COMMITTEE ON IMPLEMENTATION OF BELFAST AGREEMENT:FORMER POLITICAL prisoners continue to experience difficulties getting work and securing mortgages, insurance and travel visas 14 years on from the Belfast Agreement, an Oireachtas committee heard yesterday.
The agreement, signed on Good Friday 1998, put in place measures to accelerate the release of up to 500 prisoners of both republican and loyalist backgrounds.
It included commitments to facilitate the reintegration of prisoners into the community and to provide post-release supports.
Speaking before the Oireachtas Committee on the Implementation of the Good Friday Agreement, Raymond McCartney, a Sinn Féin Assembly member and former IRA prisoner, said that the governments’ records were “less than impressive” in this regard.
He said former prisoners faced problems in attaining employment, difficulties securing mortgages, insurance and in travelling to places like the US and Australia.
Mr McCartney said findings of a working group chaired by Sir George Quigley, coupled with a decision by Lord Chief Justice Brian Kerr in Northern Ireland, which found former prisoners should be allowed to hold public service vehicles licences, could provide a framework for many of the issues raised by former prisoners.
However, he added: “Unfortunately the guidelines, in my opinion, lack legislative teeth”.
Colin Halliday of the Ulster Political Research Group is a former loyalist prisoner who was released before the agreement was implemented but who works with political prisoners released under the deal. He said former loyalist prisoners “don’t feel good about the Good Friday agreement – it hasn’t delivered for them”.
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