Northern Ireland Community Relations Council - About Us - Council Minutes

12 March 2010

13th January 2010

Present: Billy Gamble, Hassan Mansour, David Russell, Jonny Byrne, Rosie McCorley, Sinead McShane, Katie Hanlon

In Attendance: Ray Mullan, Dympna McGlade, Gemma Attwood, Ellana Tomasso, Patricia O’Neill, Susanna Phillips, Duncan Morrow, Jacqueline Irwin

1 Welcome and Apologies

Billy Gamble welcomed everyone to the meeting.

Apologies: Deirdre MacBride, Tony Kennedy, Tony McCusker, David Porter, Stephen Farry.

2 Minutes

The minutes were left to the members of the previous Committee to formally adopt.

3 Matters Arising

The action points from the previous minutes refer to the following.

Action	Update
CRC role in Community Planning bid to SEUPB	Duncan Morrow had an initial meeting in terms of the bid and subsequent meetings with NILGA. Meeting with SEUPB has been postponed, scoping work has been done but the drafting stage has not been completed.
Contact Mary Field, Youthnet	Taking forward thematic work with young people and developing a set of local jury and planning a larger regional event during CR Week. Some negotiation around the challenge to Government Departments
Venues for CR Week	Venues and costings had been sourced. CR Awards, however, deferred until later in the year.
Section 75(2) Paper	Jacqueline Irwin to circulate paper to members and this will be picked up at a later stage.
Call a meeting of the Committee to discuss Communications Review.	Several meetings have taken place.
Initial meeting with Trade Unions Meeting with Ann McGregor Meeting with Business in the Community	Still ongoing.
Redraft of EQIA name change paper	Redrafted after the last meeting and passed at September Council meeting. Final version is available and Gemma Attwood will circulate.

4 NI Assembly Business Update and Consultations.

NI Assembly Business

Gemma Attwood gave an outline of the process for collecting relevant Q&As – oral, written and Hansard debates. The Committee asked Gemma Attwood to circulate these for a trial period via email on a weekly basis. These also appear in the monthly e-Bulletin.

There was also some discussion on how CRC can best influence Government Committees. There was some discussion on how CRC does this presently.

Consultations

Housing Commission – The Future of Housing

There was some discussion about how consultations would be taken to the Committee in future. Gemma Attwood will email both documents to the Committee for response within 1 week.

Good Relations Forum – Challenge Paper: Education and Good Relations

The Committee felt that this was a very good paper and asked that it be circulated widely within the sector. Still working on the draft. Comments should be made to Gemma Attwood within 1 week. It was suggested that CR Week should be used to raise issues. This will become a very useful policy paper for CRC.

Bill of Rights

It was decided that a sub-Committee should be set up to deal with this response which is due at the beginning of March. The paperwork will be emailed to all interested parties. Gemma Attwood will email all members to check availability.

5 Interface Working Group

Dympna McGlade gave a brief overview of the background of the Interface Working Group (IWG), Interface Community Partners and stressed that it was now time to move from discussion and consultation to action. A sub-group has been set up by the Interface Working Group (IWG) to draft terms of reference. It was noted that this work was being developed in the absence of ASF/CSI strategy.

Discussion ensued around CRC’s role as facilitator or advocate/lobbyist.

6 External Communications Review Update

A sub-group of the Committee has met several times to discuss the way forward regarding the Weber Shandwick recommendations. The Committee Chair will report to the CRC Chair when the work of the group has concluded.

7 CRC Publications

The following were published by CRC in the past few months:

Challenges of Peace; Shared Space 8; Annual Review and Report and Accounts.

8 CR Week 2010

The Committee discussed the tender options and decided to endorse JPR as the PR company to carry the work for CR Week which starts on 26 April.

9 AOB

The Committee noted the departure of Ali McAllister and congratulated her on her new role. They also stated that they were grateful for the dedication and work that she carried out during her time at CRC.

10 Next Meeting

10 March 2010.

All action points are highlighted in red and bold.