Holywell Trust Conversations

Social care provision is in crisis across much of the world. How can the quality of care be maintained or improved? How can it be made available to those who need it? And how can social care be carried out in an affordable way without underpaying or exploiting its workers? These questions are being asked in many countries and regions. Italy has come up with its own answer – social co-operatives –...

For all the focus on integrated education, if communities continue to live separately then little progress will be made towards integrating our society. So developing more areas of shared housing is essential if we are to make progress.  But the lack of genuinely shared communities is only one of the housing challenges facing Northern Ireland today. There is more generally a shortage of social hou...

Concentration of the retail and consumer services sectors in the hands of a limited number of multinational corporations sucks wealth out of local communities and into the hands of shareholders based elsewhere. So should the response be to build the local economy by supporting independent businesses based in those localities, while maximising the spend of public institutions in their local communi...

The Mondragon federation of co-operatives has been the foundation of the economy in Spain's Basque country for decades. It was founded back in 1956 by a priest - José María Arizmendiarrieta   - who believed that the best response to the hostility and neglect of the region by the fascist dictator Franco was to develop co-operatives that relied on mutual self-help and independence.  Today there are...

While it is frequently claimed that Northern Ireland has an excellent schools system, it is clear that it is also a divided system. That division is not just based on religion, but also whether a pupil attends a grammar or a non-selective school, which is related to the wealth of the parents. The system clearly separates children, despite the need of our society to come together to heal division....

In all the dozens of podcast interviews broadcast by the Holywell Trust, one idea to strengthen our society has been put forward repeatedly – citizens’ assemblies. They are not universally popular – both DUP and Conservative Party politicians have expressed concerns they would undermine the link between elected representatives and their constituents, threatening politicians’ legitimacy.  But the e...

Northern Ireland is a different place today, than when the Good Friday Agreement was signed in 1998. It is not just that many more people here today do not feel aligned to the traditional unionist and nationalist/republican identities, but we have many more ‘new citizens’ from other places. Lilian Seenoi-Barr is a well-known advocate for black and minority ethnic communities in Northern Ireland, a...

Never mind Bill Clinton saying, ‘it’s the economy, stupid’, the answers to Northern Ireland’s difficulties are instead perhaps Tony Blair’s mantra, ‘education, education, education’. In fact, the main way to tackle the economic problems of Northern Ireland are arguably to focus on education and skills.  Seamus McGuinness, research professor at the Economic and Social Research Institute, discusses...

Education is the key to progress   Education is the key to moving our society forward, says Tony Gallagher in the latest Forward Together podcast interview. But that has to mean much more than encouraging as many students as possible to go to university and obtain a degree. Our society has become fixated with university education, at the expense of school pupils who do not aspire to higher educati...

The GFA brought peace - but paramilitaries haven’t gone away The Good Friday Agreement ended the bitter conflict, but failed to eliminate the poison of paramilitarism. In the latest Forward Together interview recorded before the loyalist street riots protesting against the Brexit Protocol and the latest paramilitary shootings in Derry, Duncan Morrow considers the limitations of the GFA. Northern I...

Holywell Trust’s third series of Forward Together podcasts is now live! As with the previous series, the focus is on how to make progress in Northern Ireland and heal its divided society. In these latest podcasts we consider some of the ideas that emerged from previous interviews – which were edited together into the book, ‘Lessons from the Troubles and the Unsettled Peace’ . Unfortunately, recent...

Eighteen podcasts and Slugger blogs were produced in the second series of the Holywell Trust’s Forward Together programme. With the completion of that programme, the Holywell Trust held a discussion on the themes considered by the series, which focused on creating a better governed society, with more integration and improved outcomes.  The discussion was held as part of Good Relations Week 2020, b...

'I'm talking about a culture change in government in Northern Ireland: I mean the civil service and politicians' Evidence-based policy-making is largely absent from government in Northern Ireland, but the new Pivotal think-tank has been established to correct that, says its director Ann Watt. She was speaking in the last of the second series of Holywell Trust Forward Together podcasts.    The aim...

‘It is absolutely crazy to think that constitutional change in Ireland would happen overnight’ Consideration of Irish unity needs careful preparation, argues Seamus McGuinness, research professor at the Republic’s Economic and Social Research Institute. He suggests looking to the example of Hong Kong, where the handover of control was undertaken over a 13 year period. Seamus was talking in the lat...

’The unity conversation needs to be open, transparent, and let's keep open minds, because we need to flesh out what Irish unity would look like and what the UK union would look like’ Ian Marshall is a beef farmer, a former dairy farmer, and was president of the Ulster Farmers Union from 2014 to 2016. But more significantly he was until earlier this year a senator in Ireland’s Oireachtas – a unioni...

‘A united Ireland that is socially liberally, tolerant, European and economically successful is attractive’   Irish unity could be an attractive option if the new nation is socially liberal, outward looking, multi-cultural, European and economically successfully, while respecting both the Irish and British cultures and traditions, believes Will Glendinning. To be economically successful it may nee...

FULL EPISODE DESCRIPTION “You can’t rely on a political culture of respect when one doesn’t actually exist”   Unionists should engage in the conversation around the proposal for a Bill of Rights, recognising that it can help protect their interests and human rights, says former Progressive Unionist Party councillor Julie-Anne Corr-Johnstone. She was talking in the latest Forward Together podcast f...

A Bill of Rights for Northern Ireland is overdue and would protect the interests and concerns of all the population, insists Colin Harvey, professor of human rights at Queen’s University, Belfast.  He was talking in the latest Forward Together podcast from the Holywell Trust. The Good Friday Agreement provided the expectation that there would be a Bill of Rights for Northern Ireland that would saf...

FULL EPISODE DESCRIPTION  To follow

FULL EPISODE DESCRIPTION Reconciliation above all   Reconciliation is the primary necessity facing Northern Ireland, believes Peter Osborne. Peter is a former chair of both the Community Relations Council and the Parades Commission. He was talking in the latest Forward Together podcast from the Holywell Trust.   “I come from a perspective of looking at what reconciliation is about,” says Peter. He...

FULL EPISODE DESCRIPTION ‘Politicians will argue, they will fight over it and they will come up with reasons for not dealing with the past’   It was hoped that the Patten reforms would herald a new start for policing in Northern Ireland, but, argues Denis Bradley, the PSNI remains burdened with its legacy from the old RUC. Denis is a former vice-chair of the Northern Ireland Policing Board and co-...

FULL EPISODE DESCRIPTION ‘There is something seriously and fundamentally wrong’ – Northern Ireland’s housing crisis   Although the shortage of housing was a major issue in the recent Irish general election, it is also a major challenge in Northern Ireland. For some reason, there is much less focus on this north of the border. PPR – the Participation and Practice of Rights – is keen to correct this...

FULL EPISODE DESCRIPTION ‘My coping mechanism is talking, seeking peace and reconciliation’   Alan McBride’s personal journey is well known, but remarkable nonetheless. It was in 1993 that his wife Sharon and her father Desmond Frizzell were killed in an IRA bomb attack on the family fish shop in Belfast’s Shankill Road. But with immense dignity, Alan has since dedicated his life to reconciliation...

FULL EPISODE DESCRIPTION  What is justice? The answer might be obvious, but in past Forward Together podcast interviews it has been noticeable that the responses to that question have been inconsistent. While parts of political unionism seem focused on the judicial process for acts going back to the Troubles, the response by some in republicanism has been that the core of justice is about creating...

FULL EPISODE DESCRIPTION “Most people believe social care should be free, but there's a lot of confusion out there”   Social care must be reformed. If it wasn’t clear before the Covid-19 pandemic, it has become tragically obvious over recent weeks. So this is an opportune time to hear in the latest Holywell Trust Forward Together podcast from Deirdre Heenan, professor of social policy at Ulster Un...