline hostility has grown in recent years, particularly towards members of the trans community. A particular effort needs to be placed on engaging with trans women who suffer from a lack of representation in public life and fear participation within a hostile environment. That brings us to the question of what should be included in a new constitution.

Not only do we need to ensure that the barriers to access are reduced for LGBQTIA+ women, but also that LGBTQIA+ women feel free to participate fully in public life. I take much inspiration from our sisters in Chile who have done some incredible work in drafting an intersectional feminist constitution for the Chilean Republic. While it has not been adopted by the people of Chile, it is worth learning from their process of engagement and representation which included consultation with the diverse make-up of modern society. A new constitution must recognise the right of all women, men, gender-diverse and transgender people to exist in a society free from fear, harm and discrimination. It must encourage LGBTQIA+ women’s substantive representation in public life and reduce any barriers which seek to affect their ability to participate in democracy and citizenship. It must also commit to achieving gender equality and economic parity between all citizens.

In exploring constitutional change, LGBTQIA+ women need to be consulted on when writing any new constitution; need to see themselves reflected within any new constitution and must have equal access across justice, health and all other institutions.

I will conclude by reinforcing the need for investment in this work for grassroots organisations working with marginalised women in the voluntary community sector. We have a unique opportunity to work together to ensure that this process is inclusive, diverse and representative. To begin this forward journey, we need the support and buy in from politicians and Governments, North and South, to continue to engage women in this work and to develop it further. I look forward to deal with any questions that members have.

Photo of Frank FeighanFrank Feighan (Sligo-Leitrim, Fine Gael)
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I thank Ms Nelson for being here and for representing LGBTQIA+ women so well in discussions on constitutional change. She referred to the lack of access and how institutions and the Governments have to take the time to assess the need for supports. In regard to the Governments, is she talking just about Northern Ireland or about the island of Ireland as a whole?

Ms Nelson indicated that the Department of Communities has a responsibility to deliver on the LGBTQIA+ strategy in general. Has it worked closely with any Department down here? There is a good deal of cross-Border collaboration. The committee wants to push that a bit further. Can Ms Nelson provide any suggestions on how best to achieve co-operation? She also stated that much of the time it is not enshrined in the Government structure, that it effectively relies on the sympathy of the relevant Minister. Have any Ministers been proactive? Is there any Minister, party or grouping that is more sympathetic in respect of these challenges?

The solution has to be a new approach. One aspect Ms Nelson talked about is that the Governments, North and South, should invest in grassroots organisations for marginalised women. I would have thought that should have been happening already. Obviously, she is highlighting the challenges. However, she talked about a unique barrier for LGBTQIA+ women in the context of a hostile, toxic political culture relating to women's willingness to participate in public life. I do not disagree with her. I have a theory about that. When I became involved in politics 25 years ago, while we thought we were in the trenches, politics here was a bit more benign, certainly than was the case in Northern Ireland. I am not saying we have overdone it, but we have highlighted social media and bullying online in such a way that everything has become negative and this has put people from middle Ireland and Ms Nelson's organisation off becoming involved in politics. It is especially the case for women.

Women who I approach in local politics have been by the hostility and the sense that politics is a complete bear pit that nobody would dare to want to get involved in. To be honest, it is not as bad as that. I have seen it happening when I have been canvassing with people the local and European elections. If you look at social media, you will see the usual suspects. We have created an issue whereby we have turned people even more against getting involved by maybe over-highlighting the dangers of social media and the abuse of social media. Those dangers and that abuse are certainly there, however. We need to do something, particularly as I have found it difficult to get young and middle-aged women, even men in some cases, interested in politics. I would appreciate Ms Nelson's views on that. Maybe we have gone overboard in the context of our response to the message to the effect that people should not come here and have allowed the "hardnecks" to get involved.

Ms Sophie Nelson:

I thank Deputy Feighan for the great questions. I will try to move through them one by one. On the question as to whether the need for support is just within the North or is it in the South as well, working on that cross-Border project around credible epistemologies and having people in the room from HERe NI, my organisation, but also LGBT Ireland, there were many cross-cutting issues shared between both groups. These were issues such as access to healthcare, high costs of fertility treatment for LGBTQIA+ women seeking to become mothers and access to trans healthcare was a big one. While I am aware that progress around some of these social issues has been made in the South in recent years and, as a result, that there needs to be a bigger push in the North, I believe many of these issues are shared. This means that when discussing questions around constitutional change, there needs to a shared approach because of the shared issues.

In terms of the work that the Department for Communities has been doing, there has already been work done on the LGBTQIA+ strategy. The work is there. The group which developed that work has not met since the Assembly has been back up and running. What we have seen is that some of the other social inclusion strategies are being talked about within the Department, such as, for example, the anti-poverty strategy and, to an extent, the gender equality strategy.

There is still kind of a silence when it comes to the LGBTQIA+ strategy, which is not good enough because we need to get progressing. As I said before, the sympathy of an individual Minister should not mean that the strategy does not progress, because there are so many cross-cutting issues within it that are so important. That cannot be overstated. The rates of mental health issues within the community are really high. We had roughly 146 service users for our mental health advocacy project last year. The funding for that project has now run out and that project has not been refunded. Within a relatively small community of LGBTQIA+ women, a figure of 146 people is still a lot of people who are missing out on mental health funding and support. We need to get moving on the strategy.

In terms of co-operation, I am unaware of the co-operation. It is probably good for me to note that I was not in post when the initial work around this strategy was being conducted. One of my colleagues may be able to comment better on that. There is a need there for cross-Border support and there is a lot we can learn from committees and working groups down here to progress with the strategy. On the Deputy's question of whether any Ministers or MLAs have been proactive on these issues, the answer is yes. I should say MLAs, rather than Ministers. We currently have an MLA working with us on drafting a Private Member's Bill around ending conversion practices. We will work with whoever wants to work with us and there are strong representatives who support some of the issues that we present to the Northern Ireland Assembly. However, we need more support and we see, within unionism specifically, there is perhaps a lack of engagement with our community from some parties in particular. We need to see that strengthen but we will be committed to working to with anyone who is willing. We do meet a range of MLAs and political party representatives.

Yes, the Government should be investing in the work of grassroots organisations. I completely agree with the Deputy. Our organisation currently does not receive any Government funding for our posts. If a person were to say that the Northern Ireland Assembly is investing in the work of grassroots marginalised women's organisations, I would tell him or her it is not investing in ours. There is funding that goes to the voluntary community sector from the Department for Communities, but it is not coming to our organisation at the minute. The point the Deputy made about the hostile environment is a really good one. It is important to address it because it does act as a barrier to LGBTQIA+ women's participation in public life and increases fear. Hate crimes in the North are all too prevalent. For trans women in particular, our hate crime legislation is not updated to include gender as a protected characteristic - I know that is something they are working on down here as well - which puts trans women at risk in particular. It is also good to mention that this is a class issue as well. LGBTQIA+ women in working-class areas often face a more hostile environment than others. The work of paramilitary groups, for example, needs to be looked at in terms of acting as a barrier to women's participation because we know that paramilitary groups can have an ability to silence certain women's voices within the community. They can create and embolden this hostile environment and environment of hate. They were great questions, I hope I have provided an answer for some of them.

Photo of Rose Conway-WalshRose Conway-Walsh (Mayo, Sinn Fein)
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I thank Ms Nelson for taking the time to appear before us. She is very welcome. I read her statement with interest and the contribution she has to make to the discussion on women in the Constitution is hugely valuable, as well as the key issues that affect LGBTQIA+ groups in particular. I value her contribution and hear what she said in terms of not locking out marginalised LGBTQIA+, migrant and disabled women. I go further, we must lock it in. I know we share this across the committee, in our vision for what a new constitution and constitutional change would look like, that must be locked in and marginalised voices must be heard. I am quite excited about it as this is a really good opportunity for us to reset and what has come across in the committee and the other contributions made across other areas is that we need to look at our values as a nation and create a system whereby those values are captured and everybody is valued. I hear what Ms Nelson is saying in terms of class and the alienation or determination that can happen for that as well.

I have a number of questions. First, from working on transitional justice issues, Ms Nelson has likely witnessed the negative impact that the lack of equal representation of women within State institutions has had on those women, who are on the receiving end with the police, courts and associated systems. These institutions are mostly male dominated, despite equal opportunity legislation and affirmative action measures. With that in mind, could Ms Nelson identify how, within a new constitution, the right of women to full and equal participation and representation in all aspects of State institutions and governance, how that could be guaranteed? I have a number of other questions too.

Ms Sophie Nelson:

I thank the Deputy for her question and I agree with her statement that LGBTQIA+ must be locked in to these conversations. I agree there is a problem within institutions. Many of these institutions were historically patriarchal and have not taken enough steps at their core to address that and change it. There is real value in doing some of this community grassroots work I have spoken about within my presentation. We also need to have a citizens' assembly on this, a more formal citizens' forum. There needs to be representation of LGBTQIA+ women within that. When we are able to start this process by including marginalised women at its core, then that will filter into the institutions that are then reformed within this new constitutional change.

Photo of Rose Conway-WalshRose Conway-Walsh (Mayo, Sinn Fein)
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On the funding framework, what would that look like, because I hear what Ms Nelson is saying and resources are absolutely needed to get the most marginalised voices? That might be practical things, such as childcare, transport and all of those things that are barriers to participation. It takes resources for the animation work that needs to be done in order to build confidence and capacity within individuals. How could we, or the Government, set a framework whereby the funding would go to the right areas, because what we want to avoid is a whole industry being set up around issues, as I sometimes see? We would want to target the funding to have proper measures of the outcomes we want and to make sure it is the hard-to-reach voices that were being funded.

Ms Sophie Nelson:

It is a great question that I also contend with myself. A great start would be that we are collecting research and data and assessing where the needs-based support lies. Within the Northern Ireland Assembly, there are efforts to do that with quality impact assessments, for example, to assess where there is a need for funding. The extent to which those are adhered to can be called into question, so we need a wide-scale evaluation of where we are now. There needs to be data collection and analysis of that. We then need to assess where the need is and, from that, we need to assign a fiscal framework regarding where this funding is going to go and where it is most needed.

What also needs to come out of that is the sense that a little funding can go a long way. If we can provide a basic level of support to meet people's baseline needs, we are going to go a long way towards encouraging their participation in public life. Without access to mental health support and access to gender-affirming healthcare for trans people, people are kind of locked out of those discussions before they even begin in the sense that they are not able to participate fully because they themselves have issues they are contending with in their personal lives.

When we spoke to women, there was a sense that they are just surviving, not thriving. We need to address people's baseline needs before we go any further to address how we can encourage more participation within these discussions, but that needs to come from a wider assessment.

Photo of Rose Conway-WalshRose Conway-Walsh (Mayo, Sinn Fein)
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From the groups Ms Nelson has spoken to and the work she has done, is there an inner belief that we can create a system and a framework where marginalised voices or people who are currently marginalised can thrive? Is there a belief that this can happen? I want to ask about the work Ms Nelson has done on a North-South basis in terms of the value of collaboration, such as hearing from women from counties in the South and counties in the North who are getting together to discuss these things. There could be opportunities within the PEACEPLUS programme but also in terms of the shared island unit here, which has funded a lot of good initiatives. I ask Ms Nelson to speak to that North-South aspect.

Ms Sophie Nelson:

There is absolutely a belief that women can thrive if they are given the necessary tools to be empowered to do that.

The North-South collaboration was very useful in terms of the critical epistemologies across borders project. One of the activities was working through the common perceptions of healthcare, North and South, where people from the North were asked what they think of when they think of the healthcare system in the South and vice versa. For the North, people from the South broadly said that they see it as broken, on its knees and stretched to capacity. The people from the North who commented on the healthcare system in the South said that it is unaffordable, expensive and privatised. Then, when we worked through some of those issues and there were discussions, it was found that it is not actually unaffordable to everyone in the South and there are different things like blue cards, different accessibility measures for people who cannot afford it and so on. It was similar with those from the North. It was a kind of myth-busting activity but people came together to discuss innovative solutions, what an all-island healthcare system would look like, what that meant for people and how important it was that it was free for some people and to maintain that. That only happened by working together, not just reading the headlines but actually talking to each other. Some of the women who we went away with might not have had the opportunity to engage with people across the Border without that safe space. It was very useful and interesting. It is definitely work that needs to be invested in further.

Photo of Rose Conway-WalshRose Conway-Walsh (Mayo, Sinn Fein)
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It is very interesting. This committee will be doing work specifically around health and what an all-island health service might look like, using the experiences from North and South. We might bring Ms Nelson's group back again to look in-depth at issues of health.

Photo of Brendan SmithBrendan Smith (Cavan-Monaghan, Fianna Fail)
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I missed the earlier part of Ms Nelson’s contribution because I was at another meeting. I welcome her to the committee. What she outlined in her opening contribution is very important. She reinforced the need for investment in the work of grassroots organisations working with marginalised women and the voluntary and community sector, and we all endorse that. It is critical that adequate supports are provided to people working with marginalised communities.

Ms Nelson mentioned two cross-Border projects. It is very important, whatever research or collaboration is going on, that it is on an all-Ireland and cross-Border basis. Does Ms Nelson see much difference in emphasis in, say, the University of Ulster approach as opposed to the University College Cork approach, or is it by and large the same?

Ms Nelson mentioned that the Department for Communities is the lead Department from the point of view of supporting organisations like her own. Obviously, there is a role for the Department of Justice and the Department of Health in the work that her group and other groups undertake. Do those Departments assist her group in any way? I know different groups in this country can have funding streams from different Departments and also from the local authorities in some instances. Some programmes that are funded by central government here are often administered through the local authorities. A lot of that is supporting the work of community groups, both from the point of view of improving amenities and facilities and also supporting ongoing work.

Deputy Conway-Walsh mentioned PEACEPLUS as a possibility. I know that since the first PEACE programme in the 1990s, it and each of its successor programmes had different programmes and projects which brought together marginalised people from different communities, North and South. There were different aspects. Some of it was based on women working in disadvantaged communities or providing youth services or other learning and skills courses for different communities. PEACEPLUS is a good idea and it might be a body worth talking to because it has very substantial funding for the next four to five years.

Ms Nelson rightly mentioned the need to be included in all discussions, and everybody should be included in any discussions that concern the future constitutional arrangements on this island. She will recall there was a civic forum in Northern Ireland shortly after the Good Friday Agreement. My understanding, from talking to groups and individuals who participated in that forum, is that it was successful but, unfortunately, it is a devolved decision and the position of the assembly or the Executive at the time meant it did not continue. I know many of the marginalised groups who participated at the time said publicly that they regretted its demise. A commitment was made in a successor agreement - either New Decade, New Approach or Fresh Start - that a similar type of civic forum called a civic panel would be established to ensure that all representative organisations and groups would have an opportunity to meet in a structured forum.

To Ms Nelson's knowledge, are any of the political parties or major representative organisations taking an active part in trying to get the civic panel provided for in the agreement established as a successor to the Civic Forum for Northern Ireland, which, unfortunately, had a short lifespan? That forum had the potential to do good work. Many things do not happen in Northern Ireland as a result of a lack of interest from the Government in London but, to my knowledge, this is a devolved responsibility. Does Ms Nelson see merit in establishing a civic forum, as was envisaged in the Good Friday Agreement?

Ms Sophie Nelson:

Those are brilliant questions. I will begin with the difference in the approach of University College Cork and the University of Ulster. It was very much a shared joint project, led by Fidelma Ashe, who I know has appeared before this committee, and Nuala Finnegan. That specific project engaged with women with a range of cross-cutting identities in discussions on a shared island. The approach was very much a collaborative one. They shared a similar pedagogy of discussions about key socioeconomic rights within the Good Friday Agreement in respect of education, healthcare and housing. It challenged degendered approaches to the ideal of a shared island. That was a joint project.

On funding from Departments, our organisation does not receive funding from any Departments or from the Departments of Communities, Health or Justice. We are a small organisation, but that is no excuse. Other sectoral organisations do get such funding. Past projects have been funded but, when the funding ran out, it stopped. My director will be able to speak to the issue of applications for PEACEPLUS funding in more detail. The question of funding for these projects is significant. The critical epistemologies across borders project is running out. The evidence tells us that, to be successful in these engagement processes, engagement needs to be sustained and cannot just be a one-off forum. The women need to know that their recommendations and voices are going somewhere. That needs to be valued. To create that value, you must invest and value these projects through sustained engagement.

The civic initiative is a new participatory structure set up in partnership with a wide range of civic society organisations. It was really set up to fill the vacuum that was created and to strengthen the civic voice when we do not have a formal civic forum following the dissolution of the one the Deputy mentioned. It is actioning a people-led examination of the key socioeconomic rights under the Good Friday Agreement, specifically in the areas of housing, healthcare, education, human rights for all, access to political institutions, poverty and cultural issues. We have finished stage 1 of that process. That was a series of regional forums. The most popular topics to come out of those regional forums were housing, healthcare and education. The next stage of the process is to gather submissions from experts and wider society. The lead on the project, Emma DeSouza, is going to engage with the political parties on this civic initiative because we have identified that as a gap.

With regard to political parties taking an active part in and working on civic forums, I am not aware of any that are doing so at the minute. However, as I said before, the civic initiative is an opportunity to engage political parties and bring them along in the context of that process. I talked a bit about the example of the constitutional convention in Chile. Ultimately, there was a disconnect between the people involved in that constitutional convention and the political parties. The two did not really join up together. We need to bring political parties along with us in the process and they also need to be invested and engaged in strengthening the civic voice.

Do I believe there would be value in the creation of a civic forum? Yes but we need to be careful about the wording. One of the things we noticed when working on the regional forums of the civic initiative is that there were some questions about the motivation behind the project. Particularly within PUL communities, there was suspicion that the project aspired to lead to Irish unity, which was never outlined or expressed and which is not the purpose of the project. The purpose of the project is to strengthen the civic voice. In order to move forward, we need the establishment of a citizens' assembly on Irish unity that would engage with the voices of all citizens.

Mal O'Hara (Green Party)
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I have a series of quick-fire questions, if that is all right. This is the Joint Committee on the Implementation of the Good Friday Agreement, and I appreciate that this is a particular strand of work on potential reunification. However, it is important to set some context. Is it okay if I fire those questions at Ms Nelson? The first is on the LGBTQIA+ strategy. We have been promised this strategy in successive programmes for government since 2007, except when the Sinn Féin-DUP Government dropped it from the programme that covered 2016 to 2017. Are we any further forward following the return of the Assembly 118 days ago?

Ms Sophie Nelson:

No. There has been a codesign process. I am sure the Senator is aware of its findings but the long and the short of it is "No".

Mal O'Hara (Green Party)
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Am I clear that there are no indications regarding the social strategies in the legislative schedule that the joint first ministers produced last week?

Ms Sophie Nelson:

Not that I am aware of.

Mal O'Hara (Green Party)
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At Belfast Pride 2021, the then Minister for Communities, Deirdre Hargey of Sinn Féin, agreed to look at a different funding model for communities. Historically, what we have done has been locality based. There has rightly been a focus on getting funding into areas of deprivation. However, we have also committed to looking at communities of interest, with particularly reference to section 75 duties. Has there been any progress on that?

Ms Sophie Nelson:

There have been discussions around this. A consultation on the capacity of the voluntary community sector and the need for collaborative working and to address some of the funding issues and funding streams was launched in January or at the end of 2023. There are discussions on the issue but I am not aware what actions are being taken, particularly with regard to section 75 groups. What we can say is that, across the board, section 75 groups are still being really neglected as regards funding. It is really important to reinforce that.

Mal O'Hara (Green Party)
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On the section 75 funding, my understanding is that the last time there was direct funding from the Minister with responsibility for sexual orientation was under Peter Hain in 2005. Regardless of what Ministers have been in the Department of Communities or the Executive Office, there has been no funding. That is a really poor picture. I contrast that with the millions and possibly tens of millions over the same timeframe here in the South.

Ms Sophie Nelson:

As far as I understand it, the strategy was ready to go under Peter Hain but then went nowhere.

Mal O'Hara (Green Party)
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Yes, and that was my time in the sector. Previously, I worked professionally in the LGBT sector for the best part of eight years. It answers Deputy Conway-Walsh’s question a bit. If we use section 75 and we do not just fund localities but also fund communities of interest, that would get the resource into marginalised groups. Would that be a correct assumption?

Ms Sophie Nelson:

Yes.

Mal O'Hara (Green Party)
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We need a sympathetic Minister to make that change then.

Regarding local authority funding, during Covid I argued at Belfast City Council that we do not just fund localities. Thankfully, others saw that logic and we funded LGBT groups. I think we funded HERe NI for some work. In addition, Belfast City Council is progressing with the LGBT hub. I think that can inform any sort of constitutional change in the future - that there is an onus on local authorities as well as central government to fund communities of interest. Could Ms Nelson tell us a little bit more about the LGBT hub for Belfast and what stage we are at with that?

Ms Sophie Nelson:

My director has been working within those conversations, of which plenty have been happening. There has been much co-operation from and with the council. They are at the stage where they are still applying for funding for it. I do not want to speak too much on that because some things have not been finalised within the process. My director would be able to speak to that more directly. I can certainly come back to the Senator on that.

Mal O'Hara (Green Party)
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Regarding women in political life, I understand there are no out queer women elected in the North. We had my friend, Mary Ellen Campbell, as former deputy lord mayor, and my other friend, Julie-Anne Corr Johnson, for the PUP - two queer women, in Sinn Féin and PUP, respectively. We are currently at a stage where have no queer women elected in the North – or out queer women. Does Ms Nelson know?

Ms Sophie Nelson:

I think there is an Ulster Unionist Party candidate – I cannot recall their name, unfortunately. Across the board, the fact that I am even wondering whether there is or not speaks for itself. There is very little representation. Women like Mary Ellen Campbell led the way and paved the way for other women. Mary Ellen Campbell works in HERe NI, as I am sure the Senator is aware. There is a lack of representation across the board within council level and also within Stormont. We welcome the appointment of Micky Murray to the mayoral position because of the visibility and representation he will bring to the community. We are excited about working more collaboratively with him. However, when it comes to women, we are still under-represented and not very visible.

Mal O'Hara (Green Party)
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There is huge success with quotas in the South but some resistance to them in the North. Does Ms Nelson think quotas may be imbedded in the constitution for minority groups? I note women are not a minority group; they are a majority group. Does Ms Nelson think quotas might be in any new constitutional framework to address that lack of representation?

Ms Sophie Nelson:

Yes, I do. If we are convening a citizens’ assembly or when we look to the writing of this constitution, quotas would be a helpful thing to increase representation within those groups, particularly for marginalised women who may otherwise not have access to those spaces. Quotas are obviously controversial in the sense that people think they are ridiculous. It is about ensuring that if marginalised women and women in general are included from the beginning of this process and we do a good job in the early stages, perhaps we will not need quotas. That is the hope. However, I think quotas are never a bad idea.

Mal O'Hara (Green Party)
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It is a short-term measure to effect change and if it succeeds, we move on.

I have a question on the strategy. Minister Hargey said that it would be up to individual Ministers to contribute financial resources or departmental prioritisation of their elements of the strategy. Is that still the case? I am conscious that Minister X may decide queer equality is not an issue for him and therefore does not contribute resources. Are we still on that page?

Ms Sophie Nelson:

Yes. However, we see it with the violence against women and girls strategy, which is currently sitting within the Executive office and awaiting funding to be attached to it. The bulk of the work is done. Without resourcing and funding, voluntary community sector organisations will not have the capacity to roll out some of this work. It is the same with the LGBTQI+ strategy; it needs to be resourced. For the TEO strategy on violence against women and girls, because it is centralised in that sense and it is cross-departmental, that will help when it comes to assigning money to it, because that can be part of a budget. An individual Minister deciding how much money goes to that will always be problematic.

Mal O'Hara (Green Party)
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I have about 20 other questions but I will go with this one as the last one. We are awaiting the outcome of the hate crime review in the North. In the South, we are currently debating hate crime and hate speech legislation, and it has gotten a little bit toxic, unfortunately. Is it fair to say that queer organisations across the island would be very clear that any new constitution or any new society created from constitutional change should be explicitly clear about hate speech and hate crime legislation?

Ms Sophie Nelson:

Absolutely. No groups should be left out of that.

Photo of Pauline TullyPauline Tully (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein)
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I thank Ms Nelson for her presentation, which I read with interest. She made some extremely important and valid points about constitutional change, looking at the future, the inclusion of everybody and making the extra effort to ensure the inclusion of marginalised groups. She talked about a discussion that was held in Dundalk. Could she elaborate on the approach that was taken there? Was the all-Ireland health system discussed? I presume it was on the set agenda for it. Are more meetings arranged to happen with regard to other issues, such as childcare, education and disabled women, who are very much a marginalised group? Ms Nelson mentioned migrant women. Are there more discussion groups arranged to discuss issues other than health? That was not just something that developed out of the discussion because it was arranged prior to the meeting that was what the discussion would be about. Will there be other meetings of a similar nature? What approach did Ms Nelson take to that? That is important.

Ms Sophie Nelson:

I thank Deputy Tully for her questions. Generally, there was great engagement during the residential discussions in Dundalk. The pedagogical approach was around discussing the key socioeconomic issue of healthcare and having an environment where people who have a similar shared identity could discuss it in a way that, as I said, was not politicised to the same extent as if you asked someone how they would vote in a referendum on Irish unity and then get into the conversation about healthcare. What emerged from those discussions is that there is a chronic disconnection between urban and rural communities, and there is chronic economic division between working-class and middle-class communities. In addition, increased privatisation has increased inequality across healthcare. One woman spoke of her social life, saying that friendship groups are turning into health services. However, those groups are not the place for that. That illuminated just how much attention we need to pay to providing LGBTQI+ women with services.

Friendship groups are spaces that are meant for fun, socialising and yes, talking about difficult issues. If, however, those friendship groups were to become peer support groups all the time, they essentially would be acting as a form of healthcare. We are locking women out of public opportunity within those spaces as well. It is important to mention that women told us there was an issue of access within the healthcare system and that there was a need for policy reform to reflect their intersectional identities. Women also came up with really innovative solutions as to what an all-island healthcare system could look like, which included community-funded primary care, rural architecture, eco-villages, community clusters and engaging with women's sector organisations to shape healthcare policies that reflect the diversification of our society. It is exactly these kinds of discussions that will help shape the vision of what we want a constitution to look like. Without this vision, we will not able to progress very far. That is the value of these discussions. While we are outlining the problems here, that is, chronic issues with disconnection and privatisation, we also are coming together in a space that is safe and protected where we can discuss innovative solutions to those problems. That is what emerged from those discussions. There was more hope in the room. However, as I said before, there also was a real and predominant sense of distrust around political institutions. There was a question of how will we do this. We need to have a vision but we also need for political representatives to provide a more substantive change and what that would look like. We need to be able to give our own views on that as well. Consequently, we need both to be able to have a vision ourselves and the buy-in from political parties and institutions to tell us what that would look like in practice. That is also really important. In terms of having more discussions around these issues, as far as I know, the project is running out of funding. We hope it will be the case that we will be able to do so in the future but I cannot say for sure, as the project has not, as of yet, been prefunded.

Photo of Pauline TullyPauline Tully (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein)
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That is very much a pity. That discussion Ms Nelson has talked about having, which is talking about problems and their solutions, is happening in other sectors as well, where people, particularly women, rather than concentrating on the political situation are concentrating on the issues that affect them in everyday life. It does not matter what part of the island they are from as these issues affect them all similarly. Does that feed back into anything? As Ms Nelson said, when there is an important discussion and possible solutions are recommended, there needs to be a connection with whosoever is in power. Is that happening now? Is that feeding back in anywhere as of yet? Because it should.

Ms Sophie Nelson:

Yes, it should.

Photo of Pauline TullyPauline Tully (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein)
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There needs to be a proper mechanism for that to happen.

Ms Sophie Nelson:

While I am not sure, those involved in the critical epistemologies project undertaken between the universities probably will be producing a report. Professor Fidelma Ashe would know more about that. As for the other project around the civic initiative, the recommendations emerging from the discussions around socioeconomic issues will be presented to both the Irish and British Governments, as well as the Northern Ireland Assembly. The third stage of that process will be based on a type of citizens' forum, whereby 100 participants will be randomly selected to take part in a residential forum across two weekends and they will be paid for their time. That is important to mention. There should be no barriers to anyone accessing that space.

Photo of Pauline TullyPauline Tully (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein)
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There are huge barriers to women accessing these spaces and the disability commissioner is here all the time about disabled women in particular and the barriers they face. They often are the experts in the room but are the only ones not being paid when talking to local authorities or Departments. Ms Nelson talked about Chile and I wonder whether there are lessons we can learn from what was done there. It sounds like it was really interesting and that we could learn from it but are there things it can teach us not to do or could there be things that we could do better?

Ms Sophie Nelson:

What they did really well was to inject new ideas on intersectional politics into a new constitution while avoiding widescale conflict. That was a real success of the constitutional convention, which was set up to have representation mostly from independents but also from some political parties. The convention provided for enforced gender parity quotas and indigenous people quotas and it protected the participation of disabled and LGBTQI+ people within that. What that meant in practice was that marginalised people would be visible and represented within the constitution. There were many reasons it was not adopted. Some people have outlined that very tense economic and social relationships developed and that the process was being undertaken in a fiscal climate that was particularly challenging. We know that when that happens, it can interrupt and push back on people's willingness for change.

As for what we can learn, one of the failures of the constitutional convention was that it did not connect local communities to political leadership. While grassroots organisations and local organisations in particular were represented within this constitutional convention, political parties were somewhat left out of the discussions. We cannot let the same process happen here. We need political parties to be engaged in these discussions too. Many of the independents within the constitutional convention rejected party politics entirely. Consequently, there definitely needs to be a diverse make-up and a mix but that definitely is something we can work on.

Photo of Fergus O'DowdFergus O'Dowd (Louth, Fine Gael)
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I thank Ms Nelson for her contribution today, especially given the importance of the issues she has raised. Obviously, our committee will be very happy to support the initiative she has suggested, if we can.

Before I finish, I note I am looking at a former MEP in the back seat here who I wish, as I did their former colleagues, every success in the election. Obviously, Senator O'Hara is standing as well. On a personal level, I wish them every success. The contributions that the MPs and people from the North make to our committee is very worthwhile. Hopefully, when the reports are published, the next committee, whenever that will happen, will make a significant contribution as well. Deputy Conway-Walsh wishes to come in again.

Photo of Rose Conway-WalshRose Conway-Walsh (Mayo, Sinn Fein)
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I send on my best wishes to Mary Ellen Campbell, because she has been really inspiring both to people within our own party and more widely than that.

Ms Sophie Nelson:

I certainly will. I thank the Deputy.

Photo of Fergus O'DowdFergus O'Dowd (Louth, Fine Gael)
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The meeting will adjourn. As the committee will not have a meeting next week, the next meeting will be held at 10 a.m. on 13 June. I thank everyone.

The joint committee adjourned at 11:20 a.m until 10 a.m on Thursday, 13 June 2024.