Fergus O'Dowd (Louth, Fine Gael)
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Apologies have been received from Deputy Tully and Senators Blaney and O'Hara. Also absent is committee member Deputy Tóibín, who is contesting the European elections. Clearly, he is at a count where his presence is required. I apologise to our guests. That is where we are today. It is an exceptional and unusual day. Counts have gone on far too long and that is why our members are absent. There is also an election in Northern Ireland. Ten Members of Parliament would normally attend our meetings online. There is a general election on in the UK and in the North and they cannot attend as they no longer hold the office of Members of Parliament. I apologise for their absence. As we agreed in committee, we would be delighted to visit the witnesses in Belfast as soon as we can to try to understand and appreciate fully all the excellent work they do.

I welcome Dr. Fabry and his students from the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta who are in Dublin for a summer study programme at University College Dublin, UCD. They are observing the committee meeting as part of their course on human rights in international relations. They are all very welcome.

I will read the explanation of parliamentary privilege to our guests, which we must do before every meeting. Before we begin I wish to explain some limitations to parliamentary privilege and the practice of the Houses as regards references witnesses may make to another person or persons in their evidence. The evidence of witnesses physically present or who give evidence from within the parliamentary precincts is protected, pursuant to both the Constitution and statute, by absolute privilege. However, witnesses and participants who are to give evidence from a location outside the parliamentary precincts are asked to note that they may not benefit from the same level of immunity from legal proceedings as a witness giving evidence from within the parliamentary precincts does and may consider it appropriate to take legal advice on the matter. Witnesses are also asked to note that only evidence connected with the subject matter should be given and should respect directions given by the Chair. They should also respect the parliamentary practice to the effect that, where possible, they should neither criticise nor make charges against any person, persons or entity either by name or in such a way as to make him, her or it identifiable or otherwise engage in speech that might be regarded as damaging to the good name of the person or entity. Members are reminded of the long-standing parliamentary practice to the effect that they should not comment on, criticise or make charges against a person outside the Houses or an official, either by name or in such a way as to make him, her or it identifiable.

On behalf of the committee I would very much like to welcome Ms Eileen Weir, network co-ordinator, Shankill Women's Centre, and Ms Susan McCrory, managing director, Falls Women's Centre, to discuss women and constitutional change. I thank them both for their attendance today.

I now call Ms McCrory to make her opening statement followed by Ms Weir.

Ms Susan McCrory:

I wish to take this opportunity to thank the joint committee for our invitation today. It is a great pleasure for me to be here.

I am currently the managing director of Falls Women’s Centre. I will first give a bit of background. Falls Women's Centre is based in the middle of the Falls Road in the heart of west Belfast. We were established by local women in 1982 at the height of the conflict. Today, our centre employs 24 staff. We provide childcare, education and training and advice. Our advice and advocacy supports women and survivors of domestic violence, rape and abuse right down to supporting them through the cost-of-living crisis we have today with food banks, fuel vouchers and welfare benefits. Our training and education is up to a standard of level 5, which is university level. At the moment, with funding we have for that, we are able to provide free education to women on benefits in the hope of moving them into education.

In terms of the constitutional conversation, Falls Women's Centre and Shankill Women's Centre have always worked at cross-community level. The 14 women's centres right across the North work with each other at cross-community level, but we never referred to it as cross-community good relations. We referred to it as women coming together to share and support each other and create a better future, particularly because we all work in disadvantaged areas. However, we have changed our language as we have gone on and matched our language with Government level and policy level.

Much change came to the community sector with the Good Friday Agreement. A lot of change came with the European funding and the support that came into the community. We saw ourselves getting more structured in employment and becoming employers. We became more grounded in our community in terms of community development and moving on.

In 2016, Brexit came and changed a lot of conversations. People in the North did not necessarily vote to leave the European Union, but we had to. As part of the UK democracy, we were forced to leave with Brexit. Therefore, Brexit changed the conversation. Do we want to go with the UK or do we want to see how we can become something different and get back into the European Union? That is still very prevalent today. The people in the North still wish to go back into the European Union.

However, with that came the constitutional conversation. Around 2019, Ms Weir and I came together with Ulster University to design a template that would allow the constitutional conversation. For us, it involved sitting around a table with academics asking us about the best language to use and what would be offensive and not offensive to people and how we would begin using language that would allow the conversation to begin to look at a shared island. With that, we have worked since 2019 on bringing women together and creating opportunities for education, particularly around community development, leadership and social issues. We then brought in issues around what a shared island would look like. If we had a shared island tomorrow, what would women want? The biggest thing we have found is that women at a grassroots level need to be involved. If we look at the situation and how things work, we are in the middle of an election and everyone is selling their manifesto. However, people on the doorstep do not necessarily know and understand a full manifesto.

For us as women, we want to bring it down to basic bread-and-butter issues. What would having a shared island look like for us? What would it entail in terms of education, health, the economy, our children’s future and dealing with the past? How would it understand our different faith bases, our different affiliations to organisations and our own cultures? Even those have changed because we have become a more multicultural society. Now, we say that we need to have more discussions with the new cultures that have come to our country. It is not just orange and green, Catholic and Protestant. There is a wider range to consider.

Our main focus is women. This is all about women. It is about gender equality and how, as women, we and our issues do not get lost in any future discussion. Our issues cannot be generalised and called “equality”. For women, childcare, education and confidence are major barriers. When we discuss gender equality, we are talking about drilling down into the specifics that will help women to move forward.

Ms Weir will discuss moving on from the Good Friday Agreement. The agreement has created the peace. We can never ignore the great work it has done because it has brought peace to the North of Ireland, but has it brought a future yet? It has had more pit stops along the way and more long breaks than we intended, and there is still much left to be implemented within the agreement to allow the shared island discussion to come into effect. For me, the Good Friday Agreement is still the bedrock of moving forward on anything that is about bringing peace to the North and the South.

We have been through the Covid-19 pandemic and are now in a cost-of-living crisis. While we have tried to consider the strategic level, our main concern as a community and grassroots organisation is working and serving women on the ground. For the past number of years, we have worked on helping people with food parcels, fuel poverty, women losing their houses because of mortgage increases and women trying to find employment. Women in part-time employment who are low-paid workers are sometimes worse off than people on benefits. Our main work has been focused on trying to support women within our community while hopefully moving towards a new future as the situation progresses.

Ms Eileen Weir:

I thank the committee for the invitation. I also work with Shankill Women’s Centre and co-ordinate a network in an area hit by the worst part of the Troubles. There were more people murdered and more devastation in north Belfast than in any other part of Belfast. I believe there are 26 interfaces inside a 2-mile or 3-mile radius. It is very patchwork, as there is no one constant community. You move from one community to another and another. The area I work in is like a patchwork quilt.

Due to peace building, good relations and the Good Friday Agreement, community workers, who are undervalued, still continue to carry out their work. We do not see as much violence in terms of murders and bombings, which is a blessing, but that is solely down to the people working at grassroots level trying to keep such violence at bay. We still have trouble at our interfaces nightly and daily, but it is more of a recreational violence now than what it used to be called, namely, sectarian violence. It is just one of those things that happens that we have learned to live with, but we should not have had to do so.

This brings me back to the Good Friday Agreement. Unfortunately, much of what women, in particular the Northern Ireland Women’s Coalition, fought to have included in the Good Friday Agreement to promote reconciliation among the general population has still not been implemented. There are still communities right across Northern Ireland that are being controlled and gatekept by so-called paramilitaries and where voices that speak out cannot be heard without the threat of intimidation.

My submission highlights three or four different elements. When I campaigned and voted for the Good Friday Agreement and 71.2% or 71.4% of people voted for it on the basis of what it contained, the civic forum was a great attraction for women in particular because it was a platform at a time when women could not get on platforms. They still find it difficult to get on platforms. The civic forum was suspended in 2002 and never restored. It was another avenue for us to be able to advise and consult our political representatives and tell them that the way they were doing things was perhaps not the right way. At least it was a method of consultation, but we do not have that now. As such, 71.4% of people are not getting what they voted for.

The next issue is a big one and everyone, including the Irish Government, is running away from it, namely, our bill of rights. You could say that our conflict started over 50 years ago with a rights agenda for all. Twenty-six years on from the Good Friday Agreement, we are still fighting to establish a bill of rights. In a survey by the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission in 2021, which was not that long ago, 62% of respondents agreed on starting a process to achieve a bill of rights for Northern Ireland, 88% strongly agreed that it should contain something about our mental and physical health, 88% agreed on the right to education, 87% agreed on the right to a safe, clean, healthy and sustainable environment, 86% agreed on the right to food, 84% agreed on the right to adequate accommodation, 84% agreed on the right to an adequate standard of living and 83% agreed on the right to work. The calculation of these figures is not only based on communities, but on community workers, steering groups, the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission, the Equality Commission for Northern Ireland and some other statutory bodies, but we are still sitting and waiting. Everyone is running away from even sitting down to have a conversation about having a process for us to establish a bill of rights. A bill of rights is crucial. We started off with the civil rights movement to try to gain rights, but we still do not have that 26 years on from the Good Friday Agreement.

Something that is abused within the Good Friday Agreement – it was put in as a safeguard – is the petition of concern whereby a political party can vote against something that does not suit it even where the majority in Stormont would like to see it pass. One party has the power to stop legislation.

We were out for two years, in for two years and out for five years, and any legislation that was actually achieved in that time was lobbied for by women who went to Westminster and lobbied there while Stormont was down and trying to decide what it was going to do. We were able to get the gay marriage legislation through. We were able to get the abortion Act amended and put through, not to mention a number of other things for which we campaigned at grassroots level. We took them to Westminster while we did not have Stormont, because we were able to do that. It is very concerning when a majority of people vote to have something changed and then one political party abuses the petition of concern.

The other thing that was put in, and it was a last-minute thing but they were able to get it in, was integrated education. When the Good Friday Agreement was signed 26 years ago, the level of integrated education at that time was 7%. I think we are at 7.2% 26 years on. Integrated education goes hand-in-hand with shared housing. Unless we have shared housing, we will have an integrated education system that is sending children home to their own communities. They are not mixing outside school; they are mixing inside school. When they come out of school they are going back into their communities of single identity. We need to seriously look at shared housing, so when our children go to integrated education or any type of education and when they come home, they are meeting people from different cultural backgrounds and different religions in their own community. I am not talking orange and green but something that is very much representative of our civic society, which is more than the orange and green. We have big populations in our community, and they have been there for as long as I can remember. They are our Indian community, our Chinese community and most recently our Polish community and people from the Philippines. The nurses and a lot of our social and healthcare workers are people who came here to settle and work many years ago. Within the women's movement, we do not talk about orange and green. We talk about women, and women who represent our civic society.

We have been up and down with strand 2. It has not been stable. Every time we start to plan, budget and keep down the turmoil, poverty remains the biggest issue here. We have people who are still living in disadvantaged areas - those most disadvantaged and affected by our conflict - and are living in poverty. Mental health is especially something. We keep getting yearly budgets and we have to go with a begging bowl to actually get those budgets.

With regard to the women's movement, Falls Women's Centre is 40 years old and Shankill Women's Centre is 38 years old. Long before the Good Friday Agreement, we were actually doing the hard work at grassroots level. Women were actually running their communities because most of the men were in prison. Women were the breadwinners and the ones who got their kids educated. They were the ones who clothed their children, and now they are the ones who are being penalised.

I will speak for my own organisation and project, which is the Greater North Belfast Women's Network. I have 18 groups with women in them associated with that network. I will set out how many people we would probably see within all of the groups in the shared north Belfast community fund in any given year. Some 11,878 people have come through our doors in a single year. If you multiply that by 30 or 40 years, you can understand the impact that community is having on our communities and our peace process.

We need a lot more in reconciliation. We may have peace but we do not have reconciliation and the two must go hand-in-hand when we are talking about a lasting peace. I actually want to see a lasting peace, whatever comes out of the Good Friday Agreement, when we get everything that we voted for and the constitutional questions in that. We need to get it out and inform the grassroots people. We keep getting papers from universities and different departments. You would really need somebody to translate them for me to even understand them. We have asked about the document on numerous occasions. The last one was the Windsor Framework. They sent those documents to us to read, analyse and take out to the grassroots women to inform them because a lot of mistruths were being told. In politics, that happens. We actually had to demand an easy-read version. We should not, as women who are 51% of the population in Northern Ireland, have to demand to get an easy-read version for us to understand what is actually happening with our country.

Inequality is still a big issue. Resolution 1325 is not recognised in Northern Ireland, which means we do not have a right to be at the table when it comes to peace talks. We have to try to get in through the back door or just gatecrash and do what the community sector does: apologise and say sorry rather than asking for permission. That is the way we live our lives in Northern Ireland across all the communities. If it needs to be done, we actually do it. However, the big thing that has come out when I look around and speak to the women - I was with the women yesterday - is that 99% of people say the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer, and that gap is getting bigger. Without women in particular, the work that the women's centres do, and which other community workers right across Northern Ireland do, we would not have the tourist trade that we have. If we were not doing our jobs, who wants to go to Belfast if there is rioting? Who wants to travel? Who wants to set up their business if there is a fear of their business being petrol-bombed? We have made that sustainable but we are getting nothing out of those profits that we have made happen over the years. I want to see tourism but I want the people who actually look over at Titanic quarter to be able to afford to go into it. If you are taking a family of four into the Titanic quarter, in the most deprived area, it costs £100 to get in. There are no concessions, no nothing. We are not sharing in that but it is the people in the communities who have actually made tourism happen and made that infrastructure. Every time there is something being built now, you can bet your life it is because of tourism and not because of the people who actually lived there and came through the worst of the conflict.

I will leave it there because I am getting on a soapbox at the minute, and I do not want to be.

Fergus O'Dowd (Louth, Fine Gael)
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It is a very important soapbox, and the points the witnesses have both made are very telling. It is enlightening in particular to hear people with the same perspective from different backgrounds talking about the same things. It is reflected down here in our society as well in terms of the issues. Ms Weir particularly spoke about new communities. In our country down here, 20% of our population was not born on this part of the island. That is hugely important. New people here enrich our culture, community and society, and they will change it. We need to have them sitting in this Parliament as well in their own right. What the witnesses are talking about, I think, is engagement, acceptance of change and differences, and working together. I know we will be visiting Belfast shortly and I really look forward to hearing the witnesses.

Your voice is very clear. I like everything you say, if that means anything to you, because you speak the same language as I speak in my constituency about poverty and people not getting their just rewards for the efforts they are making. At the end of the day, you are the people who have made the peace possible. It would not have happened without your support.

Will Deputy Feighan take the Chair? I have something else to go to. I apologise for this.

Frank Feighan (Sligo-Leitrim, Fine Gael)
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I am not sure if it is in order for me to speak now so I think-----

Rose Conway-Walsh (Mayo, Sinn Fein)
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Would you mind if I speak next?

Frank Feighan (Sligo-Leitrim, Fine Gael)
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I do not mind at all.

Rose Conway-Walsh (Mayo, Sinn Fein)
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Thank you, Chair. Unfortunately, I have a meeting as well, with the Department of public expenditure. We are delighted to have the witnesses here, and I thank Ms Weir and Ms McCrory for the effort in coming down. I am more familiar with the Falls Road than I am with the Shankill but I have been to both and I see a real opportunity here in the work we are doing because it is quite similar to the things we are looking at. We have just completed a section on the economy. I remember several years ago doing work on the economy through the eyes of a woman. That was in Belmullet. I come from Mayo. It is so important to have women's voices heard, and I do not just mean women who are heard anyway. What we are trying to do on this committee and on this piece of work we are doing, women and the Constitution, is to get to the hard-to-reach voices. I really see it as an opportunity. It is like the gap. Like Ms Weir, I am very concerned about the gap. If we continue in the same vein, that gap is going to continue to widen, and the consequences of that gap widening in terms of people being left behind is just not where anybody wants to be. I look forward to having a fuller conversation with the witnesses when we visit them, if that is okay.

My first question is for both witnesses. We have talked a lot here about a bill of rights and the need for one. What is hard for us to understand here is why anybody would not want a bill of rights. What threat is it to anybody to have such a bill in place? How do the witnesses see within a bill of rights the challenging conversations Ms McCrory identifies under "identity, allegiances and nationality"? How do they see that sitting within the bill of rights, and how can we progress the bill of rights, from their point of view?

Ms Eileen Weir:

From my point of view, the bill of rights is crucial, in particular for women. Now that we are out of Europe, it is even more crucial because we do not know which way things are going to turn. The bill of rights cannot replace anything that is already in the Good Friday Agreement. I think the constitutional question within the Good Friday Agreement covers the constitutional question, and civil society will decide and has the choice whether to remain or leave, whatever it may be. I do not think a bill of rights needs to incorporate anything about the constitutional question - that is only my view of it - because it is already covered within the Good Friday Agreement. The bill of rights allows a lot more for protection. I know that at this minute in time we have other people - quite rightly; they are entitled to do this - going against parts of the Windsor Framework, in particular Article 2, which is rights-based. It scares me that there are people actively trying to take rights out of a document because it is tied to Europe. It makes it more crucial for us to have a bill of rights.

As custodians of the Good Friday Agreement, the Irish Government and the UK Government need to sit down. When I was at a human rights meeting on Monday, they gave me all this information because they knew I was coming here and they said they cannot get anybody to engage in this. They have been everywhere. They have been in Westminster, they have been in Stormont, they have approached the Irish Government and nobody wants to sit down and talk about it. As custodians of the Good Friday Agreement, the UK Government and the Irish Government have something to do around this because they are guarantors of that. They have oversight that things within the Good Friday Agreement are implemented in the way in which they were meant at the time. Only four were mentioned. I could have gone on forever. Look at what has happened to the legacy Bill. There are a lot of things happening that we voted for. What people see in the communities within the Good Friday Agreement is that the men got out of prison and that was the end of the Good Friday Agreement because nothing else seems to be moving.

Rose Conway-Walsh (Mayo, Sinn Fein)
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Really, what Ms Weir is saying is that the two Governments need to drive it on and to overcome whatever barriers or opposition there is.

Ms Eileen Weir:

Absolutely.

Rose Conway-Walsh (Mayo, Sinn Fein)
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That is a very concrete thing. I propose that from this committee we write to the Taoiseach to ask that the Irish Government play its full part in that and start that process around the bill of rights and, I think, especially-----

Ms Eileen Weir:

I think a lot of what comes in the future will depend on that bill of rights. Why would you want people to have a constitutional change if they do not even have rights within their own country as they are? A lot of things need to be done, both North and South, in order that people within civil society are protected, and a bill of rights will do that with people in the North. People have their own bill of rights down here. They are part of Europe. We are not. We could have gone along with it if we had not voted to come out of Europe through Brexit. The fact that we did come out not only raised the constitutional question but also raised what safeguards we have under the law with our human rights. A bill of rights would look after that.

Rose Conway-Walsh (Mayo, Sinn Fein)
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The witnesses refer to the legacy Bill, and we hope that Keir Starmer, if he gets in, will keep his promise of repealing the legacy Act.

Ms Eileen Weir:

Hopefully.

Rose Conway-Walsh (Mayo, Sinn Fein)
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It certainly does not serve anybody, and we will do our part on this committee to ensure that promise is kept.

Did Ms McCrory want to say anything on the bill of rights?

Ms Susan McCrory:

As regards the bill of rights, I can remember writing the very first response to the consultation, which I still have on my pen drive, and I can remember writing the second response. The bill of rights is in the ether. No one speaks about it. I suppose we have had Stormont go down so many times too that it has allowed the bill of rights to fall right into the background. When we look at a bill of rights, we look at it with a woman's perspective. In section 75 of the Northern Ireland Act, men and women are put together. There is a lot lost in terms of equality and gender inequality in just referring to men and women. For us, the bill of rights was about being specific to women. CEDAW Resolution 1325 is now Ireland-based but we do not hear anything about it. We do not know what it actually does. We have not heard anything, really, that comes out of it for us. Again, when we look at a bill of rights, so much has changed in 25 years in terms of population, culture and even, maybe, being disinterested in the politics and looking at our politics now in a totally different light from the way we looked at it 25 years ago. You had the energy, but now sometimes you look at them thinking, it is the same old, same old. It is, however, important that we begin a movement of understanding as to what a bill of rights would look at for us.

While a North of Ireland bill of rights would be big, because this relates to cross-Border areas such as health and education, there would have to be a cross-Border element in the bill of rights that would allow us access to better services.

Rose Conway-Walsh (Mayo, Sinn Fein)
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In the context of an all-Ireland charter of rights, as Ms McCrory mentioned, we have just had local elections. On Mayo County Council in 2024 and after all this time, we are coming back with 27 men and three women. While the challenges are certainly different, I just despair for us.

Ms Eileen Weir:

We are improving in the North. People have often approached me to go into politics, but I would not be able to toe the party line, irrespective of the party in question. That is me being honest. I also find that if I had been in politics, I would not have been able to achieve what I have achieved working in the community at grassroots level and making a difference in people's lives. Our politicians are not making a difference in people's lives but we can actually say we are. We are making a difference to thousands of people's lives because when we educate a woman, we educate the whole family.

Rose Conway-Walsh (Mayo, Sinn Fein)
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That is correct.

Ms Eileen Weir:

We are not men haters. If a woman is educated, her children and husband will be better educated. It goes right through. We have had grandparents, parents, children and infants all coming through because they see that when they go into a community-based education programme, people actually have time for them. Education has let a lot of people down in the North, but if people struggle, we bring them in and tell them to give it a go. If they are struggling, we ask them to let us know and we put a support workers with them to help. You will not get that in BIFE or in universities or anywhere else. We open that gate for our women to get into universities. Many of our women go to university after coming into our centres to build their confidence and to get their open college network qualifications or Open University courses. A few woman came through our programmes together. They were moved about. They did some stuff with me and with Ms McCrory. They have now come out of university with their community development degree. We do not simply look after women in the sense of them coming in for a cup of tea and having a yarn. They come in and we fulfil their lives. They then come back from university and go back into the community to volunteer as well as working.

Last week, I did a survey with a lot of the woman with whom I have worked. While this is only an approximation, there were 2,400 unpaid voluntary hours worked in one year, which are additional to any funding we get, in my own single project. That is from women who have come through and have seen the need and struggles we are having at grassroots level. The grassroots level is forgotten about, even within the women's movement sometimes. Although I support the women's movement 100%, when it comes to grassroots issues, some of them do not get it.

Rose Conway-Walsh (Mayo, Sinn Fein)
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It is a hard issue. Ms Weir is exactly right. I have looked in depth at this. There is a direct correlation between the level of education of a woman in the household and how that impacts on young people in that household. Tackling the whole knot in education and the training group is something we need to address. I look forward to continuing this conversation with Ms Weir when the committee visits.

Ms Eileen Weir:

It is never really mentioned that the women's centres across the North, 38 or 40 years ago, were the first examples of integrated education because women came through the door, not religion. We have been integrated throughout those years. When politicians were shaking hands at the signing of the Good Friday Agreement, me and Ms McCrory were friends. We did not need to shake hands because we had already built those relationships up. Sometimes, I am sorry for it; sometimes it can be a pain. Within the women's sector and the women's movement, we have managed to build those relationships right across this whole island. There are parts of Dublin and the South in which I am well known. I worked with women in Ronanstown and, 19 to 21 years ago, I worked with the Shanty education centre in Tallaght. We have been doing this for 38 years. We have been working on a cross-Border basis for all those years.

Rose Conway-Walsh (Mayo, Sinn Fein)
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The witnesses were ahead of their time.

Ms Eileen Weir:

We got no recognition for the work we have done.

Rose Conway-Walsh (Mayo, Sinn Fein)
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They are now as they are before this committee. I am going to finish now as I have to go after this. I ask the witnesses, when they sit down next week or whenever, to submit practical things to the committee which it can do to support and advance the work the witnesses are doing. It is deeply appreciated they have come here today, as is the work they do.

Frances Black (Independent)
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Does Ms McCrory wish to speak?

Ms Susan McCrory:

When we speak about the constitutional conversation, it is not just about the North; it is about the women in the South too. Whatever comes along down the line will change everyone's lives and it is important that women on both sides of the Border get involved in the conversation.

Ms Eileen Weir:

We have actually started that conversation with the Blaney Blades in Monaghan. We were down there recently.

Rose Conway-Walsh (Mayo, Sinn Fein)
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The witnesses are welcome in Mayo anytime.

Ms Susan McCrory:

We will take that invitation up.

Frank Feighan (Sligo-Leitrim, Fine Gael)
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They are also welcome in Sligo.

Frances Black (Independent)
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I thank Ms McCrory and Ms Weir. I cannot thank them enough for coming before the committee today. It is so powerful. I am a bit disappointed we do not have as many members from the committee present today. I know there are elections on both sides of the Border and everyone is out campaigning but we need to send out the witnesses' statements to all of the members so they can hear what they have said because this relates the core work of the committee. What they outlined today is really the work this committee should be doing. To listen to what the witnesses are saying and to listen to their expertise is inspirational. It is vital we hear from them about what a good life and society means to their communities and what they want for themselves as communities. It is so important and I am so glad this committee is hearing from women like the witnesses who are an inspiration and who are rooted in their communities connecting with people every single day. This is what we need to continue to do. I look forward to visiting both of them when the committee takes that trip. Hopefully I am able to go at that time.

They said a lot. I listened to the opening statements online and heard what they had to say. As I said, they are an inspiration. Ms Weir's mentioned the Northern Ireland Women's Coalition. It has been touched upon that political parties have traditionally been very male dominated and how that has impacted the gender dynamics of the peace process. We now see two women running the North. There are two women now in place. Can Ms Weir speak a bit more about her view of women's political participation in the North? I would like to hear more about that. What does she think has changed, if anything, and what problems remain? Obviously, she has mentioned a good few of those problems this morning, particularly the bill of rights, which I will come back to in a few minutes. How does she think more women can be encouraged to get involved in these conversations about the Bill of rights and about all the things she spoke about today such as constitutional future, health and education and so forth?

How could we bring more women on board with all that?

Ms Eileen Weir:

There are two answers to that. I will answer from the perspective of the communities I work in. I work right across them. I am an outreach worker, so I do not just work on the Shankill Road. Much of my work is outside on an outreach basis. In some communities, women will not speak out or get involved because of the so-called paramilitaries. We call them "so-called paramilitaries". We also call them "gatekeepers", "gangs" and "drug dealers" but they are all the same people. It just depends on the slant. Women in those communities are fearful of speaking out to have their voices heard. That is one of the reasons the network was set up, because it was a conduit. They brought the issues to the network and when I got the opportunity I allowed their voices to be heard through me so their families were not at risk, their houses would not be attacked and their children were safe and not being intimidated. It is the case that women in those areas are afraid to speak out because of what happens in those communities.

On getting women involved, this is where women's centres and the network I co-ordinate play a vital role in encouraging those women to have a voice and making it safe for them to say what they need to say and put their trust in someone to help them. We are getting better at it and more and more women are coming to the fold, but politics in Northern Ireland does not make women very comfortable and never has. Women have more sense in some cases than to get involved in the political arena because of what we have seen in the past 26 years of non-government. The Assembly has been down more than it has been up.

However, we are getting there and Michelle O'Neill and Emma Little-Pengelly are doing a great job. We see it in communities. When they are fighting at the top, we have the problem on the ground. When there is harmony at the top, we have a better harmony on the ground. The better our politicians behave and the more inclusive they are, the easier it is for community workers to go about our business and do the work we are paid to do, but not if we are constantly in battles, in parks separating youth or standing at an interface at the weekends. I am talking about women at 73 years of age going out at the weekends to stop interface violence. They are the grassroots of the politics. They see they are not getting anything from being in power. No matter what, you can be the best person in the world, but you have to stick to your party and if your party line says something, you do it.

Women do engage and there are new programmes coming out. Shankill Women's Centre is running a fantastic programme at the moment called Change Makers and it is all about the political system. It goes right back to why we vote and the different types of voting. The participants were brought to Westminster and are coming to the Dáil. Change Makers is funded by the Department of Foreign Affairs, oddly enough, and it is all about trying to encourage women into the political system. We now give those who want it a pathway to do that through doing this course in the Shankill Women's Centre and it has been very successful. Every time it is advertised there are waiting lists. We are doing stuff about it but we still have an awful lot of trauma and transference of trauma and no one seems to be doing anything about that. We need something in the bill of rights that we are entitled to treatment for that trauma and to mental health and not only a sticking plaster to hold things together. All it does is hold it together. It does not cure it or get to the root of it. We need to look at trauma more seriously rather than label it mental health.

Ms Susan McCrory:

It is early days to speak about what is happening in Stormont because the politicians only just came back in and they have come back to a lot of problems. They came back to the problems of the 18 months when they were out. We are now getting fed from the Government that it wants to fix everything, it understands our healthcare has serious problems and it is there to fix them - it has not been there to fix them for 18 months - and then we are told that it does not have a budget. In the community even today, I am sitting without knowing what my budget is. I do not know and will possibly not know until December. I know there will be a budget but I do not know what it will be. I sit on a staff who have been offered their posts but I have not received a letter of offer yet because we do not have a budget. What has happened now is that we have moved into elections. That has put everything else on hold. We are continuously on hold. I would not say that is gendered. It is political.

At the end of the day, whatever politics people pick, they go with their parties, whether they are female or male. There is not necessarily strong female gender equality in any party. Does any political party look at the party and ask what it is doing on gender equality or what issues it needs to provide for women to get them more involved in politics? That is not really looked at. If some of the politicians are asked whether they understand UN Security Council Resolution 1325 they do not know what it is. There has to be an education of political parties to understand gender inequality and equally to understand poverty and disadvantage and what they mean for women, especially for women in grassroots communities. That gets lost in the whole mix of trying to do a whole national thing.

On strengthening a woman's voice at a grassroots level, to bring it to the level we have has taken years of working with the same woman so she gets to the point of being able to trust what is called "the other side" and being able to sit in the room with women from the other side, say what she believes in and feels and feels safe to do so. That has taken many years of individual work with women, bringing them forward. Our society has changed. It has got bigger. Its scope has changed and that has to be looked at. We cannot keep making our politics orange and green, although the conflict cannot be brushed under the carpet. It needs to be brought forward and nurtured in a way that we can keep going forward into a new Ireland, a new shared island or whatever is to be. There are many different strands to trying to sort this out.

Frances Black (Independent)
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I totally agree. It comes back to the bill of rights.

The lack of progress on the proposed bill of rights is really depressing, to be honest. We all know this.

Ms Weir mentioned trauma and that she would like to see intergenerational trauma addressed. I have seen this in the other work I do with regard to areas including addiction. It was even the case when this committee went up to the Shankill Road many years ago during the last term. Conversations took place when we were there. I remember one young man saying that when he was walking down the road and a motorbike backfired, he went into this really hypervigilant state. I am sure it is the same for both sides of the community.

We cannot see intergenerational trauma and its impact but it is definitely there. I work in the area of mental health. Ms Weir mentioned that this topic should definitely be included in the proposed bill of rights. I would like to hear more from both witnesses about their thoughts in this area. They are both working with women, in particular, dealing with this intergenerational trauma. I would, therefore, like to hear more on this subject with regard to the work they do and how they would see this being put into the bill of rights. Additionally, I would like to hear about other aspects in this regard, including, for example, what the witnesses' vision is for the bill of rights. I ask them to expand a little bit more on this point because I think their vision for the bill of rights is very important.

There are three parts to this query. I would also like to hear what the witnesses think the Southern Government should do. I ask this question because we need to be able to put this into our recommendations. I would, then, like to hear from the witnesses about this topic in more detail. I know they touched on it already during their contributions but I would like to hear in more detail what the witnesses would like the Southern Government to do to help restart progress towards putting in place the bill of rights. I would also like to know what the witnesses would perhaps like the committee to do. I am giving them loads of things to comment on now and I hope they are able to cover it all.

Ms Eileen Weir:

Okay. The trauma thing comes in many shapes and forms. What I am noticing, and I am not the only one who is noticing this because I have spoken to some of my colleagues in the rural parts of the North because we are a network stretching right across the whole province, is that the women from 43-plus have really been left behind. These were the women who lived through the 30 years of the conflict and who suffered most of the trauma.

There seems to be a concentration, which does need to happen too, on our young people. I am all for our young people as well and money being invested in them. I am talking about investment and not just funding. I am sick of hearing about funding. I ask that we be invested in and that there be investment in the past 40 years and the work we have done. These women now are of an age where they are still suffering from trauma but there does not seem to be any investment in this age group any longer. It is a bit like what is being said is we should forget about those who went through it all, who suffered the most and who are the ones transferring that trauma and we should concentrate on our youth. While I still think we need to concentrate on our youth, these youth are in homes that have been affected by trauma.

Frances Black (Independent)
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Yes.

Ms Eileen Weir:

We are not going to be able to fix things at the youth level if we do not fix it at the adult level. These two aspects go hand in hand. It is not possible to buy your way out of trauma unless you actually work with the communities that suffered most of that trauma through the 30 years of the conflict.

To me, trauma is just swept over. We concentrate on educating our youth and working with them, which is great. I do not have a problem with that. I do have a problem with what is happening with the age group from 43 upwards. I refer to those 43-plus because these were the people who voted for the Good Friday Agreement. These were the people who made the peace process possible and who are now being left behind. The majority of these people are the ones who are transferring the trauma. Sometimes, they do not even realise they are transferring this trauma.

Frances Black (Independent)
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In most or even the majority of cases.

Ms Eileen Weir:

It is in most cases. I have young women coming to me and telling me they would be afraid to go up the Shankill Road. Now, they are 21 years old and I tell them this is their parents' trauma. They tell me what their daddies always say to them is not to wear their uniforms if they go up there and not to be doing this and that and the other. That is the trauma of those parents. It is very basic and is being transferred on to another generation. It is a well-educated generation and we need these young people. The particular young woman who spoke to me was terrified, but this was the transference of someone else's fear onto her.

Turning to the question on the bill of rights, we have done many consultations on it. I really do not know all that we need to cover in it. I am not an academic and I do not want to be one. I want whatever they do, though, to be put into easy language so I can take it to the grassroots level. I do know, though, and I will leave this with the committee, about a statement I got from the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission. It consulted 160 civic society organisations across all communities and sectors in all areas of Northern Ireland. Members of NGOs, trade unions, charities and grassroots community groups from every section of our society were included to bring them together to work towards achieving the goal of a rights-based society in Northern Ireland. I will leave this document with the committee.

The things being asked for are our basic rights. We are not asking to be given a pay rise that we have not had in 30 years. It is not about giving us more money. It is about making where we live safe. It is about making people queuing at food banks not ashamed to ask to be paid a proper living wage and not a minimum wage. Some of the accommodation being given out could involve a two-bedroom house and six people. In other cases, houses with stairs are being given out to people who have severely disabled children. There are, therefore, many social and economic things that we need to put into the bill of rights to ensure we can live and have a proper education.

We have young people leaving school who still cannot spell the name of the streets they live on. Why are young people being allowed to leave school with no education when we have paid for it from the age of five? At the age of 16, they are coming out and still cannot read. We need to be looking at the systems to ensure our education institutions are fit for purpose for the generations there now. We must look at our curriculum to ensure it is providing an appropriate education. Not everybody is going to go to university. Those who do want to go should have that pathway available to them but there should also be pathways available for those who are not that way inclined. There should be a right to work and a right to a job.

We lost a lot of industry during our conflict, some of it rightly and some of it wrongly. It does not matter, though, because it was all still employment. When we look at what happened, we can see that we lost the shipyards, the Mackie factory, the Sirocco Ropeworks, all our stitching industry and all our mills. They ceased to exist during the conflict. We had hundreds of thousands of people employed who then became unemployed and no effort has been made to retrain those people to take up the jobs that were required.

There is much, then, that could be included. I have spoken to different people from different groups, from victim and survivor groups, about the bill of rights. It is sitting on the shelf and no one is even having a discussion about it. It may take a while to implement such a bill of rights, but people should at least sit down and have this discussion.

Why are we talking about constitutional change when we cannot even get a committee together across the UK, Ireland and Stormont, to discuss the bill of rights? Why do we not have that? We have a UN Security Council Resolution 1325 committee in Stormont, but it is not applicable in Northern Ireland. Why have a committee on something unless they are going to give it to us? There would be stuff in that which would give women more rights.

We do not have a seat at a table of negotiation. I work across 26 interfaces and was a representative at an interface. I do not have a seat at that table. I am not invited to that table. I want to be at that table and a lot of other women want to be at that table. We have got women who have come through our programmes and are now ready to have their voices heard. It has taken a while but they are there. Even to discuss the basic rights such as education, food and standard of living, people say enough is enough; enough is not enough. I want justice for families who have suffered for 30 years. We are 30 years behind everything because we had no politics for 30 years as we were too busy fighting. There was only one type of politics then. It was us and them.

We used to be way ahead of the Irish Government on a lot of things. Now they are way ahead of us on a lot of things because we had 30 years of no political decisions being made for civic society on economic and social change. It was always about the conflict. It was always about the orange and green. We are fed up. All the women who I work with, and that is many, are fed up too. There are so many different opinions among them and they do not always agree but they are fed up of not being treated like human beings. They are fed up of not even having a bill of rights that gives them the right to have an education system that works, a health service that works, proper houses that they can live in and a decent standard of living where they do not have to borrow money to take their kids away for the weekend to a caravan park. That is what is happening.

Our whole society is being let down because we do not have that social impact and economy. If that is done, I tell you, everything else will grow from that. We are the roots. Trees only grow if they are rooted. If you are not rooted in communities or in civic society we will just go around in circles. We need somebody brave enough to sit down and say "Right, let us have a committee. Let us talk about this. Let us see what we can do." Bring civic society in, bring the Human Rights Commission in and bring the Equality Commission in. Those people are actually down at grass roots level asking us what we think.

Ms Susan McCrory:

When we talk about a bill of rights, it has gone very quiet. It has not been talked about in 20 years. If you go up to the North and ask any generation or any age group if they know what a bill of rights means, they will not know. We know because it was around during our time and we were driving it forward. To look at a bill of rights, and I would say even the South could put their hands up too and ask would many people in my area know or understand the bill of rights? For me, it is a conversation right across schools, youth groups and community groups. Do you understand what a bill of rights is? Do you understand what rights are? Do you understand what gender rights are? That is where you need to actually start, at that base, and go right back down and say let us have the conversation on what rights are and move that conversation along. Before we ever get to a consultation process, have the conversation first.

In terms of intergenerational trauma, that is absolutely massive. In our community, we are facing intergenerational trauma that has been passed down to three generations and maybe four now. I look at west Belfast and I look at families I know because I grew up in west Belfast, in Ballymurphy, so if you want to talk conflict you could not be any closer to the conflict. I know from these families by watching them, watching their children and watching their children's children, that there are now high levels of suicide and high levels of prescription drug addiction. That is because of the intergenerational trauma. It is seen in the most deprived areas. It is sitting on the surface looking at you every day of the week. That is where we need to look at problems. How can we address them? How can we make life better for our future children?

I would even say I am guilty of intergenerational trauma. I do not want my children to leave west Belfast. I do not want them to move out of the area I am in. Should they move, I would ask where are you going? How far are you going? We are all victims in some shape or form. Some of us are a wee bit more healthy and able to cope and some of us are not.

In terms of that, there has to be something around mental health. I would say there has to be something around mental health on a shared island because it has crossed borders. It has crossed into both areas. We look at the Southern Government and we have to look at a way of working on more joined-up efforts on serious issues that we have.

Frances Black (Independent)
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Do I have any more time, Cathaoirleach?

Frank Feighan (Sligo-Leitrim, Fine Gael)
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We will let the Senator in.

Frances Black (Independent)
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I thank the Cathaoirleach. That is powerful stuff. I have a couple of questions I want to finish off with but I want to get it clear in my head that when the witnesses are talking about the Southern Government, are they saying with regard to the bill of rights that there should be a committee here? Or should it be a joint committee with the UK and Stormont and do they think it is something that the Southern Government could drive, or should drive?

Ms Eileen Weir:

It could, depending on the political status and depending what is happening in the media at the time. I think the three governments we are talking about, Stormont, the UK Government and the Irish Government, have a responsibility to look at the bill of rights. It is in the Good Friday Agreement.

Frances Black (Independent)
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Who would Ms Weir like to see drive it?

Ms Eileen Weir:

I think it has to be driven by all three. It would be okay for the Irish Government to drive it if everything was quiet and there was not a question around the constitutional question, but if the Irish Government drive something like that, it could be translated in a different way. It has to be genuine. It is about engaging in the conversation with the other two parties. Sound them out; that is what we do in the community. We go to the grassroots and we ask them what the issues are. We try to draw it out. Can we sit down and have a conversation about this? That is what we have done with the constitutional question. We have had a conversation to talk about the issues. What is the point of not talking about it? We want to inform people but we do inform them that there may come a time where civic society will have a vote. We are asking them what they would like to see? Most of them are asking am I going to be better off or am I going to be worse off? That is really it, and the end of the day, it is social and economic.

From a personal point of view, I am going to go wherever I am going to be socially and economically better off.

I am not going to sign on to something that will make me worse off than I already am. I need to see those figures in front of me to make that decision. We are starting to have a conversation but that could be five, 15 or 20 years down the line and we are not even talking about the bill of rights. It is not logical to talk about something that may or may not happen and civic society will have the final decision on that but we have something in the Good Friday Agreement for which 71.2% of people have voted and we do not even have a conversation around it. We are having that conversation at grass roots level but we cannot get our political parties or governments to agree to implement it. That was probably a mistake by those who negotiated the Good Friday Agreement. We should have had an implementation body at that time to make sure that it was being implemented in the way it was supposed to be implemented.

The petition of concern was only to be implemented in the case of a fear against one culture or the other but it is being used for everything now. People were so happy to get it and the hope was there in the Good Friday Agreement. We have it on paper and in a document now and people have voted for this. The Irish and UK Governments back away and we allow Stormont to run it. There should have been something put in place at that time. There is no point in looking back and saying in hindsight. We are never too late to make people's lives better and that is what the bill of rights will do.

Ms Susan McCrory:

So much has changed in 25 years. When the Good Friday Agreement was created, it was created for that time. We are 25 years on and none of us saw Brexit coming down the line or us leaving the European Union. When we talk about a bill of rights, we must to talk about today and all the changes that have come. We are in a situation where the world is changing. We are looking at all the politicians and countries and all we see is corruption, with people looking to fill their own pockets. Politics is moving and changing, whether that is because of Covid-19 or the cost-of-living crisis that we have lived under. All over the world, people are looking for something different. If we look at the bill of rights, do we look at it as a UK bill rights, an all-Ireland bill of rights, or do we look at it as a Northern Ireland bill of rights? I do not have that answer now and no one has that answer currently. Does the UK want a bill of rights?

Again, if we look at Brexit, the people in the North voted to remain in Europe and that was wiped. We had to go with the majority vote, even though that is not what we wanted. It is a very difficult area. If we begin at the level of asking what would the public like to see where they live or what kind of life would a person like to have where they live, that would be the start of understanding the bill of rights. We could then see where it goes but I do not have the answer. Let us see these elections. We may have a Scottish referendum coming down the line. It is all changing constantly to be able to keep up with it. I would like to see the Irish Government involved and I would like to see more implementation of UN Security Council Resolution 1325 on an all-Ireland basis. It was embraced a couple of years ago by the Irish Government but we do not know how much of that has really impinged on the North or women in the North, so it would be good to see that.

Ms Eileen Weir:

I thank the Irish Government and in particular the Department of Foreign Affairs, which has invested in our peace process and still does to this day. I am funded by the Department of Foreign Affairs. I got a year of funding from it when nobody else would fund me. The Irish Government does its bit in financially supporting the work that happens at grassroots level and in peace building. I have a lot of time for it because it understands. It invests more money into the peace process and those hard-to-reach groups than we get from the UK Government. We all used to be able to be funded. We have an organisation trying to deal with 20 funders and it is no joke. We have 20 financial reports, 20 this and that, and it makes our work a lot harder while making the funders' work a lot harder also. When we are only getting year to year budgets, they are doing the same work year after year. We are reported out of our minds and if we had done half of the things that our Government does, we would not be in the job and we would not get a handshake when we are not voted in. We just walk out with our end salary and that is the end of the day, but this is not about us; it is about the grassroots.

I thank the Department of Foreign Affairs for the time and money that it has invested, in particular at grassroots level, right across the province. It does not go into just one area. It seems to understand the issues that we are facing at grassroots level. Just get your finger out with the bill of rights; that is all. We need something moving because it is another safeguard, particularly for women and children. We need better education systems and not something that was done 100 years ago. Our curriculum does not match what is needed. I hear this from head teachers, not from parents. Our education system is set up to educate those who are clever and a lot of our young people are not getting the time spent on them. They can become clever; you are not born stupid. Everyone can become clever if the proper systems are there to educate them better.

Frank Feighan (Sligo-Leitrim, Fine Gael)
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This has been a very interesting discussion.

Ms Eileen Weir:

It is all in a day's work.

Frank Feighan (Sligo-Leitrim, Fine Gael)
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There were a few questions I wanted to ask that have been asked regarding a civic forum, the bill of rights, integrated education and shared housing. I am delighted that the witnesses raised the Irish Government's funding from the shared island unit. There are a lot of good funders. While we recognise Stormont and the United Kingdom, Europe has been a huge funder for the Good Friday Agreement, but we also have our colleagues here from Georgia in the United States. The United States has certainly stepped up and helped and its interventions are very welcome. I want to put that on the record as well.

I am familiar with the work the work of the witnesses, in particular Ms McCrory, who I understand is a constituent of mine in Sligo-Leitrim, including north Roscommon and south Donegal, and she is very welcome. Any time I am in west Belfast, I always call into the Cultúrlann and the Falls Women's Centre is only down the street from it.

I have been very involved in shared and integrated education. I was on the Good Friday Agreement committee and the British-Irish Parliamentary Assembly with Baroness May Blood, who was a friend of mine. She was a formidable lady who certainly spearheaded it. She did not suffer fools gladly, for want of a better term. A lot of great work has been done.

Ms Weir spoke of working on the interfaces and this time last year, I was invited to the Belfast Boys' Model School, Ballysillan. Its principal, Mary Montgomery, did great work there in working to take her students away from the interfaces.

The Civic Forum is something that is often talked about but it has not been delivered. The bill of rghts is an issue. On the extension of equal marriage for LGBT people, a great friend of mine who is a Northern Ireland man and MP for St Helens North, Conor McGinn, was influential on that. It is amazing what can be done when there is persistence in pursuing certain issues.

The Good Friday Agreement is not perfect but has brought peace to the North. Brexit caused huge damage to North-South relations and east-west relations and we are beginning to get over that through the various frameworks that have been brought in. Whenever I go to the North and talk to people, it certainly is challenging and there are issues that are bubbling under the surface that you are dealing with at all times.

We now have family resource centres. When I started out in politics, we had one in my home town of Boyle and they now are all over, doing work in less challenging places. They give advice to politicians like me and when people come into the office and when we do not have the answers, we can tell people to try the family resource centre.

As those centres are based in areas that are less challenging then where our guests are from, the work you have done for 38 or 40 years is incredible. Ms McCrory spoke of mental health and intergenerational trauma and that issue needs to be looked at much more.

As I said, I very much enjoyed my visit to the Belfast Boys' Model School. Two colleagues of mine from Anglo-Irish Friendships- Frank Shivers and Mark Lindsay - brought me to other places on the Shankill Road as well. As somebody from a nationalist background-----

Ms Susan McCrory:

It must have been the Rex Bar.

Frank Feighan (Sligo-Leitrim, Fine Gael)
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You might not be too far away. It is something I would not have been familiar with, only for the Good Friday Agreement, and we need to do much more of that. We sometimes live in our own silos and we see it here at times when one Department does not talk to another Department. Conversations like those had today are very important. When talking about women in politics for example, bringing women into politics is a challenge. For the last ten years, my party and other major parties have had to have 40% women on the ticket and a lot of work is going on but we missed generations.

One point we have highlighted is social media and the dangers of abuse on social media. I noticed, particularly in these elections, that trying to get candidates from particular communities, especially women was very difficult but that knocking on the doors was not as bad. Sometimes, we claim that politics is such a cesspit that nobody will get involved. It was not bad, people came to the doors 99.9% of the time and while they might have said they were not going to vote for the individual, they were pleasant. We need to dial it down. We have highlighted the dangers of social media but we need to dial it down because we need now get community activists, but especially young women, into politics. As I said, there are two different jurisdictions and it is a lot simpler in the South than in Northern Ireland.

That is it. Our witnesses spoke about childcare and education and they are always welcome.