Progressive not resentful nationalism needed – Margaret Ritchie’s speech to McCluskey Summer School

The McCluskey Summer School took place on Saturday in Carlignford. Margaret Ritchie and Martin Mansergh debated the future of progressive nationalism. Here is Margaret’s speech. I am still trying to get a copy of Dr Mansergh’s to share with you.

There was also a debate about the future of progressive unionism which included a thoughtful contribution from University of Ulster academic, Arthur Aughey, which I will post tomorrow.

First of all I would like to thank the organisers of the McCluskey Summer School for inviting me to speak here.  It is a great pleasure for me to do so. I’m pleased there is such a good turnout and I hope that this annual event goes from strength to strength. It is important that we maintain our link with the true history of the Civil Rights movement.

It is also important that we go beyond reflection on the Civil Rights achieved for nationalists in the North and look at the future for nationalism itself.

There are of course significant challenges facing Irish nationalists in both the politics of the moment and in the politics that lie ahead.  But those challenges can certainly be overcome.

Of course, where there are challenges, there are also opportunities.  It is my intention that we seize those opportunities and that the SDLP leads the way in constitutional nationalism.

In looking at the future for constitutional nationalism – it is worth considering briefly, where  it has come from..

As I stand before you today, I am of course proud to be  the Leader of what’s often curiously billed as, ‘SDLP – the constitutional nationalist’ party.  However, the ‘constitutional nationalist’ label, of itself, does little for me.  In one sense it’s a clumsy term of convenience coined by the British Government and media – at a time of great turbulence and violence – to distinguish between those nationalists who would talk to you and those nationalists who might shoot you! It adds little more value than that.

My inheritance as an Irish nationalist is much richer and stronger than that. We have been around for a long time in a tradition that predates the SDLP or Sinn Fein or any 1970s label. And in the broad sweep of history there are actually few political movements that have been more successful or more democratic than the mainstream protagonists of Irish nationalism down the years.

Daniel O’Connell built a mass democratic movement and brought huge sections of the population to open air public meetings. O’Connell did this in Ireland a century before Ghandhidid it in India.  It was Charles Stuart Parnell as an Irish nationalist MP in Westminster, who deployed just about every parliamentary device and mastered every procedure – regarded now as routine to the skilled parliamentarians of today.  Irish nationalism has been profoundly democratic and positive in its instincts. Even De Valera, his own hands bloodied from fighting the British and from fighting those who initially settled with the British, having come in from the cold in 1927 handed over power peacefully having established democratic institutions of government and an independent civil service.

And just as O’Connell and Parnell and De Valera, and for that matter Collins, had their own huge successes.. Catholic emancipation; home rule; Irish independence; so too their direct descendants such as Garrett Fitzgerald, Bertie Ahern and John Hume have had theirs.

It was Fitzgerald, Hume and others (Irish Nationalists but also social democrats) who created the framework that has effectively brought to an end Ireland’s historic enmity with Britain.  It was Hume who was instrumental in helping Sinn Fein reverse the armed republican movement out of the cul-de-sac of violence.  It was Hume, Mallon, McGrady and Durkan who insisted that power-sharing would be at the core of any settlement in the North.  And similarly that any settlement required meaningful North Southinstitutional arrangements which gave real and expression to the ‘Irish dimension.’

So Ladies and Gentlemen I and those who share my perspective are much more than 1970s constitutional nationalists.  I represent the latest generation of Irish nationalist with a proud and continuous record of political success and change.  My understanding of constitutional nationalism is the same nationalism that flows from O’Connell, Parnell, De Valera, Collins.  Yes Wolfe Tone and Connolly as well. Fitzgerald, Hume, Durkan and others. 

Those who mark Sinn Fein moving onto the traditional SDLP ground of ‘constitutional nationalism’ should try to see the broader picture. With their disavowal of violence, Sinn Fein are merely rejoining the mainstream of Irish Nationalism.

Meanwhile the SDLP will continue to occupy the principled social-democratic ground at the centre of nationalism on the island. Time will tell if the authoritarian Sinn Fein can ever join us there.

SDLP Irish nationalism is also the nationalism of Seamus Heaney, an optimistic nationalism that believes that we can hope for a great sea change on the far side of revenge  – a nationalism that can believe that a farther shore is reachable from here.  And it is to Heaney’s farther shore that I now wish to turn.

I suppose if you looked at a snapshot of Irish nationalism today, you might conclude that there are three elements in the North, the SDLP, Sinn Fein, and the Dissidents.  Although they represent an ever-growing security threat, I think it is too early to try and categorise the Dissidents.  For me that leaves the two strains of Irish nationalism alive in the North. The social democracy of the SDLP and the populist authoritarianism of Sinn Fein.

For me, the differences between these two are profound.  Those profound differences are, admittedly, to some extent masked by what nationalists have in common on the surface.  Broadly speaking this includes their religious affiliation and even their cultural interests such as GAA, Music and Language etc.

However, on just about everything else that really matters the two nationalisms in the North are fundamentally different. 

Although I don’t like labels, I would tend to categorise the nationalism of the SDLP as progressive nationalism.  A nationalism optimistically reaching out for Heaney’s ‘farther shore’. 

The progress we have made in recent years with the Good Friday Agreement allows us to develop a progressive nationalism that could not have been developed before.  Because the legitimacy of the political pursuit of Irish unity is now accepted on a par with the legitimacy of maintaining the Union, then that surely allows us to look forward and to be more progressive. 

There is no longer a justification for a nationalism that is categorised by resentment or bitterness.  That is why I have said recently (although I’ve been criticised for it), that we want to make Northern Ireland an economic success.  Resentful nationalism says we don’t care about the economy, we are just biding our time until Northern Ireland is over. 

But the old nationalist ambivalence about the Northern Ireland economy cannot be justified. In the coming weeks the SDLP will set out in detail an economic vision for Northern Ireland which recognises that notwithstanding our political goal of Irish unity we must make this place as good as it can be for the people who live here now.  An economy that delivers jobs and prosperity for all our people. Not later. Now.

The other nationalism remains ambivalent on the Northern Ireland economy. Indeed it cannot bring itself to utter the words Northern Ireland. It remains suspicious of investors and entrepreneurs, and resentful of profit. Its leader has said the economy is ‘not important’

But perhaps the biggest difference between progressive nationalism and resentful nationalism is the view they take of society itself.  SDLP progressive nationalism says we want a shared society.  That means a society that is not only non-violent, but which welcomes, cherishes and embraces different traditions and actively sets out to end segregation and division.  Our vision of a shared society is one where people with different religions and races can live side by side in the same areas, sharing the same communities totally at ease with each other. 

Other nationalists reject this vision, largely because they feel it may reduce their control in their single identity communities.  They are happy to see our divisions continue.  They do of course want less violence and they would like to see better relations between the two communities.  But they see nothing wrong or abnormal about our social segregation.
SDLP progressive nationalists have a much higher ambition for our future society.

And of course resentful nationalists will use every device available to them to mark out their territory or to stamp their identity all over the other community.  That is why we have the inappropriate flag waving, the abuse of the Irish language as a cultural weapon and hundreds of unauthorised paramilitary memorials or tributes dotted all over the North.  That is the behaviour of nationalists who deep down do not want to integrate with their unionist neighbours. They seek to dominate.  We, however, in progressive nationalism are more confident, more optimistic and more ready to engage wholeheartedly withunionists across the divide.
Progressive nationalists are capable of uttering the words “Northern Ireland”.  We are unafraid of encountering a member of the British Royal Family at a function.  We do not feel the need to airbrush out of history the sacrifice of many thousands of Irish nationalists who fought in two world wars. We accept the realities of our history and our journey and we want to improve on the past.

Then there is the question of Irish unity itself.  Progressive nationalists see a unity that is a coming together of the two traditions on the island and not a hostile take over.  Our strategy is to provide assurances about the continuation of the institutions of Northern Ireland in any new United Ireland. 
Also an acknowledgement that the challenge for us as Irish nationalists is to make the case to unionists in a way that has never been done before.  What happens to the National Health Service in our vision of a United Ireland?  What happens to our Social Welfare System?  What happens to our Police Service?  These questions have to be answered. And we will try to answer them in a positive spirit.

Standing around waving flags, resenting Northern Ireland and its institutions, while we wait for the day when somehow we all wake up and Ireland is united – is not good enough. Sinn Feinsay that magical day will occur in 2016 to coincide with the 100th Anniversary of the Easter Rising”.  No it won’t.

Shouldn’t they be honest and grown-up about this fundamental issue?

We in the SDLP are developing a credible plan for Irish Unity. Because progressive nationalism is credible while resentful nationalism relies on exploiting fears and insecurities. The SDLP has a successful track record of persuading people about the political future that lies ahead and we are confident we can do the same again.

As we roll out this message of progressive nationalism, we get the usual knee-jerk criticisms from people who should know better.  Recently Brian Feeney suggested that because Sinn Fein have moved onto SDLP ground the SDLP’s reaction is to move on to Alliance Party ground.  He could not be more wrong.

We remain as committed as ever to the achievement of a United Ireland.  We are, after all, committed Irish nationalists.  What has changed in recent years is that unionists have accepted the legitimacy of our objective and goodwill of our endeavours. 

A substantial number of unionists voted SDLP in the last Westminster Election, I regard that as a significant accomplishment that we who proudly aspire to Irish unity can garner support from those who are completely committed to maintaining the union. I am proud of that fact and hope to see more of it. Indeed it is clear that unionists can see the difference between progressive and resentful nationalism.  Our task is to highlight those differences to more nationalists!

The challenge for nationalism now, led by the SDLP, is to make our case to all the citizens of the North and bring them round to our progressive way of thinking on jobs and prosperity; on a genuinely shared society; and on our credible plan for unity that we honestly believe brings benefit to all. 

The battles of the past are over. The only battle now is the battle of ideas. But, again, in line with the broad sweep of history of Irish nationalism it is the social democrats, the SDLP, who will be coming forward with the ideas that will take all of us to a better placed.

The issues DRD Minister needs to address

The Assembly’s  Regional Development Committee met in special session today to discuss recent events.

You can listen to a clip from the press conference I gave following the meeting here:

Remarks following special committee meeting

Regional Development Minister Conor Murphy fired four members of the board of NI Water on the basis of a report from the Independent Review Team he had appointed.

Given the events of the last few days and weeks, and particularly those which led to the suspension of departmental Permanent Secretary Paul Priestly early, there are grounds to question whether that inquiry process was truly independent. That will be the main focus of committee inquiry.

At the time the committee accepted and endorsed the report of the Independent Review Team in good faith on the recommendation of Minister Murphy.

The Minister will meet us on 1st September and we will be asking him to update us on specific events since he last came before us on 15th March. We will be asking him – and others –whether the report still stands and whether the very serious decisions taken on the basis of it, including the appointment of interim directors outside the normal process for public appointments, can stand.

The SDLP believes that the Minister must account for recent events.

Specifically, given that he expressed his fullest confidence in Mr Priestly late last week, what exactly happened that led Conor Murphy to say his position was untenable early this week?

What led him to change his mind so abruptly, when and how did he find it out and why did he not find it out earlier?

More generally we will be seeking assurances that his department is being run in a defensible manner. NI Water not only provides a vital public service, it is also a major employer with nearly 1400 staff.

Time to devolve security powers and tackle dissidents locally

Writing in today’s Irish Times SDLP Leader Margaret Ritchie calls for the devolution of security powers to the PSNI.

THE RECENT car bomb at Strand Road police station in Derry, swiftly followed by an attempted under-car bomb in Bangor, has underlined that dissident republicans are now able and willing to bring murder and mayhem to almost every part of Northern Ireland.

Without any vestige of popular support, without even a coherent political statement, they seek to emulate the purely technical prowess of the Provisionals who brought devastation to our cities, towns and villages for so long.

The born-again Provos now operate in a very different political, social and policing environment. Twelve years ago, in the first all-Ireland poll for 80 years, the people of Ireland voted overwhelmingly for the Belfast Agreement. It set up our devolved institutions and also laid down the principle of consent – Ireland can only be united by the votes of the people of both jurisdictions.

The principle of consent is now the settled democratic will of the people of Ireland. Violent dissidents have therefore directly challenged Irish democracy; they have excluded themselves from all democratic political discourse. They have no claim on the political sympathies of anyone. It is not a question of branding them as criminals, but rather of recognising that they have made themselves criminals by setting themselves outside and against the community. They are not a political problem; they are a community policing problem.

The first and greatest triumph of the peace process was the establishment of an accountable, representative policing service which is accepted in every part of our community. Indeed, that very success largely accounts for the fact that the PSNI is the primary target of the dissidents.

In acting against violent dissidents, the PSNI is acknowledged to be acting in the interests of, and in co-operation with, the whole community.

For almost 10 years the flow of intelligence from the community to the PSNI and An Garda Síochána has been the key to containing the dissident threat. However, I believe that flow may have been weakened by the 2007 transfer of intelligence-gathering primacy from the PSNI to MI5, and we may have been paying the price over the last year or more.

The transfer of control to MI5 was largely done at the behest of Sinn Féin, which wanted to distance itself from what it called “political policing” before joining the Policing Board. The party insisted that Special Branch, which was indeed a deeply flawed body, should not be reformed as part of the Patten process, but simply abolished. This was a serious political error, and we repeatedly told them so.

Control of intelligence- gathering was removed from the PSNI and from the control of the accountability mechanisms set up under the Belfast Agreement, including the Policing Board and the Policing Ombudsman.

We have an accountable policing service facing violent dissidents, but it is reliant for intelligence-gathering on an unaccountable, shadowy service with its own agenda and a deeply dubious record in Northern Ireland. This cuts right across the grain of co-operation between people and police which must be the very bedrock of dealing with the dissident problem.

There is now clear evidence that there have been intelligence failures over the last two years, starting with the huge bomb abandoned at Castlewellan on its way to Ballykinlar and continuing with the murder of two soldiers at Massarene Barracks and of Constable Carroll in Craigavon. But those who point the finger of blame at the PSNI are facing in the wrong direction.

The dissidents were regrouping, reorganising and co-operating across factional lines since late 2008, not least against those they perceived as informers, and there may have been a loss of human intelligence sources. The greater technical expertise the dissidents showed in bomb-making technology may have extended to frustrating the signals intelligence-gathering on which MI5 is thought to be over-reliant. It is notable that in the same period there was no downturn in intelligence success on the part of the Garda, which continues to frustrate dissident attacks and make arrests.

The SDLP believes we need to go back to the first principles of the Belfast Agreement to defeat the dissidents. Sinn Féin’s MI5 experiment has been a failure. Primacy in intelligence-gathering should be returned to the PSNI, where it would be subject to full accountability mechanisms of the Policing Board and Policing Ombudsman. Protocols governing PSNI use of informants should be extended to all informants.

There is a place for technical wizardry in this fight, but any agencies whose expertise is sought must be under the operational control of accountable PSNI officers.

The absolutely crucial source of intelligence is human, and consists of ordinary people telling what they know to a policing service they trust. There is no other way.

Its takes talent, technology and tolerance to grow an economy. O’Conall St Summer School II

Professor Richard Florida is a great advocate of creative economies. Not places making all their money from arts and culture but societies which are capable of transforming knowledge into product and attracting new people from outside to do likewise.

He argues that three key conditions are necessary for a successful creative economy; talent, technology and tolerance.

Here in the north we have the technology and the talent. Big question – when will we start being tolerant?

Read In Touch – a new community newsletter for South Belfast

In Touch is a new community newsletter for South Belfast which I have produced. If you live in the Balmoral or Newtonbreda areas you’ll probably get one through your door. All feedback very welcome.

InTouch Web

O’Conall Street’s virtual summer school launched: Hans Rosling on global population growth with Ikea props

Am going to post thought provoking lectures and articles I like during August; like we were having a virtual summer school on O’Conall St.

Here is Hans Rosling’s latest TED installment, this time on global population growth with Ikea props!

Belfast Pride hits the streets

I’ll be missing the Dubs and Down at Croker later to join some 10,000 others – straight and not - in a colourful,  musical and very carnavalesque celebration of Belfast Pride today.

In a city with many parades which exclude this is on that quite literally puts its arm around everyone.

Long may it continue and long may the diversity in our city been seen as a strength and not as a threat.

Conor Murphy has a throw out the trash day with an £8m park and no ride

Anyone who has watched the West Wing will know what throw out the trash means.

Its an age old trick to try and slip out some not so good news when there is either some much better or much worse news going on that day.

This tactic has cost people their jobs, most notably on 9-11, but more often then not passes off without too many people noticing.

Yesterday the Minister for Regional Development, Conor Murphy, was doing a bit of it himself.

As he posed for the photographers on the Newry bypass, all smiles at the completion of a the latest phase of the Dublin – Belfast motorway, he also slipped out an announcement which is altogether less flattering to his record.

The new £8 million ‘park and thumb’ a ride facility as my constituency MP Alasdair McDonnell put it is well behind schedule and unable to deliver the very thing it has been built for – a park and ride facility for commuters relying on the congested Saintfield Road – Ormeau Road corridor into Belfast.
Five years into the project, the people of South Belfast have a 700 space car park. The promised Park and Ride has not even been tendered for and so commuters are being invited to use the 700 spaces to park and thumb a ride of a mate or walk over five minutes to the nearest regular bus service. £11,500 for a park and ride space with no ride is a joke. No wonder Conor Murphy was keen to get this announcement in the trash can on a day when everyone was caught in the gaze of his shiny new motorway.

Just arriving in Dublin on the Enterprise. Thinking of jumping on a Dublin bike to get around the capital today. There is another thing Min Murphy has promised us in Belfast. Wonder if his feasibility on a Belfast bike scheme will be completed in time….

John Hewitt Summer School speech

Here is the speech I delivered yesterday at the John Hewitt Summer School.

The Good Friday Agreement changes the debate about the future of our island in a fundamental way. The question goes from being whether there will be a united Ireland to how Ireland will be united and what that will mean for people North and South. 

Yet no nationalism, Irish or British, unionist, loyalist or republican has even begun to debate what this means for us as a region and as an island. It is like we consider the absence of violence to be peace, and that we believe that stable political institutions equals reconciliation.

Will this new Northern Ireland, indeed New Ireland, be built on the very thing that has made it possible – the Good Friday Agreement – or are we to be condemned to more of the same zero sum equation tribal politics that have held us back for so long?

In other words, do those of us who claim the title “republican” want to build a Catholic and Gaelic Ireland, or somewhere more representative of the true diversity on our island? And can the North, Northern Ireland, become a prosperous region of Ireland whilst continuing to grow for as long as its people wish to remain as a region in the UK? 

It’s a great pleasure to speak at the Hewitt summer school. Hewitt has been an inspiration to me for many years and was one of the first people to pose the questions I have just asked. He did so well before the first shot was fired in our modern troubles and at a time when this region was synonymous with political discrimination and inequality.  In a 1964 letter to his great friend and poet John Montague, Hewitt wrote;

 “By trying to waken folk to the concept of the Region, it seemed to me the necessary step to prize Ulster loose from the British anchorage: then and only then, when free in ideology, the unity with the other part of our island could be realised and established.

The North cannot be invaded, and taken by force into the Republic: if simply outvoted by a nationalist majority resentment would remain, but, realising themselves for what they are for the first time, not Britain’s pensioners or stranded Englishmen and Scots, being instead a group living long enough in Ireland to have the air in their blood, the landscape in their bones, and the history in their hearts, and so, a special kind of Irish themselves, they could with grace make the transition to federal unity.

I always maintained that our loyalties had an order to Ulster, to Ireland, to the British Archipelago, to Europe; and that anyone who skipped a step or missed a link falsified the total. The Unionists missed out Ireland: the Northern Nationalists (The Green Tories) couldn’t see the Ulster under their feet; the Republicans missed out both Ulster and the Archipelago; and none gave any heed to Europe at all. Now, perhaps, willy nilly bundled in the European rump of the Common Market, clearer ideas of our regional and national allegiances and responsibilities may emerge.”

It is in this spirit that I came to Platform for Change; a gathering of people from this place who want to remain here and make this region work. Platform makes no endorsement of my nationalism, nor does it validate another’s’ unionism. It is about the common ground that cannot be ignored; the Northern Ireland beneath our feet. It hopes to be a space where issues are debated and solutions are found which will benefit the many, and not just the vested interests of the few. It’s a place where a new politics for a new Northern Ireland can be fostered. 

The history books of our island are jam packed with conflict between tribes. When we talk about equality we hear – community. When we talk about community, we often forget that it is people who have rights, and people, in all their diversity, that make up communities, be they communities of interest or communities of faith.

Yet the single biggest challenge facing us today is inequality. Not simply between two communities but between people from all sides, amongst those who have and those who have not. Surely a new politics would put tackling the true and growing inequality at the top of its agenda?

One of the great tragedies of 20th century Ireland is that this politics took a back seat to the national struggle.

Partition and the emergence of the southern state set the cause of equality, reconciliation and social justice back a hundred years. It did not just divide our island but smothered any debate that sought to move beyond the national question.

It gave rise to a tokenistic neutrality and protectionist economics; to armed republicanism, reactionary loyalism and, ultimately, a dirty and futile war.

The question today is surely not whether we wish to simply reintegrate the national territory in the image of the Irish state but whether Irish men and women, Catholic, Protestant and Dissenter wish a New Ireland to emerge.  An Ireland that reflects our diversity, built on good government and that places equality, prosperity and justice at the heart of everything it does.

My generation has been handed the keys to that Ireland. We are the inheritors of peace, not the perpetuators of conflict.

We can open the door in front of us and, with courage, recast all about us; or we can look back and repeat the mistakes of the past. We can embrace the words of Hewitt.

They are, after all, the philosophy on which the Good Friday Agreement is built. That Ireland and its people have allegiance to region, to nation, to these islands and to this great continent.

When I talk to young northerners, I meet people who embody Hewitt’s dream; proudly Northern and proudly Irish.

Many are proudly British too and most happy to be Europeans.

The truth is that the people of our region are not as divided as our politics suggests.

Irish nationalism can take the old road of a “one size fits all” future or it can walk into a new one in which unity is neither a unionist nightmare nor a nationalist pipedream.

But to do that it must change, and change radically.

First the very issue of unity needs to be elevated above politics. That’s why the SDLP has recommended the reconvening of the Forum for Peace and Reconciliation to discuss unity. We owe it to ourselves as a nation to debate and agree a model of a united Ireland and to do so before 2016. We cannot be complete as a nation without a shared vision of our future. North needs south but south will need the North if a new Ireland is to emerge and the absolute potential of our island is to be fulfilled.
 
Secondly, we need to make Northern Ireland work. Ignoring the opportunity of regional government is to ignore the common ground on which a new Ireland will be built.

That means maximum devolution but also imaginative regional solutions to local problems. It means real power sharing that is capable of building the best education system in Ireland, defending the NHS – a British institution made Irish in Northern Ireland, and modernising our budget system so it funds need and not departments. 

It also means getting serious about the economy because we will never build a strong all Ireland economy if we have a weak northern one.

We need to make the North a place where sectarianism is the real enemy and government leads the fight against it.

A strong North means a strong Ireland. A weak, underperforming and politically dysfunctional one means a weaker Ireland.

Our home is a region of Ireland. My dream is for it to flourish under a common flag representing the words on the coin and so often quoted by Hume – e pluribus Unum.

Others hope it will remain a region of the UK.

But we all surely agree that it is our region and needs governed for the benefit of all our people.

That is the as yet unfulfilled opportunity of the Good Friday Agreement. To build a great region on Irish soil, united in a common desire to see our neighbours flourish.

Where culture is shared; where sport and art is honoured and celebrated, never politicised and denigrated. Where the weave of diversity is strong and common ground is worked.

Where endeavour and enterprise are promoted and where prejudice is rejected.

The old Irelands, North and South, aspired to a separate but equal relationship with others. They adopted an old fashioned conservative British view of equality.

They cast progressive politics aside in favour of great nationalisms that could bind people in a common struggle but were incapable of accommodating those who did not fit with its sense of identity.

The New Ireland must honour those who believed in their cause, whether we agree with it or not, but it must not repeat the mistakes of their past.

It must work the common ground. Share a common goal and, in this region, coalesce to give the political leadership necessary for prosperity to trump poverty and allow reconciliation to become a reality.

Then, and maybe then, two centuries and ten years after Tone professed the unity of catholic, protestant and dissenter, his dream will finally become a reality.

Campaign for victims of institutional abuse takes big step forward

Yesterday I had the great privilege of accompanying some of the survivors of institutional abuse in Northern Ireland to a meeting with the First and  deputy First Ministers.

I did not blog about it over the past couple of days because I was not sure what reception we would receive nor whether the state would respond seriously to the demands for an independent public inquiry, a redress process and support structure for those who are trying to cope with the legacy of their abuse.

A public and without prejudice apology by the First and Deputy First Minister’s on behalf of the Northern Ireland Executive acknowledging the hurt and injury caused, is also overdue. I believe this statement should be made in the Assembly at an early date.

Many of the survivors left this region to rebuild their lives elsewhere. Others became came caught up in the troubles on both sides and nearly everyone we have met is in some way scared by the childhood abuse they suffered at the hands of those running and working in homes and other care institutions.

The First and deputy First Ministers acknowledged this. Over the coming weeks there will be further meetings to discuss all the issues raised but the process has begun and as the old phrase goes, there’s no turning back.