Northern Ireland Community Relations Council - About Us - Council Minutes

13 January 2011

Present: Tony McCusker, Sinead McShane, Billy Gamble, Tony Kennedy, David Russell, Michael Wardlow, David Porter.

In attendance: Ellana Tomasso, Bebhinn McKinley, Gemma Attwood, Ray Mullan, Deirdre MacBride, Jacqueline Irwin, Duncan Morrow . Patricia O’Neill

1 Welcome and Apologies

Apologies: Stephen Farry, Hassan Mansour, Rosie McCorley, Katie Hanlon, Jonny Byrne, Dympna McGlade.

2 Minutes of the Previous Meeting

Minutes of the previous meeting were taken as read.

3. Matters arising

Decade of Commemoration – Deirdre MacBride reported that she was planning a conference sometime during week beginning 21 March. Partnership working with Heritage Lottery Fund NI.

4 Chair’s Business

The Chair reminded everyone to let the convenor of the meeting in CRC if they were able to attend meetings or not.

Successful meeting at Farset with the Heritage Lottery Fund. CRC and HLM are arranging a joint conference before the election possibly 23 – 25 March. They will be contacting speakers next week and putting together a steering group.

For information purposes only, the Chair informed the meeting that he had taken up the role of Chair of the NI Foundation and that Billy Gamble was also a Board member.

5 Presentation on the work of CIH.

Grainia Long and Jennifer Donald from CIH gave the Committee a presentation on their work, including the challenges faced by the housing sector in the current political climate. They outlined their vision for the future of social, private and association housing.

6 Publications

The CRC’s Annual Report was published in December and sent out to all key stakeholders, it is also available to download from our website.

The CSI Response is to be published in two parts, one will be the analytical response and the other will be examples of good practice.

An updated foreword/introduction is needed to contextualise where we currently are in the CSI consultation process. There was a discussion about dissemination of the publication and who the target audience is.

Shared Space (issue 10) was also published in December.

There is a launch for a CRC-grant aided publication Education for Diversity and Mutual Understanding by Tony Gallagher and Norman Richardson on 21 January – in the Canada Room, QUB – invitations will be sent out to the Committee.

7 Consultations and Assembly Update

Gemma presented an updated consultation grid on current consultations. The Committee agreed that draft consultation responses would be circulated via email for comment and ratification.

Policy Programme is currently working on a draft evidence paper for the DOE Committee on the proposed Planning Bill. It will be circulated to Council members and comments are requested asap.

The draft Budget consultation has been extended until mid-February. A discussion took place on CR issues within the budget and on the format of CRC’s response.

NICVA are having are currently running a series of departmental briefings on draft spending plans and members of the PD programme will attend. This will help inform CRC’s response.

The CSI Subgroup will discuss and make final comment on draft response when it meets on Wednesday 9^th February 2011 – 2.00pm.

Bebhinn will bring forward a draft advocacy paper for discussion at the next Committee meeting.

8 CSI Update and Review

This will be discussed at the next meeting.

The CSI sub group meeting is scheduled for Tuesday 18 January.

9 CRC Policy Conference 2011

The subject of this year’s conference is economics specifically the cost of division. The Committee discussed possible speakers and ministerial attendance. The CSI subgroup will continue to contribute to the planning of the conference.

A Belfast venue is preferable.

It was suggested that it might be useful to change the language from costs of division to savings that could be realised through sharing and reducing community tensions

10 Community Relations Week 2011

The Committee suggested that a strong brief is sent to all prospective groups who may wish to arrange an event during the event detailing the theme of this year’s CR Week. The brief will centre on the PD Conference theme.

11 External Communications Review

Discussion will be taken forward at the next meeting.

12 AOB

CRC have included its CSI response in the Alliance Party delegate packs (300 copies). The conference is on the 22^nd Jan in Dunadry, Bebhinn is attending as observer.

Sinn Fein’s conference has been cancelled.

Bebhinn to send members details of all Party conferences

13 Date of Next Meeting

The next meeting will be on Thursday 10 March at 10am.