{"id":569,"date":"2012-11-27T10:16:22","date_gmt":"2012-11-27T10:16:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/crowe-and-good-friday-committee-in-groundbreaking-visit-to-belfast\/"},"modified":"2012-11-27T10:16:22","modified_gmt":"2012-11-27T10:16:22","slug":"crowe-and-good-friday-committee-in-groundbreaking-visit-to-belfast","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/crowe-and-good-friday-committee-in-groundbreaking-visit-to-belfast\/","title":{"rendered":"Crowe and Good Friday Committee in groundbreaking visit to Belfast"},"content":{"rendered":"

Crowe and Good Friday Committee \u00a0in groundbreaking\u00a0visit to Belfast<\/span><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

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Dublin South West TD, Se\u00e1n Crowe, visited community groups in North and East Belfast on Thursday and Friday, with the Joint Committee on the Implementation of the Good Friday Agreement.<\/span><\/p>\n


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The All Party delegation visited the Duncairn Partnership in North Belfast, the Short Strand Community Forum and Partnership, the East Belfast Methodist Mission, the Andy Tyrie Interpretative Centre in East Belfast and the Resurgam Trust in Lisburn. They also attended the formal opening ceremony by First Minister Peter Robinson and Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness of the Skainos Centre in East Belfast.The Skainos event was also\u00a0the first time that Martin Mc Guinness formally atttended an event in the predomately\u00a0loyalist area<\/span><\/p>\n


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Speaking after the ground breaking\u00a0visit Deputy Crowe said:<\/span><\/p>\n


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\u201cThis trip to visit community groups in North, South \u00a0and East Belfast was very informative and I would like to thank the Committee and Senator Martin McAleese for organising the\u00a0meetings.<\/span><\/p>\n


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\u201cThe visits allowed us to see the quiet and positive work that is being doing at community level in both nationalist and unionist areas, and to hear about the mechanisms that are in place to defuse sectarian and other\u00a0tensions in some of \u00a0these interface areas.<\/span><\/p>\n

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\u201cOur Committee\u00a0 received a tremendously warm welcome in Belfast and has had a series of insightful discussions with community representatives on the ground, in which their honesty, courage and determination shone through. We heard upbeat and candid presentations on practical initiatives that have contributed so much to maintaining peace.
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,<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cAll \u00a0of these areas suffer from social deprivation,\u00a0a lack of services and high unemployment. It is important that they feel engaged with the political system and that politicians are listening to their many difficulties.<\/span><\/p>\n


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\u201cThe ongoing \u00a0work being\u00a0carried out under the Good Friday Agreement (GFA) is not threatening to any group,\u00a0and \u00a0is trying to create a shared space among nationalists and unionists in the north and on the island of Ireland..<\/span><\/p>\n


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\u201cWhile there has been progress in the GFA\u2019s implementation there are still large and important\u00a0areas that are\u00a0outstanding\u00a0 and need to addressed urgently<\/span><\/p>\n

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.Acknowledging the gains of recent years, our Committee is conscious of the problems that endure in these communities. Despite many years of an embedded peace process, the peace walls in interface areas across Belfast not only remain, but some are higher now than they were in 1998. Hearing firsthand the issues of unemployment, lack of educational attainment and drugs related crime from community leaders,\u00a0I \u00a0pointed\u00a0 out many of the parallels with problems faced in working class areas in\u00a0many constituencies south of the border. <\/span>
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\u201cI would like to personally \u00a0thank all these community groups for welcoming all of us to their centres to\u00a0see at \u00a0first-hand the important and positive work they are doing.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

I am fully committed as are my colleagues, to <\/span>advancing the concerns we heard , such as improving institutional arrangements to ensure that the funding available filters down to the communities that need it most.\u00a0We are also\u00a0in agreement to\u00a0\u00a0continue our face to face engagement with those at the vanguard of promoting reconciliation, tolerance and mutual respect between loyalist and republican\/nationalist communities and those many\u00a0other\u00a0communities\u00a0 experiencing difficulties across the island.\u201d <\/span>
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Crowe and Good Friday Committee \u00a0in groundbreaking\u00a0visit to Belfast Dublin South West TD, Se\u00e1n Crowe, visited community groups in North and East Belfast on Thursday and Friday, with the Joint Committee on the Implementation of the Good Friday Agreement. The All Party delegation visited the Duncairn Partnership in North Belfast, the Short Strand Community Forum […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-569","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/569","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=569"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/569\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=569"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=569"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=569"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}