01/03/2012 Hearts and Minds

Hello and welcome to the programme. Coming up this week: Shock horror,

still a divided society, but will the way we deal with the past help

build a united future. The Strabane pupils getting Transatlantic work

experience. Peter Robinson's 161 spin doctors, are they doing their

job? Will Ireland vote yes to the stability deal and what if the

answer is no? No amnesty, hand yourself in if you

are a terrorist with a guilty conscience. Those were unionist'

responses this week in the context of party talks with the Secretary

of State about dealing with the past.

It came in a week when a community relations report told us what was

the painfully obvious, that we are still a society deeply divided by

housing, education and culture. So to what extent will our future be

determined with how we approach the so-called legacy issues. There

doesn't seem to be much to choose between the Secretary of State and

the DUP on these issues, no amnesty, no truth commission, so are you a

bit out in the cold? I'm more inclined to look at how long it's

taken people to get round to addressing those very serious

questions and concerns and trauma that so many survivors, victims,

are expressing. That approach, which has been around for the best

part of the 30-40 years of the conflict and since, really hasn't

addressed the concerns. I think it's time for some new thinking and

whilst the disapounting that it's taken so long, I think people still

have to be challenged. -- disappointing. Why do you think it

will work in the future if it hasn't up to now? Because it's the

bottom line? It's not for the victims. They want to know what

happened and they want justice. They are not getting justice. If we

have a trickle of people over that 30-40 year years who voluntarily

went to the police station and said I can make a statement, that won't

address it because we are talking about many people here.

thinking, you need some and quickly? I don't think there's any

new thinking when it comes to justice. Justice is the same

whether it's in this century or the last. It's about people being

brought to account for their wrongdoing. What Sinn Fein propose

will deny the victims justice and I think that is where we draw the

line. We believe that people have suffered in the past, suffered some

terrible things that have happened to them and their families. If they

want justice, they are entitled to pursue it. Do you think that

everyone wants justice? Don't people just want to know what

happened? Well, again, there is no one-size-fits-all approach to this,

Noel. I accept there are people who may have moved on with their lives

and have lost hope that there will be justice and want to know the

truth about what happened to their loved ones but have no expectation

that anyone will be held to account for that. That said, there are many

of the victims who still feel that justice is important for them. I

don't believe that they should be denyed the right to pursue justice

in those circumstances. If you withdraw from them the right to

justice, then you once again perpetrate on them all the hurt and

pain that they've been through. To deny justice is to in a way

exaggerate the wrong, it's to make that wrong even worse than it

This should have the avenue to pursue it? It should apply to

everybody. It should apply to the victims of the British Army. It

should apply to the Special Branch, with Loyalist polymer the trees in

murder campaigns. If it doesn't apply to them, clearly the only

truth they are interested in are the truth that IRA volunteers could

provide or loyalist paramilitaries. But they do not want to talk about

state violence. I think they can be made the halfway to recognising the

reality if they are arguing that. Are you arguing that? We are clear,

anybody that broke the law is amenable to the law. We do not

distinguish will seek to create a hierarchy of victimhood. That is

precisely what Sinn Fein want to do. That is what has happened at the

moment. We are saying quite clearly that if there are victims out there

that want to pursue justice, whatever the circumstances in which

the loved one died, they are entitled to pursue that justice. It

is not the DUP that is creating this sense of hierarchy amongst

victims. In fact it is that kind of proposal that Sinn Fein has that

will do just that. It will deny justice to any of the victims that

want to pursue justice. Effectively, you are halfway to agreement? As

Vince McLaughlan says, if you concede that point, that victims of

state violence can pursue justice, you are halfway there? Well, there

is nothing to stop anyone in this community from pursuing justice at

the moment. We accept the right for people to do that. What we do not

accept is that they should be denied that right. That is

precisely what Sinn Fein are proposing. In any event, I am far

from convinced that a truth commission will help us to get to

the real truth. For example, Martin McGuinness had the opportunity in

the Saville Inquiry to come clean on what the IRA were doing on the

day in which those people were killed in Londonderry. He said he

was bound by a code of secrecy, as a member of the IRA, and he could

not tell all of the truth about what they were doing that day.

Equally, Gerry Adams, the president of Sinn Fein, denies he was ever in

the IRA. What prospect have we of getting the trip, even if there was

a truth commission? Why on earth would we sacrifice Justice for

truth that is only partial? Truth is important. If we are going to

refer to Martin McGuinness's evidence, Martin McGuinness gave

evidence about the IRA and he gave that on the basis of being second

and command. He made it clear that the IRA was not active. But he said

there was a code of honour, by which he was bound. Because he

asked for names. Doesn't truth imply names? He was there to help

Savell understand what happened on Bloody Sunday, what the IRA role

was on the day. He spoke as someone who can speak with authority in

that subject matter. There was an attempt by the legal

representatives of the British Army to get him to start to name people.

He refused to do that. It would you not expect people in the truth

commission to name names? I think we can make it possible for people

to divulge everything they know, if we do in fact want to know...

Including names? All of the truth, we have to make it possible for

people to do that. I think that people would go before a tribunal,

name people that might go to jail? I don't think that would happen. If

we are objectively interested in the truth, I do not expect

loyalists or British army commanders to go and name names.

But if we create the circumstances where people can tell all that they

know, without jeopardising themselves or other people, we

might get more of the truth than we have. Is that an halfway house?

That is an amnesty. We have an effective amnesty for the Special

Branch and British army commanders. How many of them do you know that

have gone to court? That is not the case at all. Of course it is.

there is evidence against any individual in Northern Ireland that

has committed a crime, and that evidence is sufficient for the

Public Prosecution Service to bring prosecution, there is nothing any

politician can do to interfere with that process. We do have separation

of the judiciary. What about creating an atmosphere where names

can be named? Would that not be very important to a lot of people?

Of course I want to see people having the truth about what

happened to their loved ones. Take the Kingsmill families, the worst

atrocities of the Troubles. They have never had it justice. They

have had denial after denial. This week we had a claim that there are

IRA commanders in South Armagh, who would like to talk about what they

have done. Well, here is an opportunity for the republican

movement to show some good faith, left those commanders come forward.

There is a process, a tribunal in Dublin, where they can come forward

and give the information to the tribunal. That would be helpful in

helping us to get at the truth of what happened in some of these

incidents. Let's see some good faith for a change, from the

republican movement. Let's see them take a step towards the shared

future that they talk about. In dealing with the legacy of the past,

come clean. Tell us what happened. There are ways in which that can be

done. At the moment, all we get is obfuscation. Go-ahead. I just want

to address the tribunal. It was set up to investigate a specific

incident. That is my understanding, I have never been to it because I

don't know anything about that incident. My understanding is that

the IRA people went and gave evidence. That is good faith.

has been a statement in a recent edition, talking about

reconciliation meaning and comfortable conversations. The new

initiatives are required. Republicans must be producing a

sensitised response. You do not seem to be following the diktat of

that. Indeed we are. This is our contribution to finding the truth.

We are absolutely convinced, and unless someone can convince us

otherwise, we are convinced he will never get justice without the truth.

We are trying to devise a mechanism, in agreement with the Unionists,

that is prepared to look at all of the truth. If you only look at some

of the truth, only asks some of the questions, you will only get some

of the truth. At the present time, IRA members that want to go to the

police station and say, I did this and I did that, under the terms of

the Good Friday Agreement, providing those incidents happened

before it was signed, they would be in jeopardy of going to court and

could be sentenced to a maximum of two years. That has still not been

sufficient to bring forward the kind of information that survivors

are looking for. Let's see if we can... It truth cannot be a

substitute for justice. That is what Sinn Fein are asking. It is

not on. Prisoner release, two year sentences, you have accepted this.

Let's go the extra distance. community out there has compromised.

It is now time for the paramilitaries to make the

compromises. You want the truth? want the truth, but we also want

justice. Truth cannot be a substitute. I'm going to last year

but this question. The CRC report said that we are still a very

deeply divided society. Do you accept that the inability to agree

on the past is inhibiting coming together in the future? Yes. What

we have done in the past and what we have done up to the present has

not released the truth, has not addressed the needs of victims and

survivors. Peter Robinson has outlined our vision for a shared

future. I think we have to deal with the legacy of the past. We do

want to see Northern Ireland looking forward. But we've got to

address the hurt, the pain, the feeling of injustice that remains

Peter Robinson wants less negativity from the media. He has a

point. But it is beside the point because most news in Northern

Ireland isn't generated by news outlets, it is generated by

government and bodies funded by government, with politicians

playing along however depressing the headlines. Take David Simpson.

He studied in Westminster and claimed 756 people died here last

winter due to fuel poverty. This claim comes from a group called the

Northern Ireland fuel poverty Coalition. It seems our seasonal

mortality variation is due to cold housing. Which is absurd, not least

because three-quarters of deaths take place in hospitals and nursing

homes. One of the organisations in the coalition is that consumer

commission, a quango funded by the Department of Enterprise. Has he

taken aside and told them to stop the negativity? Fuel poverty is an

example of what the Americans call poverty pimping, exaggerating

problems and to lobby for a cause. Child poverty is to fist --

statistically defined so it will affect a huge amount of the

population unless everybody has the same income. But the new programme

for government from Peter Robinson pays full tribute to this concept

and promises to reduce it. The way it is defined means that Stormont

cannot reduce it, ensuring negative headlines for years to come. Has

Peter Robinson considered what investors make of this vision of

Northern Ireland of starving children and freezing pensioners?

Martin Wilson used Dickensian to describe Northern Ireland, one of

the richest societies on the face of the Earth. It is not just

poverty that is being pumped. Every issue has an army of public bodies

and publicly funded bodies threatening doom and gloom if their

pet cause isn't pandered to. An increasingly hard-pressed media

continues to repeat them. Peter Robinson should know how the

balance of power has shifted. His executive employs 161 press

officers, more than all newspaper journalists in Belfast. Much of the

clamour for public cash is, by definition, a left-leaning agenda.

Why has the instinctively centre right DUP bought into it? Stormont

is a consensus system. It covers not just the parties but the

political and activist class, who had been given funding and

positions to press for more funding and better positions. Everyone has

a seat at the table, where they can keep ministers in the hope that

they drop their wallet. When the DUP signed up to power-sharing it

was drawn into the self-serving Peter Robinson should take aim at

the negativity. Now, as pressure mounts on young

people entering the job market, any real life work experience they can

get is like gold dust. But imagine a programme that also brings

schools from different denominations together and builds

links between Northern Ireland and companies in America. Does that

sound too good to be true? This report from Strabane.

Not so very long ago, the border town of Strabane had one of the

worst rates of unemployment in the These days, it's not that bad, but

it's not that good either. So these young people will need all

the ammunition they can get to get into the job market.

Well thanks to an innovative project linking their schools with

overseas businesses, they might Hi, Lynsey. I'm good thank you.

I've got some very enthusiastic students here behind me and

teachers. And we also have the BBC television programme here as well.

Today, business studies pupils from Holy Cross College and Strabane

academy are at the district council offices. Delighted to welcome you

to Strabane... Taking part in a video conference with a company in

America. That's because these pupils are going to carry out

market research for that company which is considering selling its

products in Europe. The students will meet up with the

company, in this case it is a company who make wall coverings.

They are going to discuss the project, discuss maybe some of the

aims that hey hope to get out of it, then they'll go back to school and

develop questionnaires, they'll do the research here on the teachers'

provision. We'll compile a report and then a final video conference

will take place to present the information.

One of the things that attracted me to the project was the fact that

pupils could get involved in a practical way. It's an opportunity

to bring the subject alive to them. The job market's becoming so much

more competitive that this is giving an age of university and job

applications and an inviegt into the world of work. -- insight. It's

a farm of work experience for them. The project is the brainchild of

the export clever programme. Companies here in Northern Ireland

are also linking up with schools in America. But what makes it even

more impressive is that it's also bringing together pupils from

across the religious divide. There's been invaluable

collaboration between the schools in Strabane. It's a model for all

schools in all post-primary schools which are working towards close

collaboration at staff and student level. This particular project was

a vehicle for us to move that collaboration to a level very, very

quickly. Of course the problem with digital technology is that it

doesn't always perform to order. But the whole project certainly

seems to have impressed the pupils who took part last year.

I thought it was good because it helped us with our business studies

course work and research because we had to research the findings and

present them to Beth over Skype so I thought it was good. It might

help us get a job in the future, we can put it on our CV and say that

we spoke to the girl in America and that might help us get a job.

was strange with the different accent but they were OK to

understand us. It was a good exweerpbs. Thought it would be very

beneficial a project for us and for the company -- experience. I

thought that it would bring to notice Northern Ireland and tell

other countries in the euro that we are able to be invested in. That's

certainly the hope of the economic development staff at Strabane

district council. We were in America with companies

last year and it's like pushing an open door. We saw saw Chamber of

Commerce, business federation, universities and they were all

eager to work with companies in Europe and especially in Ireland.

This is year two. Year one we are funding, year two we are not and

it's still going so it's proved positive that it's sustaining

Julia Paul in Strabane. Now, a badly needed confidence

booster or a bankers' charter condemning generations to economic

bondage? Two views on the European stability treaty which is to be put

to referendum in the republic, I'm joined from Dublin by the

representatives from the yes and no camps Dominic Hanagan, Labour's

chairman of the European Affairs Committee and Sinn Fein's Foreign

Affairs spokesman Patrick magistrate lock lan. A no-vote

would condemn generations in Northern Ireland to economic

confusion and potential disaster surely -- McLoughlin? Because of

the action taken by an independent citizen in the '80s, he created

this trend of referendums in the Irish people. So we can take a

stand, not just for our own people, but for people across Europe

against this mad austerity strategy that our Governments are insisting

on with no real solution to our economic crisis.

But they say it's needed to create stability as it says on the tin, if

you like? What is the alternative? The only person who seems to need

this is Angela Merkel. There's no economists I've heard on left or

right who believes this treaty is any kind of a solution to our

crisis and the problems being, the core problems being the sovereign

debt crisis, the banking crisis, investment and unemployment crisis.

There's no comprehensive leadership or strategy to address the issues.

What we have is this austerity treaty condemning us to very

limited expenditure and capacity to address our crisis across Europe.

It's a daft proposition. OK, Mr Hanagan, how will you sell to it

the Irish people? We'll sell from a basis of the benefits. What we see

this treaty doing is giving a sense of governance to the euro that

currently doesn't exist. The euro's been around for ten years now. It's

had many problems over the last number of years. What we don't have

is a system to ensure that each of the countries that are members of

the euro put in place a mechanism to ensure they don't spend too much,

that they don't go into too much debt. So the purpose of this fiscal

compact is to build on the current mechanisms that are out there such

as the six pack and ensure that any country that tries to break the

rules is brought back into line in the process creating stability

within Europe, creating the right environment for people to invest in

new businesses, to start new businesses, to grow businesses, to

create jobs and to get people back at work. We need the see consumer

confidence, we need to see investor confidence and this new fiscal

compact will do just that. It will put back confidence into the heart

of the European economy. The problem is, it doesn't tell you

or help you in any way to reduce the deficit, it just says you have

to do it? Well, what needs to be taken is in relation to growth

measures that we are looking at in relation to how we are going to

combat problems of youth unemployment, how we are going to

make it easier for businesses to set up, we need to pursue a growth

agenda at the same time as fiscal consolidation. The fiscal compact

is just one part of what Europe is doing to try to get the economies

of all our member states back moving. It shouldn't be looked at

in isolation, it has to be looked at in relation to what is being

done elsewhere to make sure we get people in work. You cannot just

treat this as one thing in isolation. There are other things

that are being done across Europe by governments there. Here in

Dublin two weeks ago, we brought ining an action plan for jobs, 270

people to start new businesses and all those things, we are pursuing

both agendas. They have to be done together. It's only by doing them

together that we can actually get out of this crisis we are in.

want to address the point that Mr McLoughlin raised about the only

person being interested in it is Angela Merkel. We see for the

second time that sensitive information about the Irish economy

is being banded around the Bundestag. Are you really not just

being a nodding dog for the Franco- German joint leadership of Europe?

Let's be clear here, this is sensitive information and it was a

report that was done by a third party. It contained information

that had already been published on our own websites. There was nothing

particularly sensitive about it. There is an issue about whether or

not we'd be debating our budget in other jurisdictions and whether or

not we should be careful about the amount of information that gets out

there. But the information that was leaked by this report was mostly

stuff that was already in public domain. You are shaking your head,

Mr McLoughlin? I just wonder what country I'm living in. We have

450,000 people out of work, tens of thousands emigrating every year, we

have businesses closing, hundreds and hundreds every day, we have an

economic catastrophe here in Ireland because we have been satled

with private sector banking debt. Is there any justice for people

after now budget off budget of austerity? No. What we have is

basically Angela Merkel's insistence backed up by Sarkozy

that the narrative has to be that the peripheral states were

wreckless and Germany's the responsibility. The reality of the

core states, their banks wrecklessly lent under the European

monetary union to, in Ireland's case, private banking institutions

and in some cases sovereign Governments and they are not

willing to share responsibility in appropriate fashion. Our

Government's failed to renegotiate all of this and get a fair deal, as

promised. Now we have this spin about growth. It's a catastrophe.

We are re-negotiating. We have done that. You need to get your act

together. We can't do it overnight. We said at the time of the last

election. Where are you promises to the people? We said we'd keep

working at this and get as much of the deal re-negotiated. We have

managed to deliver in certain areas and we'll keep at it. We are trying

to re-negotiate the things and we are not giving up on it. We

continue to do it. If there were some kind of write down of

outstanding dt, would that make you more supportive of the treaty? --

debt? It's asking us to reach a 0.5 deficit ceiling. Under the Troika

agreement, we have to get back to a 3% deficit by 2015, meaning that

that extends our austerity for another number of years. In

relation to the other point, it's the ratio of GDP at 60%, we have to

get back to that, nobody believes we can do that saddled with this

debt. There's no plan or solution for our people, just more crazy

austerity targets set for us. All things being even, if we hadn't

have been saddled with European banking debt, we wouldn't be in

this difficult situation, certainly nowhere near it. Mr Hanagan,

there's always a danger that people will vote on more than the treaty.

One Senator said yesterday that the people of Rosscommon would question

this campaign if steps were not taken to tackle A&E. This could be

a lot more about just a European treaty? It could be but the

important thing is for all of us around the table, including Patrick

is that we put the case to the people as to why they need to

support this treaty, what it means. This is not a referendum about

whether or not we need additional beds in a hospital in the Midwest

or a renk Dom on the performance on the Government so far, it's about

where we see ourselves in relation to the future of Europe --

referendum. Do we see ourselves as part of the future... But there is

no solution to our crisis. This is part of the solution. Angela

Merkel's brainchild... It's part of the solution. It's not the whole

solution, you are right. Indeed today... We are talking to

colleagues about how we can fight youth unemployment. In a couple of

seconds, would you like to see Ireland come out of the eurozone?

No, no. Let's be very clear, if Ireland rejects this proposition,

we are still within the European Union, we are still members of the

euro, so we are not saddled with more of these crazy austerity

policies, so there's to be no scare tactics in relation to this. This

treaty is an intergovernmental agreement, it's not a European

treaty. Thank you very much gentlemen for your thoughts.

That is where we leave it this time around. We'll do it again next week

at the usual times and I hope you People say Northern Ireland