Irish Peace and Reconciliation Platform

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The Irish Peace and Reconciliation Platform is an umbrella organisation for a number of peace groups in the Republic of Ireland.

Criticises Irish Government funding

The Irish Times reported in May 2007 that the chairman of the platform, Ian White, had written to leading politicians, wishing to discuss "how the work of nongovernment organisations in this area complemented the efforts of both governments; the lack of a coherent strategy in the Republic for peace building initiatives; the need for everybody to engage in the peace building process and increased funding."[1]

THE Government provides only "a scandalous" Pounds 240,000 annually to peace and reconciliation groups compared to Pounds 10 million dispensed by the British government, the umbrella organisation for such bodies has claimed.
The Irish Peace and Reconciliation Platform, to which 10 peace groups are affiliated, complained yesterday in Dublin that not one of the political parties in Leinster House had appeared at a press conference to which they were invited.[2]

Accuses Republic of intolerance

In 2000, the platform compiled a report which accused the Irish authorities of intolerance towards unionism. A copy was leaked to Henry McDonald of The Obsever, who gave the following summary of its contents:

It concludes that there is:
• Exclusion of people from the unionist tradition.
• A tendency to avoid the concerns of both sides in Northern Ireland.
• A fault in school curricula so serious that children can complete their entire education without properly learning the history, culture and beliefs of any tradition or religion but their own.
• A fostering of selective cultural and historical amnesia, such as allowing whole swathes of people to be 'airbrushed' out of history if their 'faces didn't fit'. These include Irish people who fought on the British side in the world wars, and a mistaken belief that only Catholics suffered in the nineteenth century famines.
• An under-emphasis in the media of the integrity of the unionist position and the portrayal of people of that tradition in over-simplified terms.[3]

Experts involved in putting the paper together included Chris Hudson, former Education Minister Niamh Breathnach, and the Anglican Bishop of Meath and Kildare, the Most Rev Richard Clarke.[4]

Affiliates

Cooperation North | STOP | Northern Ireland Children's Holiday Scheme | The Peace Train | Peace 93 | New Consensus | The Irish School of Ecumenics | Rosnowlagh Peace and Reconciliation Centre | The Irish Peace Institute Research Centre |The Glencree Centre for Reconciliation[5]

Notes

  1. ↑ Maol Muire Tynan, State funding level for peace groups criticised, The Irish Times, 30 May 1997.
  2. ↑ Maol Muire Tynan, State funding level for peace groups criticised, The Irish Times, 30 May 1997.
  3. ↑ Henry McDonald, Dublin excludes unionist culture, report claims, The Observer, 26 November 2000.
  4. ↑ Henry McDonald, Dublin excludes unionist culture, report claims, The Observer, 26 November 2000.
  5. ↑ Maol Muire Tynan, State funding level for peace groups criticised, The Irish Times, 30 May 1997.
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