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UNCORRECTED TRANSCRIPT OF ORAL EVIDENCE To be published as HC 539-v House of COMMONS MINUTES OF EVIDENCE TAKEN BEFORE NORTHERN IRELAND AFFAIRS COMMITTEE The Europa Hotel, Belfast
'HATE CRIME' IN NORTHERN IRELAND
Monday 13 September 2004 MR BRIAN CAMPFIELD, MS PATRICIA McKEOWN, MR TOM GILLEN and MR NIGEL SMYTH
MS HAZEL FRANCEY, MR GERRY McBRIDE and MS CLARE MULLEN MR DÓNAL McKINNEY, MR PETER McGUIRE, MS MINA WARDLE, MR TOM WINSTON and MR JIM AULD
MS ROISIN McGLONE and MR BILLY McQUISTON Evidence heard in Public Questions 296 - 408
USE OF THE TRANSCRIPT
Oral Evidence Taken before the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee on Monday 13 September 2004 Members present Mr Michael Mates, in the Chair Mr Adrian Bailey Mr Roy Beggs Mr Eddie McGrady Mr Stephen Pound The Reverend Martin Smyth Mark Tami Mr Bill Tynan ________________
Memoranda submitted by the Northern Ireland Public Service Alliance and the Confederation of British Industry
Examination of Witnesses
Witnesses: Mr Brian Campfield, Northern Ireland Public Service Alliance; Ms Patricia McKeown, Unison; Mr Tom Gillen, Irish Congress of Trade Unions; and Mr Nigel Smyth, Confederation of British Industry, examined. Q296 Chairman: Welcome, lady and gentlemen. Thank you very much for coming to help us with our inquiry. One of the things that has come out of all the other evidence which we have had is that one of the best places where we have success in inter‑community relationships is the workplace and that is very largely thanks to both the CBI and the trade unions. This may be just I suppose because it is out of the home environment but there may be other reasons and other lessons which could be learnt for the rest of society. I wonder if very briefly you would each like to give us your views on why that has been a relatively successful coming together of the different traditions. Start at whichever end of the table you like. Ms McKeown: I would say first of all tough anti‑discrimination legislation and the fact that strong codes of practice push us towards jointly tackling the issue in the workplace. I am speaking from the perspective of a public sector union. That then follows through with some reasonably good commitment from levels of the public sector as employer on taking those issues seriously. I think that we are very clear that had it been solely voluntarianism we probably would not have made the successes we did over the last decade and a half. Having said that, new issues emerge for us which are around whether we have now reached a new phase. We have fairly successfully managed to create, if you like, neutral working environments but then that does not sit quite so easily these days with a society that wants to talk about inclusion and celebrating diversity, so it is probably time for a re‑working of the kind of joint approach we have taken. That there is still the problem of discrimination and discrimination and harassment in the workplace is something that is still with us and manifests itself in different ways. I think again with a public sector emphasis we have relatively good procedures and processes to tackle those problems as they arise. I do have to say that over my quarter of a century of experience, local shop stewards have been extremely effective in trying to tackle and sort out these problems before they ever get as far as either the public stage or into the need to take either criminal or legal action, so that has been a measure of success but I think we are probably entering a new period. We are also now entering a world where the workforce itself is being subject to external threat and attack and that is a new and disturbing development for us. Q297 Chairman: Public sector workers? Ms McKeown: Public sector workers, yes. Q298 Chairman: What sort of attack? Ms McKeown: Well, if you take the last three years we have had sectarian threats, death threats in some cases to health care workers, particularly in areas that are on what we might call "interfaces" these days. Both individuals and sections of the workforce in the Mater Hospital have come under attack. There is the impact of the Holy Cross dispute in terms of people I would represent in that school and what happens to the workforce there. Increasing violence, some of it not necessarily directly related to racism, sectarianism, homophobia or disability but some of it certainly linked and that is a new development for us as a public sector union to have to work with because in the past the people we represent providing health, social care education, et cetera, would have to a large extent during the Troubles been regarded as hands off or neutral territory. There were always exceptions to that of course but not generally because they were public sector workers. Mr Campfield: I certainly would concur with Patricia. One of the reasons why the workplace is I suppose an example of where things can be done right is the fact that trade unions obviously have the economic interests of the employees and they tend to come from a non‑sectarian or anti‑sectarian philosophy, and therefore that solidarity, irrespective of what religion you come from, is a particular feature of trade unionism. There has been a question of leadership being provided in the workplace to ensure that the political divisions in broader society do not intervene in the workplace. That has not been an easy task over the years. Difficulties have arisen in different industries and different parts of the public sector but, by and large, the objective of trade unions that organise the workforce is that there is a unity there and there is a philosophy there that goes beyond the sectarian divisions that exist in broader society. I think on the point about the legislation, it is important that both employers and trade unions can use the fair employment legislation in particular as a tool in order to persuade employees that really they do need to keep sectarian division and hate crime out of the workplace because I suppose from one point of view it is not in the economic interests of employees or employers to have that type of division within the workplace. I think there are a number of reasons. I think the legislation itself has supplemented things considerably and it is crucial in allowing both employers and employee organisations and trade unions to be able to confront even their own members with the reality and the impact that that type of activity has. Mr Gillen: My colleague has outlined in general terms the role that we have played in the trade union movement. We are happier now in the fact that the workplace is a much safer environment to work in and it is a much more accommodating place where people from different traditions can work together. It has not been easy. Brian has already alluded to the fact that we have had problems within our own movement and in our response to this Shared Future consultation we have said we have to address our own house first, the trade union movement, to see that our practices are proper and correct before can go to anyone else. We have been very successful since 1993 in working with Nigel and his colleagues in the CBI and we have a joint declaration, which I know Nigel will probably want to refer to later on. We have made this point very clear in our Shared Future response: the workplace is the place where people from different communities, religious and ethic backgrounds can meet and therefore we feel it is somewhere that could be utilised to improve life and society in general. We think more can be done jointly with our own unions and with employers, particularly in the private sector because the public sector has made significant advances here but there is still room for more co‑operation in the private sector to promote multi‑cultural and diversity training issues in the workplace and we think that that is the next step that we want to take forward. Again we highlighted that in our response to Shared Future. If the Committee has not already seen that response I recommend that you look at it because we regard it as a very important response to what government were saying on how we wish society to progress in Northern Ireland. Mr Smyth: From an employers' perspective the legislative framework was extremely important, in particular the Fair Employment Act 1989. As Brian mentioned, it helped companies address some difficult problems within their workplaces, whether that was with management or indeed with employees. The codes of practice were certainly extremely helpful too. During the 1990s we believe that companies, particularly medium and large companies, developed strong and effective policies for dealing with this. Indeed, in the consultation when we were putting together our submission the words "zero tolerance" came up to the whole area of intimidation and harassment. Most companies out there, particularly the medium and large, would have a zero tolerance policy to that. In line with the policies and the legislative framework companies have had to do a lot in terms of communicating why they were doing certain things and what would be the consequences of people standing out. Linked to that ourselves and, as Tom has referred to, the ICTU launched a Joint Declaration in 1993 just to help companies create a broader general framework out there showing the importance of creating a neutral working environment for all their employees. I think there has been a lot going on. We certain believe that it is not a major problem. Certainly there are a lot of tensions, particularly sectarian tensions behind the scene and we would have seen those coming out in the late 1990s particularly regarding parades issues and various things but, by and large, most of the problems I would say are very specific around isolated instances. So good policies, good communications, and having that legislative framework are certainly very important. Q299 Chairman: In the recent survey that we had 82 per cent of people said they preferred mixed workplaces, which leaves 18 per cent who do not. What is the way round that from both sides in the argument? Mr Gillen: I think probably 18 per cent could fall into a number of categories. I think a lot of people may be frightened. We have a lot segregation in the community at the moment and people are genuinely frightened to travel from one area to another or to work in a certain location. We also need to deal with the problems of mixed housing if we are going to talk about mixed workforces. That is a very, very difficult issue. Q300 Chairman: That is a problem that is getting worse not better. Mr Gillen: Just round the corner from where I live there was a young man stabbed within these past few weeks. On the same spot just over a year ago a young lad was shot dead on the same spot. It is Whitehill Road I am talking about where I live and come from. So these are big, big problems for us, but we can start in the workplace and we have started in the workplace but we need shared services. Brian could say something about this. We are concerned, as we have indicated in some of our submissions, because you cannot have a job centre for one community and a job centre for another community. You cannot have a hospital or a health centre for one community because the public purse cannot afford it. Government really needs to grasp this nettle as well. We are looking for some kind of concordat with government whereby we can discuss these on an on‑going basis. It is very, very difficult in a direct rule situation but of the 18 per cent fear some of them are bigots who do not want to work with anybody else because of their colour or their religion, and I think we would be happy that we have got it down to 18 per cent. Q301 Chairman: This was not meant critically. Mr Gillen: I know it was not. I think I am disappointed it is 18 per cent but we will work on it. Mr Campfield: I think the 18 per cent might reflect to some extent that while the workforce broadly is fairly mixed, geographically there may well be certain workforces that are predominantly one side or the other. People who only have that experience may well be inclined to think that is the best experience to have whereas we would certainly promote a mixed workforce and certainly mixed use public services. I do not know what the explanation for the 18 per cent is or what the nature of the survey that was carried out was. There may be an element of that contained in it. Ms McKeown: I have to say as well, Chairman, I do not know if it was 100 per cent workers who were surveyed. People who are in employment may have a different perspective from people who are out of employment. We do obviously still have with us an issue of structural long‑term unemployment that genuinely has to be addressed. We also have an issue of an unemployment differential in terms of Catholic or Protestant that has not moved as much as it should have done. I think if you are saying what is to be done about it, there are a number of approaches. There is straightforwardly the multi‑lateral approach that says you have got to get people when they are young and you have got to train and educate them in basic issues around equality and human rights and we should be celebrating the fact that we should live in a society where those are really the underpinning factors. There is a role that is increasingly under‑estimated and sometimes vilified and that is the role the community and voluntary sector here which tends to be at its strongest in our areas of greatest disadvantage and our ghettos where some of the serious risk‑taking by people involved in that sector to both try and develop infrastructure inside their own communities and across communities is not supported as well as it should be. I think one of the things that could be done to strengthen that is to get the whole funding crisis issue sorted out so that the kind of recommendations coming through bodies like the Greater West Belfast and Shankhill Taskforces are genuinely supported with resources. I would have to say that for me always a leader in this field of challenging people who do not want to work together and creating a situation where it is absolutely the norm is the public sector and the public sector is quite frequently under attack in many different forms. It might be privatisation, for example. People think that we are mad when we say there are genuine issues of equality to be addressed when what looks like an economic decision is about to be taken, and I think those are areas that are currently within the Government's power to start to seriously address and they can make a difference, I know they will make a difference, but never under‑estimate the amount of risk‑taking that goes on on both sides of the two main communities by committed people who want to do something about the 18 per cent. Q302 Reverend Smyth: We are actually dealing with hate crime in the workplace and we talk about it, but is there any idea of what the scale of it is? Are we dealing with discrimination through hate, disability, homophobia, racism and sectarianism and what work are you doing or do you plan to do to monitor it? Mr Smyth: From an employers' perspective we have highlighted in our submission that we do not see this as a major issue. Certainly there are isolated instances. I said earlier that the whole area of sectarianism would probably be the biggest area and the biggest issue that we have to address and sectarianism would remain the biggest issue. We are certainly not aware of any specific cases in the workplace of racism as we see in the broader community but we would expect with the levels of immigration which are increasing quite rapidly that could potentially become a bigger issue. We have said because companies have extensive policies and procedures in place for addressing the sectarianism issue we believe a lot of those will impact and help address some of the issues and harassment and intimidation would not be acceptable within the workplace. Ms McKeown: We would have a rather different perspective. As a union our business has changed significantly over the last number of years. For example, we are now dealing with an area we did not deal with before and that is the growing number of incidents of race hate crime and homophobic crime, much of it manifesting itself in the community in attacks on the homes and the persons of people from the black and ethnic minority communities or lesbian and gay people. Q303 Reverend Smyth: Not in the workplace? Ms McKeown: In the workplace there is a different issue, Martin. I think what is happening there is that it has opened everyone's eyes to the fact that the homework was not done in advance about the changing workforce, particularly a changing workforce in terms of ethnicity, so while we see the dramatic effect of direct physical attacks on people, on their homes and in the streets, we have not put in place sufficient training resources and processes to deal with the problems which people from other ethnic backgrounds face when they come to work for us or to deal with what is not a tolerant workforce on race. There has been some work recently done by the University of Ulster into the attitudes of indigenous health workers here in the North and there have been fairly appalling statistics produced as to the level of racism that is there in the workforce. That we have in place very robust procedures that can, if you like, tackle it at an early stage is a good thing but we need to do an awful lot more work now in order to start genuinely addressing this. It is too late when as a union you are facing a harassment case through the internal processes or a court case through the external processes or you are dealing with the fact that your member has just had to move house because they have been attacked Q304 Reverend Smyth: So you are saying you have not monitored it hitherto and you are not monitoring it now? That was the question. Ms McKeown: We are monitoring as best we can at the minute. What unions can do and what we do is we monitor the nature of cases that are coming in our direction, but the point I am making is to an extent that is too late, the damage has happened, so we are able to say we have dealt with X number of harassment cases that may be under the fair employment legislation or under the race discrimination legislation in the last number of years or we have dealt with X number of external type court cases or we have had to arrange X number of meetings with PSNI to deal with the effect of direct attacks on public sector workers, and in our case it is primarily overseas nurses. So we are monitoring, we are counting, but we have also said to relevant government departments that we have got to go in advance of that and start putting into place some of the protections that could head that off at the pass. It is not unlike what we did when the sex discrimination and fair employment legislation first came in, and indeed the equal pay legislation, and one of the things we would do as a union on a regular basis is monitor whether we are dealing with these issues, but we are still in that type of monitoring and dealing with the outcome of a problem and not trying to prevent it. Mr Campfield: I think it would be true to say we have not got in place any systematic overall monitoring process. Individual unions would be aware of the types of cases that come their way and many cases would be resolved without getting to a particular stage and therefore may not be recorded as such. Here you are back to the difficulty of what hate crime is because there is obviously a scale of things and on the one hand there may be discrimination by employers ‑ not in the sense it is a crime ‑ but there is a scale. If it is legitimate to discriminate against somebody then somebody else might think something more extreme than that is legitimate also. There are issues there. We would monitor and we would pick up information in various sectors about the numbers of members who had come to us with complaints of discrimination or that they were being harassed or bullied because of their religion, their gender or their race, but we would not have an overall system in place. The question arises what would be the most appropriate body to do that. Q305 Chairman: Just to interrupt a moment, when you say they come to you and complain ‑ this is really to both of you in the trade unions ‑ about religion, gender, race, roughly speaking, what proportion is for each? Do you have a feel for that? Is it mostly sectarian? Is it mostly race is? Is it mostly gender? Mr Campfield: Certainly race would be in the minority because the nature of Northern Ireland society is such that only recently have we had a big influx of overseas employees, but that is becoming an issue, increasingly so. In fact, after some of the incidents in parts of Belfast the Health Minister Angela Smith was seeking the trade unions' co‑operation on issuing a statement about this. We did not have a particular difficulty about that but what we did say was a statement on its own is not sufficient. What really is required is the putting in place of policies and processes which are going to allow everybody involved in the workplace and in local communities to deal with the issue. Resources are also required. A press statement is fine but really it only scratches the surface, so it does. The bulk of complaints that we would have would be sex discrimination and then religious discrimination. Ms McKeown: There is a different perspective for us, Chairman. In the last two years complaints of racism have been increasing and I think in the last year have overtaken the other two that we would be used to dealing with. Another growing area is disability discrimination including some disability harassment. You could say that because our union on the foot of the Macpherson Report introduced new monitoring arrangements around race, that everybody is much more conscious and is starting to be more systematic in the approach to what is a complaint of racism. The issue of sectarianism is never too far away from the surface in many of the complaints we get but one of the areas that needs seriously to be addressed there is to define what we mean. Are we talking about discrimination under the fair employment legislation or are we talking about hate crimes and, if so, how do you define sectarianism? For us it is what we have said in our preamble to the consultation on the hate crime legislation and on the Shared Future consultation. Q306 Chairman: I think it is very important to get this on the record. Mr Gillen, would you like to comment? Mr Gillen: I think my colleagues have covered that issue quite adequately. Mr Smyth: We would not expect to monitor that. We are working on a broad range of policies and it has not featured as an issue. There are bigger issues in terms of actually getting people into work. Q307 Mr Tynan: How would you deal with an issue of either unlawful racism or sectarianism? If it was brought to you as an issue as a trade union how would you deal with that? Mr Gillen: Obviously we have very, very comprehensive education programmes running within our own movement. We see that as a key issue and we started that in relation to sectarianism. A lot of that is transferable into this particular issue, but I think we will need to look at this and see whether we can do some research to see how big the problem is. In the sense of the Congress itself, with the accession of the ten new European countries, we have produced a leaflet in the ten languages for distribution to people coming from those ten countries highlighting the importance and the role of the trade union movement in society. I say "society" very deliberately. It is not just the workplace that we are interested in. We have a stake in society. We are the biggest social partner in Northern Ireland and therefore we have a duty and a responsibility to our own citizens and those citizens who we are inviting to join us in a growing Europe ‑ and they are very, very welcome to join us in Northern Ireland to make a contribution to the economic and social well‑being of the community. So we have started that process. We have a lot more distance to go yet and just this morning Patricia and I had a meeting of our Equality and Human Rights Group where we discussed these issues. We were talking about how we can improve our structures and develop them to deal with those issues. As a trade union movement we have methods of disciplining our members if they do things which bring the movement into disrepute. We also need to be very careful how we do that because they have their own rights under the Human Rights Act and the human rights legislation. Certainly our message is strong and we reinforce it on an on‑going basis. This is a new challenge for us and one which we have to address. We have been in discussions with the Curriculum Council which is responsible for primary and secondary school education and we have been pushing for the question of citizenship to go on to the curriculum and it will be going on to the curriculum. This emphasis on racism is part of the issue that we want to have addressed in schools also. Mr Campfield: In the public sector in particular there have been for quite a number of years policies and procedures in place to deal with harassment, whether that is sectarian harassment or sexual harassment, and those are procedures that have been negotiated between the employers and the trade unions and they are fairly common across the public sector. So there are policies in place and there have been for religion, politics and gender. With the Northern Ireland Act and Section 75 and the broader range of categories that are included there, I know that for instance sexual orientation has been another issue which has been picked up in similar procedures. Not all those categories would be covered by those policies and procedures in the workplace and are certainly something the trade unions need to look at. The same approach would be adopted if anybody came with a complaint about the way in which they were being treated if they are being treated unfairly. Q308 Mr Tynan: You made the point as regards ministers making a statement when really there is a need for more policies and procedures. What additional policies and procedures would you see as required and what additional weapons would you need? Mr Campfield: We were talking in the context of the Health Service and about health and personal social services in Northern Ireland. That was specifically in the context of attacks on people from ethnic minorities and overseas workers, attacks primarily which happened in the local communities. That is not to say that there are not difficulties and problems, as Patricia has alluded to, in the workplace itself both among the workforce but also in terms of the interface of overseas workers with the public using the services. One of the big concerns that we express is in the private health sector in Northern Ireland because there are quite a lot of overseas workers and they are treated a lot less favourably, if I can use that term, than their colleagues and their compatriots in the public sector where at least there is fairly well structured pay and terms and conditions. A lot of overseas workers are in the private health sector. From Patricia's organisation in particular we have had some horror stories of how people are treated there. Given that the Government itself through the Department of Health and Social Services and Public Safety and also the health boards in Northern Ireland have a commissioning role, our view is that they should operate an influence over the way in which overseas workers in those particular parts of the economy are treated. That is one of the issues we have deliberately thrown on to the table when we were discussing with the departmental officials what more needed to be done in the context of policies and procedures. Ms McKeown: It can be as basic as if you are going to encourage a workforce to come in from overseas what do you feed them? Seriously, it has been as basic as not even having on the menu food that people eat. Another big issue is if you are going to encourage them have you got a safe place for them to live or do they find, as they are currently doing here, the cheapest possible place to live because they are trying to send money home often to extended families, therefore they find difficult or contested areas for the local citizens to live in and so you have the compounded problem of the kind of physical attacks that are happening at the minute? There are some absolutely basics that we have not thought out in advance that need to be addressed. Q309 Mr Tynan: I think some of those issues apply to the mainland as well. Is the issue of flags and emblems a particularly contentious issue in the workforce and how do you deal with it? Mr Gillen: It was a significant issue going back a number of years. One of the ways in which we tackled it was we set up a dedicated anti‑sectarian unit called Counter (?) which is running to this day. It provides training on diversity. It would assist employers and employees in addressing problems of flags and emblems, or football shirts as the case maybe in different places. It has been successful, deals have been done, and it is definitely not the issue that it used to be. It still is there but in the workplace it is not the problem that it used to be. We have had the education and we have had disciplinary action taken and robust action taken by a number of employers when these issues are brought forward but they are treated sensitively because they have to be. The biggest problem we face with flags and emblems is on our streets. Not just the Union flag or the Northern Ireland flag but paramilitary flags associated with one paramilitary organisation or another are also major issues of concern in society. We are working on that and Patricia has also mentioned the voluntary community sector. We are out there with them, out there talking to people who are representatives in these groups trying to address the issues. Some go up at certain times of the year and then come down again. We have to live with that. That is the reality of what goes on in Northern Ireland society. Flags and emblems in the workplace are definitely not the problem they used to be. Mr Smyth: The background to that would be in 1989 the Fair Employment Act was the key catalyst for that and after that there was the guidance provided by initially the Fair Employment Agency and, as Tom said, employers worked with the unions addressing a very sensitive and difficult issue. Without that legislative background companies would have had a difficulty in terms of taking that forward. Q310 Mr Tynan: Could I ask you a question. A recent poll by the Equality Commission (A Wake-Up Call on Race) noted that little had been done by employers and large institutions to tackle the question of institutional racism. What responsibilities do you feel employers have to respond to personal and institutional prejudice? Mr Smyth: I think employers have got a lot of burdens on them in creating a safe working environment, creating a neutral working environment. As we already discussed, some of these provide quite a lot of difficulties and are quite sensitive. In terms of addressing the broader institutional prejudice or sectarianism in Northern Ireland I think it will be a very big burden to ask employers to address that. I think many companies have taken positive steps to get better balanced workforces and sometimes that is easier to do than in other cases. If you are a large employer and you are losing people it is very hard to get a better balance in place. It is difficult to put an additional burden on employers to go out and address that in society because it is a fairly broad cultural issue. There is wide acceptance that there is a lot of middle-class sectarianism hidden away behind the scenes. From time to time those tensions do break out in the workforces. I can think of the late 1980s when there was a lot of tension around parades and various things. Companies have got obligations to deliver a lot at the moment in the working environment and, by and large, do a fairly good job in doing that. There will obviously be isolated instances. Q311 Mr Tynan: Do you feel that employers encourage anti‑sectarianism in the workforce at the present time? Mr Smyth: Very much so. They have some very strong procedures in place. They generally have, particularly in large and medium companies ‑ and I think you have to accept that very small companies that employ three, four or five people would struggle with resources to have policies in place to do this - are obligated under the law to do that. I think medium and large employers have put a lot of resources into doing this and, by and large, have succeeded. One cannot be complacent about the underlying tensions there are around particularly around sectarianism but maybe in the future with an increasing number of migrants racism may well be moving up that agenda. Mr Tynan: Coming from the West of Scotland I know the problem. Q312 Mr McGrady: Good afternoon. I think most of you have already indicated that previous legislation was a necessary framework that enabled you to improve and supply a neutral workforce. Do you feel that the Criminal Justice Order of this year will give any additional legislative benefit to you in pursuing sectarian issues at the work face? Ms McKeown: Certainly there are elements of the Criminal Justice Order 2004 that redress some of the problems of 2002, particularly around composition and structures, et cetera, although there are still weaknesses around appointments. For us fundamentally the entire judicial process needs to have some very serious training and schooling in what these issues are and how these issues should be addressed. We have already argued that there is not much point in the hate crime legislation having strengthened sentencing powers if no‑one in the criminal justice system can find anybody to prosecute for these kinds of offences. We would certainly hope that this is an opportunity to take on board the very serious, genuine package of training that needs to happen with all wings of the criminal justice system. We also, quite honestly, need to see the groups who are on the receiving end of discrimination or hate crime reflected somewhere in the structures. I think those are the kinds of lessons that were coming through very strongly from Macpherson and we need to see those translated into our society in terms of sectarianism, racism, homophobia and the equally unacceptable problem that people with disabilities are facing in this society. We need to see it reflected in the system. There is a chance for that to happen. Q313 Mr McGrady: There are signs of it being looked at? Ms McKeown: There are signs and, I think, to be honest, there are a number of initiatives here that need to be pulled together. We are fundamentally disappointed with Shared Future's failure to take on board the role of the trade union movement and the fact that equality and human rights ought to be central to addressing bad community relations. There is genuine political will needed in putting into effect some extremely good equality tools we have already in place and then the opportunity to use these other issues to take this holistic view. The criminal justice system is not the only element that needs work done on it but certainly an absolutely crucial element in terms of trying to make this a better society. Q314 Mr McGrady: Have you any optimism that these packages of training as you call them would be coming into place at all? Ms McKeown: That would rather depend on you lot getting yourselves into our devolved government. Q315 Mr McGrady: You have to define "you lot"! Ms McKeown: It is important that we get our local structures up and running again. I do think that is important. I think the idea of having in place our devolved structures and having devolved a very clear responsibility for these issues and making sure they happen and are followed through and are monitored is fairly essential. I am hoping there is within Parliament itself a genuine political will to take these issues forward because they are areas that need to be addressed seriously to underpin the peace process. It is all part of the bigger picture. Q316 Mr McGrady: A number of you are involved in the public sector. Have you experience of the application of Section 75(1) and (2), the equality agenda and the good relations agenda, and how that has progressed? Has it been effective? Ms McKeown: In-depth involvement at the minute, to be perfectly honest, yes. Where it is sitting in terms of the hate crimes legislation, we are only at the stage of the public sector starting to produce some drafts on what the policy and process should look like in terms of tackling racism, so we have taken time on that, dragged our heels a little bit I think, but that is starting to come through and these are areas which I believe are essential for the trade union movement, the employers and the other pressure groups and NGOs to work on. For example, with NICEM we are doing some very important tripartite work there where I think we are going to produce some good models to tackle those issues. We are overdue in re‑visiting what is really happening in terms of the awareness‑raising training that needs to be done on both religious and political discrimination and gender discrimination. We are in danger of thinking that is all done and dusted - it was a while back - but those issues are still with us and those cases and grievances still manifest themselves. Serious work needs to be done on awareness raising on disability and homophobia and the vehicle for that is very much the statutory duty because everybody is making the right noises in their equality schemes and in saying we are going to take these issues seriously but there is a genuine issue of under‑resourcing of the public sector in terms of taking those matters forward. I hate the idea that this all gets dumped on one poor person's desk in, say, a health trust employing 6,000 people and they are told, "That is your area of responsibility, get on with it." It is everybody's area of responsibility. I would like to see proper resourcing. The practitioners on the public sector side, whom I meet with on a regular basis, say that they want to see greater political will, just as we the trade unions say it, in genuinely making this equality legislation work. Most of the criticism I have to say from the public bodies designated tends to fall at the doors of the government departments as we move up the scheme for not having the same political will to implement as they themselves have and when you move into the government departments you find that there are very committed people in the equality units but they are still working in isolation, it is not cross‑departmental and it is not linked into the senior decision‑making processes. So it is all there for the doing and most of it is in place for the doing and really it is about how do we get our act together. That there is a roll‑back on the commitment to equality I am absolutely convinced of at this point and we have made these points vigorously to the Secretary of State when we met him at the Irish Congress on 23 July. We are waiting for him to come back to us on these issues. Mr McGrady: I think you have effectively dealt with what was going to be the second part of the question. Thank you very much, Chairman. Q317 Mr Pound: Michael Walker of Unison in London has written that the size of the workplace has a direct correlation to the extent of sectarian problems within it. The larger the workplace the lower the problems; the smaller the workplace the higher the problems. Is that accurate? Mr Campfield: There is an issue there. I think it is more to do with the balance of the workforce within a particular workplace rather than the size of it. You will find that the larger workplaces and the larger factories or employment areas are probably more balanced. I think there is a correlation between the fact that the large workplaces, those organisations which employ large numbers of people, would tend to have more mixed workforces, and with more mixed workforces I think you are likely to find a greater degree of co‑operation among everybody that is employed and therefore because there is that balance I suspect that sectarian difficulties are not as prevalent as they might be in a smaller workforce, for instance where you have almost predominantly one set or the other where maybe there is an assumption that there is particular culture of one particular group rather than the other which is the prevalent one and therefore it creates more difficulties for those who happen to be in a minority situation. I think it is probably because of the balance of the workforce as opposed to the actual size of the workforce, but there is a clear link between the size of workforces and the fact that larger workforces tend generally to be more representative of the community as a whole. Ms McKeown: I think also larger workforces will tend to have a more clearly defined human resources structure, more clearly defined training development programmes and procedures, and they will more tend to be unionised than smaller workplaces, and I think that is an absolutely key issue. Chairman: Is that always an advantage? Q318 Mr Pound: Yes, it is always an advantage, Chairman! Ms McKeown: That is always an advantage speaking as probably the only movement or organisation on the island that encompasses every single shade of political opinion and some not at all. Mr Gillen: Boy, do we know it! Q319 Chairman: Just checking everyone was awake, that is all! Mr Smyth: I would reiterate what Patricia said, I think the larger companies are going to be better resourced. It is only if you employ 100 people are you going to have an HR manager so if you are a lot less than that employing 40 or 50 it is going to be an operations manager or director who is going to have to pick up these responsibilities. You have less skills there, less resources, more pressure on time, so you are more likely to find all of this a greater burden. Mr Pound: That is interesting. I was going to ask the next perfect question: what is the Government not doing that it should be doing but I think Patricia McKeown has got that on the record, may I say vigorously, so I do not know whether that needs to be asked. Chairman: I think I do not think it does. Q320 Mr Beggs: Has the influx of foreign workers led to problems in the workplace? Mr Gillen: It is too early to answer a question like that because this monitoring which was mentioned earlier on by Reverend Martin Smyth is something that we want to look at and honestly I have to say there have been a few phone calls made to the office about it. There appears to be a policy with some companies - and there was one in the press recently so I can talk about it to do with the cleaning of the new trains for Translink where a company said that they were unable to get a workforce in Northern Ireland to do the work and they had to go to the Czech Republic to bring those people in. We do not know whether that is true or not because we have not seen how many people applied, although the press speculated 500 people applied and I think they were only looking for the 30 or 40 or 50 people, so that would need to be tested. There is a duty, as Patricia says, on the departments. Translink are the people who let the contract and they would need to be looking at this. Certainly we would be very interested in the terms and conditions on which people are brought in. There is another company which I will not name where welders were brought in from Poland. We are not objecting to that at all but some unions and others would say that local workers who had been made redundant who had the skills were not given the opportunity to apply for those posts. So we could see some issues raising themselves there, which is why our own education process needs to talk to employers as well to ensure that we are not stoking up any kind of an issue. Certainly Ireland is a well travelled nation, both North and South, and has worked everywhere, but Patricia has already indicated our sectarian nature and how we can be prejudiced. It is not the first time one has heard phrases about people of a different colour. So we have that prejudice as well, it is not just other countries have it. You would have thought that when we have travelled so much and looked for work elsewhere we would be a lot more tolerant of people coming here. So there could be something building up. Mr Campfield: One of the issues that clearly exercises trade unions in these situations is reports where overseas workers or immigrant workers appear to be working for lesser wages. I heard a story over the weekend in one part of Northern Ireland that people were complaining that people were not getting jobs because there were some overseas workers doing it a lot cheaper. One of the issues that raises of course is the whole question of exploitation and unscrupulous employers who are abusing the fact that this labour is available and they are paying people very, very, very low wages, which may seem to be acceptable to those individuals who are employed but certainly the employers are making a bigger profit out of it. As I say, I am not sure how extensive it is but that is some of the stories that we have heard. So there is an issue. I suppose I would pose the question in a different way and say not so much is it the influx of overseas workers that have created the problem but what we need to examine is the reaction and responses in certain quarters to the increase in the number of overseas workers which is the bigger problem as opposed to the fact there are bigger numbers of overseas workers employed now in Northern Ireland. Ms McKeown: We certainly have evidence of exploitation of overseas nurses in the private nursing homes sector, and indeed some horror stories. Q321 Chairman: Is this on the medical side or the domestic side? Ms McKeown: Primarily nurses. Q322 Mr Pound: Philippinos principally? Ms McKeown: Principally Philippinos but a little from South Africa as well. We have an Anti‑Racism Network in the Irish Congress that spans North and South and involves unions and also some of the lobbying organisations which looks at clear exploitation, some of it through almost the slave trade of people being brought in very much on exploitative terms and conditions and they are displacing local workforces and of course stuff like that breeds racism. Also our colleagues in UCATT have flagged up their very serious concerns that there are clear instances in the construction industry too, by one means or another, dismissing existing workforces to replace them particularly with workforces from some of the accession countries. This has raised a very important issue around the practice and behaviour of employment agencies. They have already tracked employment agencies who have been advertising themselves as capable of bringing in workers from A, B, C, D or E accession country at cheaper rates than would be permissible to pay the workforce in this country. All of that is a big issue for the trade union movement because we have got to protect the people coming in, we have got to protect the people already here and, as it happens, the issue of racism grows because the resentment and the fear of it all is going to manifest itself in clear racism. Mr Gillen: It is going to be a new challenge. Mr Smyth: I have spoken to three or four companies in the last month who are what I would call the reputable large companies and they all reinforced the fact that they cannot get people in the local labour market and they have had to go out to Portugal or increasingly to Eastern Europe. They emphasis that they are paying the going rate but I think they are frustrated by the fact they cannot get local people with the attitudes and knowledge and skills they require in their workplaces. Q323 Mr Pound: Is this construction, catering, nursing? Mr Smyth: This is the food sector principally but increasingly in the engineering and construction sector. Q324 Mr Pound: Engineering? Mr Smyth: There are companies relocating out of the Province going to Cookstown because they cannot get the local labour market. They are moving into the Belfast area where they believe there is a bigger pool of labour. There are other companies that are working at capacity because they cannot get labour to manage their output on the back of that. We need to bring these immigrants in if we want to grow the companies. They are communicating that to the rest of their employees and, by and large, that is accepted. One thing these international workers are bringing is a very, very high work ethic, which is an extremely powerful benchmark for the existing workforce. Mr Gillen: We have 250 young people coming in as modern apprentices in the construction industry. A recent survey said we need an 18,000 workforce in the construction industry. 250 modern apprenticeships will not address that skills shortage that Nigel highlighted and it is something we need to do something about. What it does do is give 250 people young men and women the opportunity to finish their time and come out with a skill. What was happening prior to this was they were coming in for a year or two years, costing the employers virtually nothing and going out before they had the opportunity to finish their training stint. That again is something that we have discussed with the employers, with the Secretary of State, with John Spellar. There is the whole question of public procurement as well. We met the Procurement Director just two weeks ago. We are asking them to introduce this whole social issue into granting public contracts. There is a duty on government here, as Patricia referred to earlier on, to ensure the systems are there where people can be trained, and that is still a problem for us. Q325 Mr Beggs: Are you aware of illegal immigration having any impact on the workplace or on hate crime? Mr Gillen: We have no statistics on that at all at the moment. There is obviously some illegal immigration but because it is illegal it is more hidden and they are unlikely to come to the trade union movement for help or support because they know that they are vulnerable. Again, it is an issue for the authorities to look at. Ms McKeown: We have seen the television programmes that you have probably seen yourselves in terms of the some of the activities, some elements of the food industry, the mushroom‑growing industry, et cetera. We have had again through the Anti‑Racism Network evidence from local trade union officials in various parts that there are people certainly being smuggled and exploited and there is all of the problem of fear and intimidation that goes with that. It is there; I could not say to what extent. Mr Gillen: There was a case last week anecdotally where a person was employed and they did get in touch with the trade union officials and they were prepared to help them. They said, "We want advice as to how we should go about some things but this person is here illegally." You cannot help them if they are not prepared to stand up. Q326 Mr Beggs: My final question would be to Nigel. The CBI has suggested that there might be merit in the Government becoming involved in a more proactive communications campaign in partnership with the business community and other stakeholders to explain why immigration is increasing in Northern Ireland. What form would you like the communications campaign to take? Has the CBI approached the Government about this issue? Mr Smyth: The second part of the question we have not approached the Government on the back of that. We know from experience that communications has a key part to play in terms of changing a culture and addressing a problem and we have experience in that over the last 14 or 15 years within the workplace. Certainly we do believe it requires some form of educational campaign, whether by posters, TV, leaflets or newspaper articles. We would need to combine that with a level of education training of community leaders, local political leaders, et cetera, particularly in some of these sensitive areas geographically where hate crime seems to be a bigger feature than others. We have not given it a great deal of thought but certainly the experience that we would be coming from over the last 15 years would suggest that communications is a key part of the answer in addressing a problem like this. Chairman: Thank you very much all of you. It has been a very helpful session indeed. Good answers, to the point, and I hope that those who follow will do the same. The Committee will adjourn for five minutes.
Memoranda submitted by Belfast City Council and Down District Council Examination of Witnesses
Witnesses: Ms Hazel Francey, Good Relations Manager, Belfast City Council; Mr Gerry McBride, Policy and Co-ordination Officer, Down District Council; and Ms Clare Mullen, Community Safety Officer (previously Community Relations Officer), Strabane District Council, examined. Q327 Chairman: Let's move on. You are very welcome, ladies and gentlemen, thank you for coming to help us with our inquiry into hate crime. Perhaps each one of you could just give us a quick thumbnail on what evidence you have of sectarianism in your council areas and how you have each tried to tackle it. Shall we start left to right. Ms Francey: My name is Hazel Francey from Belfast City Council. I think it is fairly obvious that Belfast has particular problems in Northern Ireland regarding sectarianism because Belfast has actual physical divisions. We have 27 peace walls or peace lines in Belfast. The level of segregation is fairly obvious at all levels of the city and social surveys will show that segregation and polarisation of communities is increasing. That is particularly obvious in public housing. Basically the less money you have the less choice you have. Obviously the Troubles of the last 30 years have subsided a lot but we still have sporadic outbursts of violence, particularly at interface areas and other confrontation zones. Q328 Chairman: What have you been doing in response to it? Let's stay with Belfast for the moment. Ms Francey: Belfast for a long time did not have community relations officers in post and we have just recently rejoined the District Council Community Relations Programme which is funded by the Office of the First Minister and Deputy First Minister. We have set up a good relations unit within the last year and a half and that unit is a bit different from other district councils because we have joined together the two statutory obligations under Section 75, the first of those being, as you know, to promote equality of opportunity and the second part of Section 75 is to promote good relations. So we have set up a unit which combines the equality responsibility with the good relations duty and we have rejoined the district council programme. We have established a large good relations fund through which we hope to fund and support local activities and projects which promote good race and good community relations between our citizens. We are also doing a number of other things internally within the council. We are establishing a training programme for all the council staff. I think it is important to point out that Belfast City Council in Belfast terms in Northern Ireland terms is a fairly big employer with 2,500 employees so we hope to complement our existing equality training strategy by bringing in new a community relations and race relations training strategy on the back of that which will then filter out through all our workforce. Q329 Chairman: Let's go to Mr McBride from Down. Mr McBride: I am Policy and Co‑ordination Officer with Down District Council. The Down District Council area includes about 64,000 people. The council has had quite a well‑developed community relations programme for over eight years. The programme covers a wide range of activities. It incorporates various elements of the main strategies of the council so we try and mainstream what we do into all the different activities and policies we have. I am also the Equality Officer for the council and I try to ensure that all the different programmes incorporate the equality principles, in particular the Section 75 principles. Q330 Chairman: What is the biggest problem area of hate crime in your area? Mr McBride: In relation to our district I have been trying to assess the statistics in relation to the various divisions, et cetera. In the last year there appeared to be approximately 30 sectarian incidents across the district. That is very much anecdotal as the statistics are not well collated at present. They would tend to centre around issues such as sectarian graffiti and in some cases physical attacks on individuals but there would be roughly 30 incidents that we can assess across the districts. In terms of race attacks, there perhaps have been one, possibly two, that could be seen to be motivated by the ethnic nature of the individual. In terms of homophobic crimes there appears to have been one incident that has been noted that may have been homophobic in nature. Q331 Chairman: It is overwhelmingly sectarian although the figures are relatively small? Mr McBride: Yes, they are. Q332 Chairman: What about Ms Mullen and Strabane? A different story here? Ms Mullen: The way the district is made up Strabane Town which is 98 per cent Catholic and the rest of the district which is 65. Like any other area in Northern Ireland there have been a number of sectarian incidents taking place in the district, be that through graffiti or whatever. In terms of racial incidents there have been eight incidents recorded between 1996 and 2004 and there has been one homophobic incident from 2002 to 2004. Strabane District Council has a community relations programme and since inception in 1989 has taken this on board. We have a very strong community relations programme. We try to reduce geographical polarisation between rural communities and urban communities. We do a lot of work with the local schools in the district through different cultural awareness programmes and initiatives and we work closely with all our community groups. Q333 Mr McGrady: It has often been said that local authorities because of their proximity to day‑to‑day issues within their communities are best suited to address the causes of sectarian hate crimes and the resolution to them. That would mean in my interpretation that you should be given the primary role in that particular development. Do you accept that and, if so, how do you think it should be implemented? Ms Mullen: Councils are well placed to take on a lead role in assessing sectarian incidents which happen and their causes because we have officers there at a local level working with groups and because of our local councillors we are there in place. I do not know if I can speak for the others. Ms Francey: In Belfast we would argue that one organisation could not possibly tackle 30 years of sectarianism and violence. It is a question of huge numbers of organisations working in partnership and that is certainly the approach that we are taking in Belfast to try to work with the Community Relations Council, with the main churches, with the business sector, the trade union sector, the education sector, whatever, because it is only by everybody working together that you will make some sort of impression on this problem. Mr McBride: I think my views would be very similar to Hazel's. The important feature of local government is that it is providing local services to local people in a local way and many of these problems are local problems and therefore there is a key role to be played by the local authority in terms of fostering better relationships, in terms of showing civic leadership, and ensuring that those particular programmes that need to be implemented to improve good relations and to ensure that hate crime is less likely to be fostered are in place. I think, however, as Hazel has said, there are many other agencies that have a key role to play and without them these other programmes would not be as successful. Q334 Mr McGrady: I am not sure, Chairman, if there is a consensus of opinion on answers there. If it is not the districts councils who are the primary driving force on local issues what body do you think should be the primary co‑ordinating body in the eradication of hate crime? Secondly, just as an aside for a minute, we have some evidence that homophobic and racist attacks are on the increase generally. In each of the districts you represent has there been an increase in sectarian hate crime, is it level, or is it diminishing? Ms Francey: Could I answer on the question of partnership. I would also say that the council has certainly said that it is quite happy to lead this partnership so I do agree that councils are the best body to take responsibility in the future. Certainly the feedback we appear to have had on the Shared Future document, which was about community relations in Northern Ireland in general, would seem to imply that councils might be given a greater responsibility in that direction. That is not definite yet by any means. On the homophobic point, I would say that the level of homophobic crime in Belfast certainly does appear to be on the increase and racist attacks are on the increase as well. I think sectarian crime is as it was. I cannot answer for Down. Mr McBride: In our own area we have found, again from anecdotal evidence, that the number of crimes of a sectarian, racist or homophobic nature has not really increased and to some extent has decreased compared to say five years ago. Q335 Reverend Smyth: I think we have heard that some councillors in Northern Ireland exhibit sectarianism. Do you think therefore that a council is in a good position to promote good community relations? Ms Francey: I think that Belfast has had particular problems because we were out of the community relations programme for a long time and it is difficult to re‑establish an effective programme. I do think ‑ and Reverend Smyth will probably know all the reasons for Belfast being out of the programme for so long ‑ there were political rocks about ten or 12 years ago and there were problems about getting it re‑established. Belfast Council has now changed and we are about 50/50 from the point of view of the composition of the council and despite all of the political differences (and there are many within Belfast because we have six political parties and no party in overall control) all the parties did agree and do agree that we need to promote good community and good race relations among all our citizens for a better future for everybody. That is not just from a moral point of view or a social and security point of view but also from an image point of view and from the point of view of attracting investment and of promoting business regeneration from an economic point of view as well. Mr McBride: I believe, and I think our council believes that good relations is really a prerequisite for effective service delivery and for ensuring that we serve everyone within our community. I think we are all aware that in various areas we have to duplicate services because of issues that arise and we may have to have community halls or leisure centres in different areas because people are unhappy to travel to a neighbouring area. Therefore we do believe in our council that it is a prerequisite and good relations is one of the underlying principles that we stress in our corporate plan. Ms Mullen: I entirely agree with Gerry and Hazel. The councils are well placed to take on a key role in promoting good relations but the role of the local strategy partnerships through the PEACE II programmes also have a role to play in it. Q336 Reverend Smyth: Quite often that role is played by community relations officers and we have been told there has been good work done. Is there any illustration from the different councils that you think worthy of emulation that others could look at and share? Ms Francey: As I was just saying, we only started up our programme in the last year or so but we have worked closely with the Community Relations Council. Just as a couple of examples of projects that we have supported from the race relations point of view, we have supported a mediation programme project that is still on‑going in Donegal Pass between local residents and the local Chinese community because there have been quite a few instances of conflict there which I am afraid continue to the present. We are funding that and we are happy to continue funding that because we hope that that might be resolved in the near future. We have also supported projects to reduce sectarianism in sport in Belfast. We have supported projects which have been developed and carried forward by local people on particular interfaces, for example, Springfield Road, which is a very good, locally based steering group. Those are the kind of projects certainly I would regard as good practice. Q337 Reverend Smyth: Yes good practice, but have you got any that have positively changed the attitudes and behaviour of communities? Mr McBride: I could give the example in Down District of the cross‑communities St Patrick's Festival. That certainly has gone a long way to break down certain barriers that there have been across the communities. It culminates in a cross‑communities carnival parade. In that we have representatives from different sections of the community and also in last year's parade there were six ethnic groups that were represented. We think that has been very positive in terms of showing the cultural diversity of the area and also the inclusiveness of the district and the fact that there are people who are wishing to reach across the divide, as it is known, to try and explain various identities. Ms Mullen: Again like Hazel, Strabane Council has been involved in supporting small‑scale projects through the delivery of training programmes which have been successful in developing an understanding of race, disability and sexual orientation to both schools and community organisations in the district and through evaluation of every programme we do we are hearing back analysis. Maybe it is the first time groups have come together to undertake training and they would therefore do other projects because they felt more comfortable by coming together and they would be more willing to do other programmes. Q338 Reverend Smyth: I appreciate Belfast is both the largest council and has a great many more difficulties in it and also you have just come back into the loop. Is there any basic difference between your good relations approach and community relations approach that other councils have? Ms Francey: I think the main difference is a structural difference, the fact we have linked together the good relations duty with the equality duty. This has been accepted by the Equality Commission as an example of good practice and the Community Relations Council say the same. I think it would be difficult to just impose that on other councils because smaller councils have been dealing with community relations programmes for years and very often the community relations officer is part of the leisure department or part of the community services department. We are based centrally within the chief executive's department. The whole purpose behind that was that the principles of good relations and the principles of equality could be mainstreamed into all of the other departmental activities and all of the departmental plans so that good relations and community relations is seen to be everybody's business and not just: "Community relations? That is the little girl who works down in leisure." It was seen very much as being distant and not related to mainstream, core council activities. That was the main purpose of the structural change and basing it centrally in one department. For example, at the minute we have introduced for all departments for all reports going to committee which need a decision ratified by elected members an equality section, and we hope to expand that in the next year or so to good relations considerations. All senior managers within the council have to think about every decision that is being taken - does this have equality considerations, does this have implications for good relations across the city? Q339 Reverend Smyth: I think we have been speaking about community relations and I know that councils have funded, for example, Christmas lights, tea parties, concerts and such like and they would be hopefully fairly consensual. On the other hand, it has been suggested by Mr McBride that because of the nature of communities that community halls and leisure centres have got to be provided in different areas. What role can local councils play in breaking down this concept of narrow community rather than "their" community and the whole concept of deep‑rooted sectarianism which leads to hate crime? Ms Francey: In Belfast we do not fund things like turning on Christmas tree lights or pensioners' tea dances or any of the smaller activities that may have been funded 15 or 20 years ago. We have drawn up, in partnership with the Community Relations Council, much more stringent criteria than in the past and any project or activity that we fund has got to deliberately challenge issues about relationships, it has got to make people think more seriously about the purpose of the activity. Ms Mullen: Strabane would be in the same position as Belfast. We do not fund Christmas lights. Q340 Reverend Smyth: I understand that is changing. I said these things were done and they were consensual. Nobody was going to object to Christmas lights being turned on - well, some folk might - but we are dealing with the question of how do we bridge the sectarian divide that leads to hate crime. Have the councils any role to play in that? Ms Mullen: Through the Community Relations Programme, through the delivery of training programmes, and through developing awareness. Councils have a role to play in educating school children and educating community groupings. That will go some way to preventing hate crime in the district. Mr McBride: In our council area at the moment we would want a range of programmes to try and provide people with the information that they need in order to see a way through some of the difficult issues that they are facing. We have a number of programmes that we run and we would use people from the Northern Ireland Council for Voluntary Action (NICVA) and they would run a number of these training sessions in relation to various perceptions, different identities, and they would also look at things like mutual understanding, anti‑sectarian awareness, mediation skills and a basic introduction to community relations work. These programmes ensure that the capacity of the community itself is strengthened. We believe that that is an important aspect of what the council can do in terms of providing the community itself and groups within area with the ability to understand the differences and cope with that when it occurs on a more local basis within their own areas. We feel that that helps with building relationships and we believe that again is a key factor in promoting good relations across the district. Q341 Mr Beggs: Community relations policy has been accused of being a very middle‑class concept which fails to recognise the harsh realities of many single identity communities, and is therefore aimed at those who need it least and people who attend community relations training are the converted. Is current community relations policy really targeting those most likely to commit hate crime? Ms Francey: In Belfast with our particular interface problems we have a duty to look at those particular communities and the Belfast interface project itself launched its own policy statement within the last couple of months and we have agreed that on those particular problems our council should look seriously at those issues. Next week we are inviting in the director of that project who is going to give a presentation to our steering panel. At the same time we are conducting a major piece of research from Dr Mike Morrissey, who used to be a lecturer at one of our local universities. The aim of that is to try and find if there are other gaps because we realise there are a lot of organisations funding projects in Belfast and we want to find out where our money should be going so that there is no duplication and no overlap. We are trying to use this piece of research to identify areas where our funding should be targeted. I agree in the past there have been accusations that it is middle‑class and it is nice and it is safe. All of our steering panel agree that we need to get the best use of resources to make sure that they are used most effectively. We want to look at the areas where it is needed most and I would suspect very strongly that the interface is going to come out as one of the areas where we need to focus our efforts in future. Mr Beggs: The empirical evidence show patterns of increasing polarisation in Northern Ireland, an increase in hate crime, deteriorating attitudes between communities, all of which create circumstances in which hate crime flourishes. Has community relations policy failed? Q342 Mr Clarke: Nobody wants to answer that! Ms Francey: It has not been terribly successful. You would have to say that really, to be realistic! Ms Mullen: Good job you said it! Q343 Mr Beggs: Are there particular successes you can point to? Ms Francey: Yes, as I said earlier, there are a lot of groups who have been working for years and often behind the scenes. We have a lot of unsung heroes. The fact that relations at the interface this summer and certainly last summer were quieter in Belfast than many of the previous years is owed to a lot of hard work from a lot of individuals living in the very difficult areas and doing difficult work at all times of the night. Q344 Mr Beggs: My final question would be addressed to Belfast. You say in your submission that the Council is working in partnership with public and private agencies "to address wider public issues and examine the factors that cause division and exclusion". What agencies have been involved in this work and what have you found in terms of the causes of division and exclusion? Ms Francey: That is part of the research to which I just referred that we were commissioning that is being jointly financed by ourselves and the Community Relations Council. A lot of other organisations have already expressed interest in the results of this survey which we hope will be available before the end of the year. The Local Strategy Partnership certainly would be interested in the results of that because they are in charge of allocating PEACE money. We mention in the written submission that we have representatives from churches, the business sector and the trade unions on our steering panel and they are on there because we know that they have access to much wider networks an obviously we can cascade our policies and efforts throughout those bodies as well. Q345 Mr Bailey: We have already had some indication about the relative levels of mixed housing provision but can you just give a breakdown for each of your authorities. Ms Francey: Within Belfast it is estimated now that less than one‑third of the population of Belfast lives in areas which are mixed and this split is particularly marked in public sector housing. The Housing Executive estimate that in the rest of Northern Ireland about 70 per cent of estates are segregated and in Belfast they are almost wholly segregated. Mr McBride: In Down District the majority of housing areas would be mixed public sector housing areas. Again the majority of the housing estates would be mixed. Ms Mullen: Strabane Town itself would not be mixed housing. Some of the smaller rural villages like Down Manor, Ballymagorrey and Sion Mills would have more mixed housing but again I would say the majority of the district would be segregated. Q346 Mr Bailey: In the case of Belfast it has definitely become more segregated. I think that is a fair comment. Would that be equally true of the other authorities? Mr McBride: In terms of Down it has probably gone the other way. Q347 Mr Bailey: Strabane? Ms Mullen: Strabane remains segregated. I do not have official statistics. Q348 Mr Bailey: To Belfast, if it is accepted that increased housing segregation is symptomatic of worsening community relations ‑ and perhaps you can debate that ‑ what specific initiatives have you taken to address this? Ms Francey: In Belfast? Q349 Mr Bailey: Yes. Ms Francey: The Northern Ireland Housing Executive has recently launched a programme to try to promote community relations in housing. The city council in Belfast does not have responsibility for housing. Q350 Mr Bailey: Have you taken any community-orientated initiatives because some of the problem, as we heard in interviews earlier, was that in effect the housing authority was trying to improve housing but community relations were so bad that it still left this segregation. Ms Francey: We have not made any specific efforts regarding housing from the council's point of view but we would certainly be supportive of the Housing Executive's efforts. Q351 Mr Bailey: Would there be scope for joint initiatives with the Northern Ireland Housing Executive? Ms Francey: Yes. At our last steering panel meeting we talked about doing some pilot projects along those lines but nothing definite so far. Q352 Mr Bailey: To any of you ‑ any particular thoughts about giving existing mixed residential areas support to ensure that they do not become polarised as has happened in some cases in Belfast? Mr McBride: In terms of Down District we have very strong links particularly between what you might call the single identity areas where the various tenants and community groups would meet on a regular basis, and that does help to improve relations. That happens right across the district. The council itself has a mailing list of 185 groups across our district and that would go out regularly explaining the different programmes and schemes that are on offer and also there is a lot of joint working between those different areas. We feel there is a lot of very positive work going on. Ms Mullen: Strabane would be similar to Down. There are a number of Northern Ireland tenant action projects in place throughout the district which bring members of the community together to talk about housing issues and there is a multi‑agency approach. We also have a regular community sheet that would go out to over 100 community organisations to keep residents and community groups informed of what is happening and what is available. Q353 Mr Bailey: To Belfast just to, if you like, broaden the discussion slightly. In your submission you mention that in a partnership effort with the Northern Ireland Housing Executive you have cleaned up 21 murals and removed 7,000 metres of kerb painting on the Lower Shankhill Road. Aside from its obvious environmental impact what other impacts did this work have? Did it provoke resistance and is this policy continuing? Q354 Ms Francey: It did not provoke resistance because it was done in consultation and with the support of local community groups. It was very widely welcomed. I think I mentioned in the submission that it won a Tidy Britain award and the Chairman presenting the trophy said it was not only an environmental improvement but a symbol of hope versus the legacy of the past. It is not continuing as such but our contract services department has a Better Belfast Campaign and is certainly developing a programme to brighten up the neighbourhood in Belfast. We have other partners in the council who are developing what we call Strategic Neighbourhood Action Programmes (SNAPs) and arterial routes programmes where that kind of regenerational approach is taken throughout the city. That was a pilot problem and it seemed to work very well. Mark Tami: We have heard a lot about Section 75 of the Northern Ireland Act today. How successful do you think it has been in combating 'hate crime'? Mr McBride: I think Section 75 is a very strong piece of legislation. What it did perhaps for the first time is it identified many key groups that in the past have received less attention than would be required. The essence of Section 75 is to improve public policy making and therefore it did focus the minds of the elected representatives when they were deciding on what particular policies to put forward to ensure that they were quality-proofed and effective. So I think it is a very important piece of legislation. Tied into that is the good relations responsibility which is incorporated within Section 75 and I think if it is taken to its logical conclusion it should improve the overall delivery of services and at the same time create a more inclusive society for everyone and one that is responsive to the specific needs of various groups. Q355 Mark Tami: Would your colleagues agree with that? Ms Mullen: I would agree with Gerry that Section 75 has gone a long way in terms of making the councils and other bodies more focused on disability and race. Strabane District Council would make the community organisations aware of what Section 75 is and how it works and how they would need to take it into consideration if they have a building and they are employing staff and that kind of thing. Ms Francey: I think the main issue from our point of view has been the equality training that all staff and all elected members have undergone to make them aware of their obligations under the new legislation and make them aware of the nine groups that have been designated. The introduction of the consultation process has broadened things out and made people aware, not only of their statutory obligations under the legislation, but it has improved our communication with the groups affected. Our equality officer would have a very good working relationship with the various Section 75 groups. Q356 Mr Tynan: How successful have the Community Safety Partnerships been, and how would you see them developing? Do you see their role developing further? Ms Mullen: Strabane District Council have just adopted the Community Safety Partnership, so we are lagging behind other councils in that respect because of the politics. We feel that the establishment of the Community Safety Partnership provides the opportunity for multi‑agency working. Community safety will be a new concept for Strabane District Council to take on board and we hope that it will help us focus on the community safety of the area as a whole through a multi‑agency approach. Ms Francey: It is probably too early to say. We are just in the stages of having adopted a Community Safety Partnership in the last year or so, so it is very much in its infancy, but it does seem to be working well. Mr McBride: I would agree. The working definition we have for community safety is "protecting people's right to live in confidence and without fear for their own or other people's safety". It is about ensuring that everyone within the area is being dealt with in a proper manner and that where issues arise, there is support for them and that crime prevention measures are brought into effect before certain issues get out of hand. Using the partnership approach, using people like the councils, the local health authority, the housing executive, the police service etcetera, ensures that there is greater emphasis on preventing crime and also ensuring that the communities themselves can play their own part in preventing crime within those localities. So we believe that a Community Safety Partnership is very important to the district. Q357 Mr Tynan: Is there any way we can improve on it? Can the role be developed further? I know it cannot as far as Belfast is concerned, but how do the other councils see that? Mr McBride: There are a range of initiatives that are being considered by our own Community Safety Partnership. We have just embarked on a community safety audit. Stage two of that involves consultation with various groups throughout the district. Running on from that will be a specific action plan. We have already identified a number of programmes, some of which are cross‑border initiatives, to try and look at best practice not only within our own district but across the UK and across other districts in Northern Ireland. We have also looked at a range of specific programmes, such as target hardening for particular properties. There is a scheme that has just got off the ground called the "Good Morning Down" scheme. This is a telephone help‑line type scheme where vulnerable people within the community will be able to receive some telephone support, particularly in the morning time and we hope to extend that to people from ethnic minorities or other people who feel vulnerable. We believe that that type of scheme shows that the community cares about people and it cares about giving support to people who perhaps feel under pressure either because of their age, because of their disability or because of their ethnicity, or perhaps they have been the victim of crime in the past. We believe schemes like that, properly targeted and focused, can have a great impact in dealing with the fear of crime, which in many cases is a big issue particularly for elderly people. Q358 Mr Tynan: Hazel, Belfast Council is critical of the Government's funding and allocation as regards the community relations sector and argues that it "is indicative of the priority given to it and is considerably less than that assigned to the equality sector". What additional funding do you require? Ms Francey: We were just making the point in the submission that the amount allocated is tiny compared to the amount given to various other sectors and that obviously reflects the priority given to it by central government and by government at Northern Ireland level. If you are serious about addressing a problem and about resolving issues, nothing happens without resources. If you need to tackle the problem, you need to pump some resources into it. We were just making that general point. Q359 Mr Tynan: If additional funding was made available, what would be the priorities for support and why? Ms Francey: I think training staff, not just public sector staff that have to train under Section 75, but training from a very broad perspective. There have been social latitude surveys undertaken which show that children as young as three show evidence of sectarianism in their behaviour. So you are really talking about training and education from a very broad point of view and about how damaging and how negative poor community relations are in the workplace. There have been examples in the past of government campaigns on all sorts of things, road safety and wearing seatbelts. Perhaps we should start putting out the message that sectarianism is not a good thing to do and not a good idea. Q360 Mr Tynan: Surely if you are able to make a case for additional funding then that is the best way to receive that additional funding? Surely under the circumstances where you believe that there is a need for additional funding, if you make the case on that basis then there is a good chance you will receive that? Ms Francey: We have been told that there is no more money available. Q361 Mr Tynan: Regardless of what you require? Ms Francey: Yes. We were told to stick to last year's figures, that we need not ask for any more because we will not get it. Chairman: Thank you very much indeed. You have given us a very interesting perspective from three markedly different areas which you work in and represent. Thank you very much for your help. Witnesses: Mr Dónal McKinney, Falls Community Council, Mr Peter McGuire, Duncrun Cultural Initiative, Ms Mina Wardle, Shankhill Stress and Trauma Group, Mr Tom Winston, Greater Shankhill Alternatives, and Mr Jim Auld, Community Restorative Justice, examined. Q362 Chairman: Lady and gentlemen, thank you so much for coming to help us with this inquiry. We have had a lot of really differing opinions so far today and I have no doubt we are going to get some more from you. First of all, let us talk about your perception ‑ and it may well be different ‑ as to the relative balance of 'hate crime' activities, that is race, homophobia, sectarian. We get the impression that it is much more sectarian 'hate crime' than the others put together, but that may not be the case in particular areas. Perhaps if we go from left to right, starting with Mr Auld and then moving down the table. Mr Auld: Maybe you could come back to me. Mr McGuire: The only reason that there are more sectarian crimes is because there are more Catholics than Protestants. If there were more gay people and more people from a different ethnic background living in Northern Ireland, there would definitely be more incidents. Q363 Chairman: I suppose the Almighty may be working on that, but I rather doubt it. Mr Winston: I do not think I am going to say anything that is going to shock you. There is obviously more sectarian crime in Northern Ireland than racism or homophobic crime. Q364 Chairman: But as far as the people you deal with in the Greater Shankhill area, is it mostly sectarian? Mr Winston: Yes. Q365 Chairman: Is there a race element? Mr Winston: It is creeping in, yes. Q366 Chairman: It is growing, is it? Mr Winston: It is becoming more prevalent. Q367 Chairman: What about Ms Wardle? Ms Wardle: Hate crimes are a complex subject. Sectarianism would be the main one for us. I believe we have a golden opportunity to stop racism before it starts because it is occurring in areas of high concentration of ethnic communities. It is not a community problem if all of a sudden people are expected to know about everybody else's culture. I think we still have time to work on it. I know that at least one political party in south Belfast actually put their election literature in Chinese as well. Some parties are attempting to address the issue, and that was four years ago. Q368 Chairman: Which party was that? Ms Wardle: It was the PUP. Change is difficult. Going from sectarianism to a tolerant society needs a lot of work. The people who live and work in the communities have had to take the lead role as community workers because statutory people we cannot get at the weekends or in the area after high tension. At times the challenge is whether it is diversity, it is sectarianism or politically sponsored exploitation of the lower classes. That is a thing that comes into my mind all the time. I think it is time we all took risks. I believe we have already seen that, which has not been perfect, since 1994. It is about how we run our organisations, how we ourselves recognise our past can be imperfect and work towards leading our community out of it. It is how you apply yourself to those things that is important. We all know the ills of the past, but the way out of it is to lead from the community. It is most difficult at the minute because we are in a political vacuum. There are things happening now that were not happening when we had an Assembly and that makes it more difficult for people like us. We noted in the IMC report that the amount of punishment beatings, which is another form of 'hate crime', had gone up. I think it is more about a lack of energy and resources by the police than about people themselves. In our community we are practising an alternative system where people have to recompense their community for the ills done and not by a punishment beating. Q369 Chairman: Mr Corr? Mr McKimmey: Mr Corr is on baby duty. I am Dónal McKimmey. Q370 Chairman: Where are you from? Mr McKimmey: I am from the Falls Community Council. Sectarianism is the main dynamic here in relation to 'hate crime' only because that is the one people understand and that has been exposed over 30 years. Sectarianism and racism, whatever that means in this context, is one and the same ill. Q371 Chairman: We have a clear distinction. Sectarianism is between nationalists and unionists or whatever you want to call them. I think the Committee is well versed in the problems that we have had over the years. Let us look at the other growing ones. Racism is something that is relatively new in Northern Ireland as you have had more and different ethnic minorities arriving here. Homophobic prejudice and 'hate crime' probably always have been there but it has come to the surface much more. How are you in your various ways trying to cope with those two? Let us put sectarianism to one side for a moment because I think we all understand the dynamics of that and the difficulties. These are relatively new problems for organisations like yours to tackle. Can we try and leave the sectarianism out for a moment. Tell us what your problems are with racism, homophobia and 'hate crime' and disability too, which is another thing that apparently is growing, and tell us how this reacts in your community and how you are trying to cope with it. Mr Auld: Perhaps I can go back to the sectarian question. In terms of my own organisation, in general terms we would be dealing with a lot more sectarian outline cases or generalised cases, but in particular incidents we would be dealing with more families or individual people who have suffered because of either homophobic attacks or race attacks. How do we tackle it? I assume this is the same as some of the other people here would tackle them and that is by trying to get an understanding from the perpetrators about why they do what they do, getting the victims to confront them about their behaviour, getting some sort of mechanism in place where that can be done in a safe environment, where perpetrators get an opportunity to see the harm and the hurt that they have caused others and get an opportunity to apologise to the victims of those attacks. While that is being done we can support the victims through that whole process so that they feel that they have a safe place to live. Q372 Chairman: Any other offers on this? Does it take up a lot of your time and effort? Mr McGuire: The history of this island is that it has been isolated from the rest of Europe, particularly the north. I work with young loyalists, with people either on the fringes or members of loyalist paramilitary groups. My experience of them is that they have no experience whatsoever of difference or diversity, and why would they have because everybody here is white and Catholic or Protestant, and Catholics and Protestants are segregated. They have no experience of the others even here in this country. The majority of them do not even know the name Europe or internationalism and I think the only way that you can break that down is by bringing people into contact with it. Q373 Chairman: That is not the question I am asking. I am asking you how homophobic, racial and disability 'hate crime' impact on the work you are doing. It has got nothing to do with Europe, with respect. You can be pro or anti Europe and you can be as homophobic as hell. Is it a growing problem in the people you work with, and how are you handling it? I want to get a feeling of how big a problem this is. Mr McGuire: What I do is try and bring our groups into contact with people from the gay/lesbian/bisexual community with international people, people from different ethnic backgrounds and to work on relationships and to renegotiate new relationships. Mr Winston: As far as we would be concerned in the Greater Shankhill area, we are funded to try and stop young people getting involved in anti‑social type behaviour and we have been quite successful in doing that. The funding comes from outside the UK and that is another problem. The difficulty we face with young people is that a lot of them do not know what they are getting involved in. When they start to get involved in racist attacks they do not understand the problems behind it. They do not realise that what they are doing is counter‑productive to the community that they are living in. It is a small number of attacks. They are attacking people who are working in folds, in hospitals, giving a service to the community that they are living in. So we try to educate them in that, but unfortunately we do not get funded to do that so we cannot do it as well as we would like because we are busy doing what we are paid to do. I think the Government fails in that respect. There is a lot of money given to organisations who are not on the ground and who cannot deliver to the people that are on the ground and I think that is something that needs to be looked at seriously. Q374 Mr Clarke: I appreciated the candidness of Mr McGuire's first answer. I think it is a very complex issue. I think sometimes we have to get down to basics and say things as they are. I hope you will forgive me if I make it a little bit more complex by asking you to help me with a quandary which I am unable to answer myself. Mention was made earlier on of the good work the PUP did in south Belfast. Over the last few years the majority of these cases of race hatred have taken place within Protestant communities and that has confused many of us and left us unable to provide an answer as to why race 'hate crimes' are more prevalent within Protestant communities than within nationalist communities. I ask that question not to point a finger, I ask it purely on the basis of trying to understand whether or not it is about class, it is about community work. What is the difference? Why do we have an imbalance in terms of where the attacks are taking place? Mr McGuire: The main reason is that these people are being housed in loyalist areas because that is where the housing is. It is not members of the Ulster Unionist Party putting bricks through people's windows, it is working class loyalists on the fringes of different paramilitary groups. Why are they doing it? Because they feel under threat. They see their area disappearing. They believe there is a conspiracy to depopulate areas close to the city centre in Belfast so that they can build more commercial properties. They feel under threat from nationalist republican areas and in the morning they wake up, come out of their door and there is an Asian family or a black family living beside them. It is obvious what is going to happen, particularly because no work or preparation has been done within these communities for these people coming into the community. Q375 Chairman: Is it a fact that more of the ethnic minorities, Asians, blacks and others, are sent to Protestant public housing rather than Roman Catholic? Mr McGuire: Yes. Q376 Chairman: Is that a fact? Mr McGuire: It is a fact. Q377 Chairman: Does anybody know why? Mr McGuire: Because there is no housing in nationalist Catholic areas. Q378 Mr Clarke: The Sub‑Committee's inquiry into housing discovered that housing pressures within the nationalist community were so great that there were not the voids prevalent within Protestant areas, whether it is housing executive houses that are empty or ex‑private housing being used. Here is an example where housing policy is having an impact on 'hate crime' and I think the Committee needs to take that into account. Mr Winston: Sandy Row is just out the back of us and a hotel has been built where there were once thousands of houses and you have apartment blocks where there were once thousands of houses and the community is being squeezed and squeezed and squeezed. They feel under threat by multi‑nationals coming in and bulldozing their houses and putting apartment blocks up or ethnic minorities coming in their areas as well. You have to put that into the mixing pot and realise that that may be part of the problem. Q379 Mr Clarke: I am going to ask another complex problem related to paramilitary feuds. The Community Relations Council have said to us in their evidence that they do not consider intra‑community sectarian violence to be 'hate crime'. Again, it is a bold statement, but is it one that people would agree with or comment on? How do we define those offences that go on intra‑community? Are they 'hate crime' or are they not? Mr Winston: It depends on what way you look at that. People hating each other, is that 'hate crime'? No. We all hate something, although some of us would not like to admit it. Possibly part of that is down to the fact that they do not like individuals within different paramilitary organisations. Whether that is 'hate crime' or not is open for debate, but there is obviously a dislike there. Mr McKimmey: There are more than two communities in the north. When the Parrick Report came out with the Runnymede Trust in 2000 they talked about "a community of communities" recognising that everybody belongs to an ethnic group. It is important to move away from race and to try to see the different dynamics. If you start talking about ethnic groups, often it is about colour. It is not about colour. The travelling community (and they are represented here) are not black, they are not Asian, they are an ethnic group who experience racism. It is very important we talk about the different communities we all share. We have a complexity of communities here. There are not just two communities. I think that is where sometimes we need to change, in relation to understanding 'hate crimes' taking on certain dynamics. Mr Auld: One of the points I was making in my submission is that from my research into the history of 'hate crime' I found that there is not a clear definition of what that means internationally. My understanding is that the language is being changed now and the phrase that is coming more to the front is 'bias crime' because that is more specific in terms of what it is that is happening. You can hate somebody and not be involved in a 'bias crime', but if you commit a 'bias crime' it is very specific that you are being biased towards someone. In terms of that inter‑paramilitary group, it may be a 'hate crime' but not necessarily a 'bias crime', if you understand the logic. Q380 Mr Clarke: No, I do not. I apologise for asking the question. The Community Relations Council did say that they did not wish that to be seen as 'hate crime' and I thought that was important. Ms Wardle: In our community we like to think that the intra‑community violence actually is pay back time for an awful lot of people, it is just individuals paying each other back rather than two organisations or differently opposing groups. Very often it is to do with something that happened 20 years ago and somebody remembers it. Q381 Mr Clarke: Within my own community in Northamptonshire in England we pioneered monitoring and reporting procedures for 'hate crime' whereby people could decide themselves if a crime had been committed against them and they could report it, even if it was not reported against them when they witnessed it. That led to an incredible breakthrough in terms of being able to record and monitor incidents and then match those against those that are recorded and monitored by the various different bodies and authorities. Is that something you would encourage? One of the faults here is that there is a lack of detailed and comprehensive monitoring and reporting. Is it not about time the community took it upon themselves to take responsibility for reporting it and having the power to decide themselves what is or is not a 'hate crime'? Mr McKimmey: Yes. Third party reporting, which was something we worked through with the travelling community, was reasonably successful and it is something that should be thought about here. Mr Auld: In terms of my own organisation, last year we dealt with 43 cases that we have logged as 'hate crime' throughout the North. Q382 Mr McGrady: In dealing with cases under restorative justice you must get a good insight into the motivations or responses of the perpetrators and the victim. Are there any lessons you can learn in general terms from that experience as to how we could better address the general area of 'hate crime'? Mr Auld: I think it has already been talked about. I think the issue is a lack of understanding, fear, a sense of power for some people and a lack of education around the issues. Mr Winston: I represent the Greater Shankhill Alternatives. Restorative justice is a bit of a buzz word at the moment. What we tried to do was simplify it. Basically it is about people helping people and it is a bottom‑up approach. It is something that goes amiss by many people including governments. You cannot impose something on a community. You have to give the community the tools to try to give them the opportunity to come out of it. What we found was that when we gave the community the tools, that is bringing in the offender to sit round the table and discuss the problem, we could come up with solutions. That is the way forward. It has worked. It is proven to work within the Greater Shankhill community. In the past a lot of people within our community were always getting experts in to tell them how to work. What we found through our research was that there was a lot of expertise within the community. When we first started, restorative justice was a concept that not a lot of people knew about but it was what everybody was doing. It is about you helping your neighbour and your neighbour helping you. It is something that always happened. Putting the term restorative justice around it within Northern Ireland tends to politicise it a lot and that is the problem with it. Basically in its simple form it is about helping your neighbour and letting your neighbour help you. The more we developed that the better response we got from within the community. Q383 Mr McGrady: Do you refer problems or concepts or findings to other organisations? Mr Winston: If there are things that come up within the organisation that we have not got the expertise to deal with, we would refer that on. We have found that there is a lot of expertise within the community to deal with drug and alcohol abuse, trauma, things of that nature. If it is more serious than that, we would pass that on to the relevant authorities to help to deal with it. We find that by keeping most things within the community there is a better opportunity for young people to see the error of their ways, giving something back to their victim and then their community and then themselves, and that gives us the opportunity of working with those young people to prevent them doing that thing in the future. Q384 Mr McGrady: You seem to be indicating that one of the consequences of restorative justice endeavours is it reduces the possibility of re‑offending. Is that your finding? Mr Winston: Very much so. Q385 Mr McGrady: I have some concern about restorative justice, not restorative justice per se but about certain organisations claiming to be restorative justice who are perpetrating 'punishment' beatings as their interpretation of restorative justice. How much does that impact upon the obviously valuable and evenhanded work that you are doing? Mr Winston: I do not know what you are speaking about. We are a restorative justice programme. We try to stop young people getting beaten and shot for the misdemeanours that they cause within the community. We have been an all-inclusive organisation. There are statutory bodies, such as the police, the probation service, social services, that would sit on the various committees we would be involved in. It is a holistic approach and we have found that using that holistic approach is the only way forward. If there is evidence to suggest that people within Shankhill Alternatives are not doing things properly, then I think that should be put to Shankhill Alternatives and the people that are on their different management committees. Unfortunately, in the past people have been saying that it is just the paramilitaries wearing suits and having control within their communities when it is the opposite. I do not know how many young people we have convinced to stay away from paramilitary groups, not to join them, to take a different route and I do not think we are given any credit for it. Q386 Mr McGrady: The organisations I was referring to have no connection with what you are talking about. I am talking about so‑called community groups calling themselves restorative justice who will not have any contact at all with the courts, the probation service, the police or social services, but rather a self‑fulfilling organisation. Thank you very much for that very helpful response. Mr Auld: Certainly in the past we have had the same difficulties as Tom has had. I am from Community Restorative Justice Ireland and we operate in nationalist areas and as such we do not have a relationship with the PSNI. We have a good working relationship with all the other agencies of the state. We have a good working relationship with the probation and social services, the housing executive and all the other agencies that flow from them. However, we do not have a relationship with the police. You are all politicians. Some of you will be in Leeds this week talking about the policing issues, or certainly people from the main political parties are going to be there to talk about resolving the difficulties with the police service. I am not here to apologise for my own organisation not having a relationship with the police. We would welcome that day. We are one organisation that is actively trying to promote the idea in the nationalist community that there is a need for a genuine and open police service operating in our community because we see at first hand the effects of not having a responsive police service to our community's need. Last year we had over 1,100 cases that we dealt with throughout the north and 800 or so cases we dealt with successfully, but in 147 of those cases the people we dealt with said that they did not want to take part in the process that we offered and they walked away. None of those people who did not want to take part in the process that we offer has been punished or been put out of the country or had any other ill effects. They have to live with the consequences of arguing with the people that they had an argument with in the first place. I had a meeting two years ago with the criminal justice section of the Northern Ireland Office when the same points were originally made about restorative justice and the accusations that were made about the name, and I told the director of that branch simply to put up or shut up, that if they had any information about us as an organisation or any individuals involved in it they should go to the proper authorities and make those complaints known or come to me as the director of the organisation and I would ensure that none of those people would have anything to do with the organisation. There was no reply. I would say the same to anybody. If there is anybody who has got any evidence that anybody in CRJ Ireland has had anything to do with punishment beatings or shootings, please come and tell me. I would be delighted to deal with it. Q387 Mr Beggs: Paramilitary‑style shootings and beatings (so‑called 'punishment' attacks) appear to be increasing, particularly in loyalist areas. Why is this the case given the work that you are involved in? Mr Winston: I would dispute those figures for the areas we are working in. The figures that we have would prove that paramilitary attacks in the Shankhill have decreased dramatically over the last six years. For example, in the nine months of research from March 1996 to December 1996 there were 18 or 19 punishment attacks in the Shankhill area. I would argue that there have been less than ten since 1998 to now for those involved in anti‑social type behaviour. There will always be punishment attacks for those involved in paramilitary organisations who transgress the rules of that organisation, but unfortunately that is outside of our remit. We are trying to protect young people from being beaten who are involved in anti‑social behaviour. I wish there would come a day when we could influence the paramilitaries not to go down that road for their own members, but that is something we cannot deal with at the moment. In Northern Ireland a lot of people are good at saying you should always do something else as opposed to giving you praise for the work you are doing. The figures that are being bandied about at the moment might mean that there have been paramilitary attacks in other areas, but we have to look at the remit that we have been dealt by the organisations that have given us the money to try to prevent them happening. I think the police would be very supportive of the work that we do and I would suggest the areas we are working in and have been working in over the last two or three years have seen the number of paramilitary‑style attacks drop dramatically. Mr Auld: I suppose that term is an interesting one, "paramilitary‑style attacks", because one of the things that I am very conscious of is that there are more and more ordinary citizens who are willing to band together to carry out attacks on individuals who they perceive as causing trouble in communities, who have nothing to do with paramilitary groups but who are frustrated individuals who are taking the law into their own hands. Q388 Mr Beggs: Will the Criminal Justice (Northern Ireland) Act 2004 (allowing courts to impose heavier sentences when an offence is aggravated by religion, race, sexual orientation or disability) help to combat this kind of violence? Mr Winston: Yes and no. The difficulty in the areas that I live and work in is that some people would suggest that the police have obligated their responsibilities and therefore the community turns to the paramilitaries to act out on their behalf. The type of offences that we would be dealing with are minor offences like vandalism, petty theft, things of that nature, which is high up the list of priorities for the community but may not be so high up the list of the police's priorities. Whether there should be more emphasis put on policing the areas is another question. I think that should happen and I think it would have the support of the community if that did happen. Whether for political reasons or other scurrilous reasons the police do not act for certain individuals, but that needs to be taken very seriously. Mr Auld: The Criminal Justice Act will have a very limited impact. I am basing that on the fact that we dealt with 43 cases involving those headings over the last year out of a total of just over 1,100. It will have a small impact. Q389 Reverend Smyth: I would like to look at the question of those who are involved in what are called 'hate crimes'. Are they sectarian victims of the wider Northern Ireland scene, or can we say that the sectarian conflict is over and that current sectarian attacks are actually individualised 'hate crimes', particularly bearing in mind what you said, Mina, about these being pay back crimes? Ms Wardle: I see it as neither one nor the other, but I know that in many cases it is pay back time. We have seen that big time in our area with some people losing their lives over it. Q390 Reverend Smyth: Hate is lying behind it, is it not, even if it is hate for the person who perpetrated the offence? Ms Wardle: Yes. There is a lot of that and I think it has been widely publicised by the media, although the media sometimes get that wrong as well. What we find very strange in our community, and it is becoming more and more prevalent in our community, is that you ring up the local police station, if you have got one, and nobody responds. There are old ladies of 84 years of age ringing up paramilitary organisations for a response. The policing on the ground has got to multiply particularly in that area. You cannot phone up a police station ‑ and I would ask you to try it ‑ and get a crime number. You never see anybody there. As to your question, there is a bit of both. Sometimes people want retribution, not restoration and it is difficult because it is horses for courses, what do people want. Mr McKimmey: It is very complex. People will attack somebody for hatred reasons as well. One of the important things about racism or sectarianism is the idea of supremacy. People may have the idea that they are not the boss here any more so they act against that. That must be put into the equation as well. There is no doubt about it, the dis-effectiveness of some communities and some groups within those communities is another dynamic. Hate is another part of that equation. There is no one answer to the whole thing. Q391 Reverend Smyth: This is what we are trying to get at because the harsh reality is that it has become hate, whether it is for disability or homophobia, and how are you going to define it as distinct from the actual crime? That is one of the issues that we are having to examine and why we are maybe pressing you and trying to get to the bottom of things. We did say that the paramilitaries are not as active as they were. Would you say that they are not responsible for any 'hate crimes' at the moment? Is it all just at an individual level now? Mr Winston: I think it is easy to blame the paramilitaries for 'hate crime'. Mr Clarke was saying about "the village" area and about people being associated with a particular paramilitary organisation supposedly having control over that area, therefore they must be involved in 'hate crime'. My understanding is that that is not the case. My understanding is that it is certain individuals within that community doing that. If paramilitaries do what they do best and punish those individuals for being involved in 'hate crime' then there is another outcry for that. It is a hard nut to crack. If paramilitaries were policing their community the way certain individuals within their community want them to do and stamping down on that type of thing, then that opens another can of worms. I suppose the easy answer is to phone the police and let them deal with it, but we are living in Northern Ireland and that is much more difficult to do than a lot of people understand. A lot of people that do not live in those communities do not understand that it is not easy to lift the phone and say that young Joe next door is causing problems because it puts the emphasis on that individual and it is difficult to break out of that cycle. Associations like our own who are trying to do what we can within the communities that we are living in are not given the tools, we are not given the recognition by Government and by other funding agencies to help us tackle that, hence we have to go outside of our country to try to attract funding in to help us do the job for the young people that are living within our communities. That is wrong. That has to change. How does it change? I think it starts with people like yourselves putting pressure on the Government and saying that here are organisations who can do their own little bit but unfortunately they have not got the tools to do it. Everybody cries about resources. We all know you need resources to do a lot of things. Prior to us starting up everybody was condemning punishment violence, saying it is wrong, it should not happen. We condemned it and said it was wrong, it should not happen and what we are trying to deliver can take us away from that, but we never got a penny from government agencies to help us do that and that is wrong. Mr McKimmey: I do not understand why you are emphasising the paramilitaries so much. Most of my recent work has been in London and I did not deal with any race inequality in Hackney or the surrounding areas. The systemic problems in a society of poverty are what you should be looking at. I do not understand why you are spending all your time on paramilitaries. Q392 Reverend Smyth: We can understand that. We have got to probe the issue. Whilst I understand what Tom was saying, he speaks with authority on the Shankhill, I happen to represent south Belfast and he is not going to deny that the party which actually published an election leaflet in Chinese was also the party that sought to remove a person who actually wrote an article in Donegal Pass calling upon the folks to clear out the Chinese from the area. Mr Winston: Surely that party should be commended for getting rid of that individual. Q393 Reverend Smyth: He is still about, and that is the very point I am making. Mr Winston: Are you suggesting that the paramilitary group associated with that party deals with that individual? Reverend Smyth: I am saying that it is quite possible for political parties to do things and to say things ‑‑‑ Chairman: I think we are getting diverted. Q394 Mark Tami: What is your relationship with the police? Have you seen any improvements or change in the way that they are dealing with 'hate crime'? Mr McKimmey: No. The race debate here and what you are doing is a prime opportunity to do something really good. You can have the best legislation in the world but if you do not have enforcement then it is ludicrous. We have had incitement legislation here for years but it has not been enforced. There are credibility issues as well. We have to live with it in this part of the world and deal with it. I cannot see that there is going to be huge change. Mr McGuire: It is all right having the legislation and it is great if it is enforced in an honest way without any politics coming into it, but all that means is we will have more people in prison and more people with a criminal record. Mr McKimmey: I worked on many good initiatives in London, with young black kids. Do they have any more belief in the police? It has gone up slightly but it has got a long way to go because they have to see good practice and honest practice. Mr Winston: Getting back to your question about how we deal with the police and how the police deal with us. We have had an on‑off relationship with the police over the last eight years where we have tried to encourage the police to be more actively involved with our organization, and certain individuals within the police have done that and taken risks to do that, but somewhere up that chain of command they have been stopped at certain levels. Things are changing slowly. More and more police are getting actively involved with our organisation. We are dealing with the Northern Ireland Office about trying to develop that further. Whether the police are doing enough about 'hate crime' is up for debate. If organisations working on the ground were given the tools to help convince the young people to desist from getting involved in those offences then surely we could go further. Mr Auld: We are in a very similar position. We have a meeting with the Northern Ireland Office tomorrow to look at developing a relationship with them and hopefully that will set the scene for us developing a relationship with the PSNI. I have no doubt that, should that happen, an active, strong community working in partnership with an open and accountable police service is a unique opportunity. We have an opportunity there for a new emerging police service working with a community that is open and tolerant and active and wanting to participate in the criminal justice system and there is an opportunity there to develop a police service with the community that will make this place a much safer place to live in. I just hope the opportunity is not squandered. Q395 Mr Bailey: What do you think the Government should be doing that it is not already? Ms Wardle: I think they should be listening and I think they should be leading by example, which is what you are doing today. In about four months' time I will be able to give you a paper called "Would you listen to them?" I do not know if they use it in any other part of the world. It is about how when somebody else is talking somebody else has to listen. It involved talking to 200 people on every issue that affects your every day life. We are not going to steer away from all the contentious issues of policing, racism, homophobia, housing, the health service, we are going to cover everything that any of you have to cover in Westminster and we will produce a paper on that. We have done a programme called "Turning the Tides". I am going to pay a bit of a compliment to Greater Shankhill here. Three years ago we took three of their young people who they had finished with, they were 18 years of age and we started working with them. We put them into a mediation programme which meant they had to go to other conflict areas, including Kosovo and we have got three young gentlemen from the Shankhill of 21 years of age now and they went with nationalist youths and they are playing an active role in monitoring the situation in east Belfast and they are doing that with the Mediation Network. They started off as slight offenders. Their lives have been turned round because somebody took the time. There is no point in taking a group of kids away for a week and bringing them back, that achieves nothing. We have taught them a new way. Initially Greater Shankhill had begun that process and then handed them over. I think it is good you know, when you hand them over, there is another programme that they will benefit from, which they have done. They have been great ambassadors for Northern Ireland. Chairman: That is very encouraging to hear and a happy note on which to end. Thank you very much indeed for your help. Witnesses: Ms Roisin McGlone and Mr Billy McQuiston, Interaction Belfast, examined. Q396 Chairman: Good afternoon. I know exactly what Interaction Belfast is involved in, but just run through it in less than one minute. Ms McGlone: Interaction Belfast is an interface project, it is 15 years old, working in the west of Belfast, along one of the biggest interfaces and looking at development models of good practice, of how you deal with conflict, resolve differences and create protected space. Q397 Chairman: If only all our answers were like that we would be very happy indeed. Thank you. Mr McQuiston, we have not had you in front of us before. Just tell us, briefly, how you struck up this friendship with Sean Murray and the cross‑community work you are currently involved in and the main impact of that. Mr McQuiston: First of all, I have to apologise for Sean not being here. He had another commitment he could not get out of. I am the chairperson of a group called Prisoners in Partnership, which is a group of ex‑loyalist prisoners and it is based in the Highfield/Springmartin area of west Belfast. Our motto is "From defending to mending". After the ceasefires we thought we would get into a partnership with the community to try and bring some community development into the area. Because it is an interface area it was impossible to get away from inter‑community stuff within the area and in order to develop that community we decided that we would get involved in the Springfield Intercommunity Development Project. We got involved with the Springfield Intercommunity Development Project and basically, of the 28 or so core member groups in there, it would be roughly 50:50. There was a lot of contentious stuff around the area. We felt it was no use working on a day‑to‑day basis in and around the area without looking at the contentious stuff and so we started the mobile phone network. With the mobile phone network what happens is we have different community workers the whole way down the interface and they would have an adjacent worker facing them. If young people gathered at one particular place in order to start throwing stones or whatever, then the community worker on whatever side it happens will ring the other community worker on the other side and move in and try and move them on and try to make them see that this is the wrong way to go about things. We had several meetings about several different contentious issues around the area. One of the things that was a bone of contention within the area was a parade. There were people against the parade and people for it. We felt we would not be doing our job right if we did not face up to this and discuss it. Basically what had happened was that there were people from the nationalist side who were involved in SICDP (it is now Interaction Belfast) and we all sat down together and we discussed this and tried to come up with solutions. We have weekly meetings on the mobile phone networks. Relationships have been built up over the last two or three years on that and I would like to think that there was trust there on both sides. Q398 Chairman: That is very interesting indeed. Has that sort of alliance been replicated in other interface areas? Mr McQuiston: To the best of my knowledge it has not been done very much. We are working with people from north Belfast to try to replicate the good practice and the models that we have in west Belfast. Ms McGlone: Last year myself, Billy and Sean, along with the Parades Commission, went to South Africa and we met Brian Currin from the Criminal Justice Review Board. I asked Brian if he fancied coming over and doing some work on trust building along the interface in west Belfast and he said yes. So this time last year he came over and we started a series of trust building sessions between activists in north Belfast, unionists and nationalists, and west Belfast nationalists and unionists. Obviously there are differences in those areas and that is the problem. The difficulty is each interface area is different, it is different geographically and some are enclave areas. We did find the difference stark in terms of north and west, but we are still engaged in that process. That process has been going on for a year. I have brought you the documentation that resulted from that. Q399 Chairman: The Community Relations Council question whether this sort of intra‑community sectarian violence and paramilitary feuds within the individual communities could be described as 'hate crime'. Do you have views on this? Mr McQuiston: We have had 30 years of the troubles so there is bound to be deep‑rooted hatred within the two communities. Some of the inter‑community trouble that is going on at the minute is recreational rioting, kids basically with nothing else to do. We have the mobile phone network and we ring each other up to try and speak to kids on both sides, but what has happened is that the kids on both sides have now got their own mobile phone network and they ring each other up and try and arrange a riot in places where we are not. Whether that is hatred or not, I do not know. Ms McGlone: We listened with interest to the previous evidence. We live in a very segregated society. The diversity is not something we are used to. People have had protected territory for centuries if not generations and there is prejudice there, prejudging the other without prior knowledge. People will attack houses on the other side. They do not know those people. Those people have not done anything to them. That is about prejudging that those people are Provos or nationalists or loyalists or whatever. There is a lot of prejudice in our society, but when people do something that then becomes sectarianism in my view. In some senses what we see on the interface is the manifestation of prejudice. People are attacking other people because they see them as the enemy when they have never even met. Our job has been, and continues to be, to try and develop relationships where more and more of those people get to find out who the other people are. You cannot get everybody to meet everybody. It is about creating a culture, which we have managed to do to quite a successful point, where it is normal that communities meet on loads of different issues, whether that is youth issues, women's issues, and the mobile phone network. Obviously we work across a broad range but our main expertise is in conflict resolution and it is about resolving that conflict. In terms of intra‑community problems, that has a different dynamic and as an organisation we published one private and one public report on the recent Shankhill feud. I am surprised that the Community Relations Council do not see it as 'hate crime' because the end result is the same, people are displaced, they are killed or injured. Q400 Mr Clarke: You will have heard my questions earlier on. I think we are trying to get a feel, not just of whether or not there is 'hate crime' because of course there is 'hate crime', but post the ceasefire is the problem getting more focused and targeted in certain areas than others. I wonder if you could give us a west Belfast perspective in terms of whether or not you have seen any increase or any shifts or any trends. As the ceasefire has come on is the 'hate crime' different? Are you seeing rises in 'hate crime' related to racism? Are there more intra‑community problems? What would you say to the Committee in terms of a west Belfast perspective? Ms McGlone: I would say that we are going through a blip right at this moment in time and that is because of the summer that we came through. Because there was not much publicity and there was not much rioting people did not see it as a bad summer when in fact it was a horrific summer. Both communities were very traumatised by decisions made around parades, and both communities convulsed in some situations around decisions taken by the Parades Commission. We have had a slight rise in young people, because of what happened in Ardoyne, because of other issues, actually going out and attacking communities on both sides. It is a blip. One of the things I would say is very different at the moment is that in the past if something like Leeds Castle was coming up everyone would have waited with baited breath and it would have been said that that was going to have an impact. The sectarianism is not at the interfaces, that is not where it is played out, people would come from other areas. In the past the community took responsibility for that and said, "Hold on a minute. Our quality of life is not going to be affected every time there is a break down in talks or the Assembly is suspended." People took responsibility and started to build the trust, to develop those relationships. There is ambivalence about Leeds next week, but three years ago it would have been a disaster if it did not work and it would have been played out at the interface and there would have been violence. From our perspective it has got better because, even though we have got this blip at the moment from the summer that has been a bit hard to manage, people are still managing it. Relationships were strained because of what happened, but people still kept meeting and talking and the relationships are slowly being healed. We facilitated the communities for a year and we asked them what would make it easier for them, what is this about sectarianism and Brian Currin helped us with that. I would say that we are going through a difficult time at the moment, in fact there was some stuff last night and over the weekend, but things are getting better. Mr McQuiston: Some of the things that are happening are of a recreational nature. I have noticed since the ceasefires that there has been what I call cartoon characters appearing. These people seem to come on the scene all of a sudden and they are at the forefront any time there is trouble. I think it is at times of political instability that these people can run about and be listened to, and I am hoping that in the near future the political instability will be taken away and so another excuse will be taken away. If you look at young people now that are involved in inter‑community stuff in most of the interfaces, the kids are 16 and 17 years of age, but they were six, seven or eight years of age when the ceasefires came about and when the Good Friday Agreement came about. They have not really got a hate there, it is just that they are unsure or whatever in their community. A lot of it is recreational. I do not see it as being hate. I think we have to change people's perceptions of each other and we have to get involved in stuff that helps us see each other's cultures and what perceptions the other communities have. We are involved in a lot of cross‑cultural stuff at the moment with young people and letting them see that there is not any danger in any other culture and that having a different political belief or culture is quite legitimate. Is it 'hate crime'? I do not know. Q401 Mr Clarke: You will have heard me talking earlier about "the village" and how a lot of Chinese and Asian people have moved in and the paramilitaries saw it either as a good way of getting support or they tried to stop it. Has there been any of that around? Ms McGlone: No. One of the things that came up in the strategic plan that we did was about racism and people saying that we would have to sort out the fact that we are all segregated and that there has been interface violence or whatever, but people say the issue of racism is rising and it is an issue within our communities. On the nationalist side, you have a lot of Pilipino nurses working in the Royal Victoria Hospital. The vacant housing stock is much more accessible. There are Iraqi families on the Shankhill as well. Certainly our community activists identified with that and they said that many of the things that we are using to look at the differences in terms of sectarianism could also be used to learn from. It would not be in our remit or out of it but at the same time it is something we are going to have to address. You were talking about your system in Northamptonshire where you started to log the incidents. We do that on a regular basis, every Friday people come and they log the incidents. That has been dealt with through our network. We have taken off racist graffiti. Last year there was one racist incident, it was not an attack, that would have been seen as racist, that is just on the interface. Maybe there are not many ethnic minorities living along the interface. Although it covers 12 wards, there are not many there because the housing stock is premium anyway. Mr McQuiston: I take the same view that someone sitting here said earlier and "the village" is a prime example, the communities feel under pressure. The housing stock is being bought by young professionals and you have people of different backgrounds coming in and they feel under pressure. These things seem to be happening in loyalist areas. Last year there was 29 people re-housed because of racist attacks by the housing executive and 16 of those were in loyalist areas and 13 were in nationalist areas. It is not just in one community here that this is happening. Q402 Reverend Smyth: Billy, in the light of a number of submissions, for example from the CRC and from NICVA, we have noticed that they are claiming an increasing segregation in Northern Ireland, particularly in housing and deteriorating relations between the two communities. How many would you assess the state of community relations at the moment between the two main communities? I appreciate that you are mainly in the north and west but you must see a fair bit of Belfast. Mr McQuiston: I put a lot of it down to political instability and people not knowing where they are at at the moment. When people feel frightened they will strike out. There is a lot of that going on at the moment. I would say in west Belfast, in the area that we come from, community relations have been greatly improved in the last five to six years. When I first got involved with inter‑community stuff I took some flak within my own community, but I took the view that if you have an interface area then the Protestants will move out and that is just a fact. I felt it was endemic on me and people like me to do what they could to give confidence back into the area so that people could live in that area. Our community is now expanding. Ten years ago in the estate that I come from 15 per cent of the housing was empty. We now have a waiting list and the community is expanding. A lot of that is down to housing stock. The Catholic community in Belfast is expanding at a tremendous rate and the Protestant community has dwindled and this has a lot to do with housing. There is a lot of instability there and perceived threat. Q403 Reverend Smyth: One of the problems I have noticed myself in your area of west Belfast is the great numbers of people who were moved out by government planning, whereas because of the parish system in the Falls and so on people stayed and houses were built there. Is that not still part of the problem? Mr McQuiston: Within the Greater Shankhill area there would be a viewpoint that the British Government had a plan to move all loyalists to the east of the river. I know community workers in the Greater Shankhill area who have maps on their wall and if you look at the Protestant loyalist community in west Belfast in 1969 for instance and now, it is dwindling all the time and a lot of that is down to housing stock. If you take the redevelopment of the Shankhill, at the time there was 64,000 Protestants living in the area but there is now something like 24,000 living in the area and that is because of the redevelopment of the Shankhill. Thousands of houses have been knocked down. There is a perception within the Shankhill area that the British Government was trying to move people east of the river in order to contain the troubles in east Belfast. Q404 Reverend Smyth: You mentioned "the village" earlier. How far is this group that call themselves the British National Party who have come into the area responsible, and how far is it that folk are concerned they are not getting the houses they want to live in their own area because young professionals have bought it over? Mr McQuiston: I think that is a big problem in areas like "the village". Young people born and bred in the area get married and they cannot afford housing stock in the area because the young professionals have put the prices through the roof and because outside developers are buying the houses up and renting them out to other people for rents that those young people cannot afford. Q405 Mr Pound: I was going to ask about best practice and how you expand that beyond the boundaries of your immediate areas but I think you have both answered that question. Is there anything you want to add to that about spreading the word on the extraordinary achievements you have had in terms of best practice? Ms McGlone: Thank you for that opportunity. What we have done is we have talked to people that live on the coalface and we have said to them - and this project has been going a long time - we need to have a framework within which we can move on all these issues. We started with a blank sheet. Brian Currin helped us with it. I believe this strategic plan is a document of good practice because it was drawn up after consultation. I will go through it briefly. Q406 Chairman: Are you going to leave it with us? Ms McGlone: I brought you packs. We did an annual report like a newspaper because we have this real thing about the media never report anything good about interfaces. Q407 Chairman: The media never report anything good about anything. Ms McGlone: What we did was we decided to produce a newspaper and it was the good news stories from west Belfast. We also did a report called "The State of Play" and basically it is an idiot's guide to the interface in west Belfast, what the issues are, what the problems are, the political leadership, all of that. Then I brought along the strategic plan, which was the final document to come out of it. I want to run through that because it will be very different from some of the things I heard earlier. The area that we work in is the interface between the Shankhill and the Falls, so what I am saying has been agreed by people from the Shankhill, the Falls, the nationalists, unionists, republicans and loyalists. One of the things we need to continue doing is what we called resolving difference, that is the mobile phone network, that is about conflict, that is the fire fighting in some senses, but it is also the issue of graffiti, flags and emblems. We need to deal with those issues and we have been doing that very successfully. When I talk about us, I am talking about all the community activists we work with; I am not just talking about the staff in the organisation. You can read that. We have put what we mean by that there and then the actual steps that need to be taken to combat that issue and we have tried to put in quotes we had from different people that epitomize that for us. The other one was community developments across the interface. We are trying to achieve a place where we do not do community development on the Protestant side and the nationalist side, even though they have very different needs, but we do community development together. People will train together, do seminars together and they will do projects together. We recently painted the Lanark Way gates. There are now beautiful murals on them that were done by children from Clonard and Highfield and we had the launch there a couple of weeks ago. The reason why this is on the front of the report was to retain the old gates and there has not been a touch of graffiti on them yet. It is about starting to do things together rather than separate development. The third one is exploring diversity and this is where the issue of racism comes in. As Billy was saying, they are involved in cultural visits. We have gone down to the Doyle, we are going up to Fernhill House next week, both communities together and we also do some quite political stuff as well in terms of murals and going in and out of each other's areas, visiting memorial gardens that would be perceived as being for people from the troubles. The other one is highlighting community needs. These areas are deprived. There needs to be a joined‑up government. We do not have an Assembly. We need to have all the departments working together to look at urban regeneration and instead of bringing out all these separate initiatives that do not link together, maybe we should be taking interface communities and having a look there. Q408 Mr Beggs: What should be the Government's priorities in tackling sectarian attitudes and behaviour which can result in 'hate crime', and what should the Government be doing that it is not presently doing? Ms McGlone: Two things. One is a shared future. A shared future is not perfect but it is the only show in town. It is the first time that we have a potential policy that has been consulted on. Is it not incredible, after 30 years of war, that we do not have a community relations policy for the Government? When I was in the civic forum I abused one of the researchers by asking her to go into the programme for government and the finance and to find out how much money was spent on community relations. There were two areas, OFM and DFM through the city council programmes and EMU, the Department of Education. The answer was £0.5 million. That is disgraceful. I will read a quote from this report: "Since the publication and resourcing of the North Belfast Community Action Unit ..." ‑ if you remember, it was set up in May 2002 and it was after the Holy Cross dispute - "... the report provided analysis of many of the key points concerning issues facing communities in north Belfast." We welcome that analysis, but the reality was that £17 million is going into that area. That is not a coordinated approach to these issues, that is a specific approach directly because of a dispute that happened in one area. The positive side to that is that interfaces then became prominent. We were very lucky because suddenly everyone started to see it was possible to do something. Up until then it was very difficult for us to get funding. The funding is not the issue, it is support. It is about a policy in community relations, at least it is about saying to different government departments that they need to look at this. One of the ideas that they may think about is that interface communities take some of this good practice that we have worked for so hard. You do not have to re‑create the wheel. There is good practice already out there. Maybe you could use that as a pilot to see how it goes. It is not about resources, it is about support, it is about enabling and empowering people to do things. The other thing that I would say is that I do not think the Government is very good. If you want to know about domestic violence, you do not go and ask a fireman unless he has been a victim of domestic violence or a perpetrator. Groups like ourselves that have gone through all this work suddenly find an initiative that is coming out that nobody has discussed with us. That was one of the difficulties with the north Belfast unit, they did not take into account all the experience of people that had worked in that area prior to that and that is why we were glad they did not come near us because we were able to do that ourselves. These are the two things we would like to see happen. One is a shared future, imperfect though it may be, but we will learn as we go along. It needs to be moved on and the Government needs to engage with it. The second thing is that I think the Government needs to recognise that there is expertise out in the community sector. Let me give you an example. I met with Des Browne on a number of occasions. We said, "You need to do this, this and this," and he said to us at the time, "Look, I would really love to do that but you have your own government here. There is really nothing I can do." Two days later it fell. We asked him for three things at the time. One was to progress the shared future, the second one was to provide some way that groups like ours that were well established did not have to jump through hoops every time they wanted some funding, and the other one was to have an inter‑agency group that would start to look at interfaces. He brought in a group of people from different departments in Stormont. The only representative on it from the community was Duncan Morrow. There were no specialisms in interface or racism or whatever. I think Des tried very hard to progress those things. Unfortunately somebody decided to move him. Chairman: As always, a thoroughly positive contribution from you. Thank you for coming. We will read the paper you have left us. I am going to adjourn the Committee. Thank you both very much indeed.
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