Northern Ireland Affairs Committee
Oral evidence: The effect of paramilitary activity and organised crime on society in Northern Ireland, HC 24
Wednesday 23 November 2022
Ordered by the House of Commons to be published on 23 November 2022.
Members present: Simon Hoare (Chair); Sir Robert Buckland; Stephen Farry; Mary Kelly Foy; Sir Robert Goodwill; Claire Hanna; Carla Lockhart; Ian Paisley; Bob Stewart; Mr Robin Walker.
Questions 175 - 230
Witnesses
I: Professor Marie Breen-Smyth, Independent Reviewer of the exercised powers under the Justice and Security (Northern Ireland) Act 2007.
Witness: Professor Marie Breen-Smyth.
Q175 Chair: Good morning, colleagues. Thank you for joining us this morning for our further session in our inquiry—I am finding it interesting and fascinating, and I am sure you are too—into the effect of paramilitary activity and organised crime on society in Northern Ireland.
Before we begin this morning’s session, I would like, on behalf of all of us, to congratulate our Committee colleague Robin Walker, who last week was elected as Chair of the Education Select Committee. We now have, including me, three Select Committee chairs on one Committee. I think that is a first, and it speaks to the quite important work this Committee is doing and the attractiveness of being a member of it. Robin, on behalf of all of us, huge congratulations, and enjoy it.
We have two panels this morning. Our first panel is Professor Marie Breen-Smyth. You are very welcome, Professor. Thank you for joining us. You are the independent reviewer of the Justice and Security (Northern Ireland) Act 2007.
I am going to kick off the questioning. We have been discussing—it has been involved in our thinking and the flow of our questions over the last several weeks—this default position of the words “paramilitarism” and “paramilitaries”. It suggests formal and almost state-recognised structures when you start using the word “military”, et cetera.
To start with, are these terms useful in describing the very complex influence exerted by some individuals or groups on communities in Northern Ireland? Do you share the view we have been hearing from previous witnesses that talking about gangland mobsters, organised criminals and, to an extent, child groomers, so raising safeguarding issues, is more realistic and appropriate?
Professor Breen-Smyth: This term has a history in Northern Ireland, as you are well aware. The phenomenon, if I can separate it from the term, has evolved dramatically over the period since it was conceived. I do not see it as something that provides an imprimatur from the state, by the way.
Q176 Chair: No, but when you start using the word “military” it suggests organised armies and so forth, which by definition suggests some degree of formal organisation and the like.
Professor Breen-Smyth: There is a degree of formal organisation within some of the armed groups. There are 14 of them that are currently proscribed in Northern Ireland.
My recent engagement and concern have been largely to do with the loyalist paramilitaries. If I can use those as an example, it is very difficult to talk about a loyalist paramilitary organisation as a single entity anymore. If you look at the map of Northern Ireland and at how organisations are organised across it, there are schisms, tensions and, indeed, occasionally feuds between members within the same organisation. That is the first thing, and that is true of both the main loyalist organisations.
Their predilection for crime—let me call it that—also varies. There are pockets within each of the two main organisations that at this stage have lost the appetite. They see themselves as guardians of the community, whether or not we agree with that. They are anti-crime and certainly anti-drug. There are others, however, who are deeply involved in all the criminal activities that you refer to.
It is difficult to talk about paramilitaries in the generic way that we used to, even though they were also involved in some of these activities in the past. Nowadays, it would be helpful to separate them out. There is enough military structure to warrant the use of the term “paramilitary”, but there are pieces of those organisations that we can separate out and isolate, and then we can deal with the other parts quite differently. That would be my view.
Q177 Chair: You mentioned there the 14 proscribed organisations. Is the method for proscribing fit for purpose and efficient? Does the number 14 accurately reflect the number of organisations that could or, indeed, should be proscribed?
Professor Breen-Smyth: I have to say formally that proscription is outwith my remit. If you ask me for an opinion, the list of proscribed organisation could do with a revisiting.
One of the difficulties is that the route to de-proscription is, as I understand it, not entirely an easy one. That is also something I would draw to the attention of the Committee. There are organisations or, perhaps, parts of the organisations I talked about earlier that would be very keen to pursue this route, but in fact they find it very difficult. Indeed, one organisation did try to use the route. There are different accounts of why it went wrong. I hear one thing from one side and one thing from another.
Chair: That is not unusual.
Professor Breen-Smyth: It has never happened to me before.
Q178 Chair: You mentioned drugs in your answer to the first part of the question. You will have doubtless seen in this week’s media the raids on brothels across Northern Ireland. My understanding, just from reading the media, was that either every woman involved or the vast majority had been trafficked. What is your assessment of the scale and use of people trafficking, modern slavery and indentured labour?
Professor Breen-Smyth: Again, I would refer to my colleagues in the PSNI in relation to this. This is also not something I am directly concerned with.
Chair: I appreciate that.
Professor Breen-Smyth: My comment would be that the misuse of migrants is limited to those in the paramilitary organisations who are involved in organised crime. If the Committee were to make recommendations about the use of terminology, a more appropriate term for some of the subsets of the paramilitary organisations would be “organised crime gangs”. That would also give comfort, if you like, to those within the same organisations who wish to seek a peaceful path and pursue things like de-proscription and transition.
Q179 Chair: You mentioned there—I appreciate that this will be more about your observation than experience—abuse of migrants, which could be read as people who have migrated to Northern Ireland of their own free will and volition, and then find themselves brought into a network. What is your understanding and what are you hearing about the scale of very bespoke and specific—I do not use this phrase either flippantly or anything else—mail order? “We need 30 young women from wherever to indulge in this bit of criminal activity. Go and get them”.
Professor Breen-Smyth: Again, that is not something I have directly involved myself in because I am really rather more concerned with the total phenomenon of paramilitarism. I am briefed by the security services and the secret intelligence services in relation to what is going on. The information I have is information that has already been before the Committee. The PSNI’s evidence, for example, contained that. I do not have anything to add to that because I am getting the same information as you are.
Q180 Chair: There is one final question from me at this juncture. If we move away from the use of this term “paramilitary” to “organised crime gangs”, “child groomers”, “people traffickers” or “modern day slavers”, will their levels of community esteem and status wither or decline, allowing law-abiding people to better assert their authority in their communities rather than the criminality and hooliganism of these groups?
Professor Breen-Smyth: Would that the power of language was overwhelming. Unfortunately, it has a limited effect. When you begin to talk about paramilitary-style attacks, the victims of those being children and that being child abuse, it does have a psychological impact. That reframing certainly informed the development of the restorative justice movement in both loyalist and republican areas.
However, it needs a great deal more than that. The political origins of these groups are something we need to understand deeply, recognising the contested nature of the claimed politics. Some people in these groups are claiming political allegiances and causes when one could argue that their primary concern is crime and profit.
The wider context is also a difficulty, particularly for loyalism. One could say there is a great deal of recalibration in loyalist politics at the moment, facing into things like the protocol and so on. There are people within the loyalist paramilitaries camp who very clearly have no appetite for violence, war or any of that.
I would advocate something I have not seen in any of the evidence until now. There has been a great deal of talk about engagement with the paramilitary groups. I would advocate subgroup engagement for the reasons I have given. You are not engaging with the organisation in its entirety, but with those parts of the organisation that have indicated a will to move in a positive direction.
I would also advocate that we do not treat Northern Ireland as a whole and that we pay particular attention to rural areas. A great deal of the discussion has been rather Belfast-centric, if I might point out.
Chair: Yes. This often happens.
Professor Breen-Smyth: There is life beyond Belfast. Trust me.
Q181 Chair: Thank you for that. You have given us some food for thought on loyalism. Having said that that was my last question, let me ask whether you have a comment on paramilitary groups—I will use that phrase—organised crime gangs, et cetera, operating on the nationalist side of the coin.
You mentioned that there are many groups that seek political legitimacy or cover. “We are doing community work. We are doing this, that and the other”. Do Northern Irish politicians do enough to call these people out and say, “No, you are not. You are nothing to do with us”?
Professor Breen-Smyth: Let me backtrack a little bit. For me, seeing someone do community work is a good thing.
Chair: Yes, undoubtedly.
Professor Breen-Smyth: If it is somebody who has previously been involved in violence, it is a good thing. When people do good work at community level, they deserve the credit for that. There are many examples at community level of people who have been in paramilitary organisations.
Q182 Chair: Just to clarify, those are not the people I was talking about. I meant those who are still engaged with illegal activity but who use, as a cuddly carapace, the phrase, “I am doing community work”, or, “I am doing local political work or engagement”, when in fact it is just a smokescreen for criminal behaviour. I take your point entirely on reformed paramilitaries, who are doing very good work in their communities to try to ensure youngsters do not get involved. I take that point.
Professor Breen-Smyth: We need to allow people to move on and we ought to encourage that. My answer to criminality is always the same: law enforcement. We need to empower the Paramilitary Crime Task Force and the PSNI to move in and effectively arrest, prosecute and convict these people in the courts. The only answer, for me, is law enforcement.
How do you frame that? Unfortunately, we do not control the media. Some of these people have quite high media profiles and are very effective at using them. My frail powers do not extend that far. I wish you well, if you wish to extend your powers in that direction. It would be wonderful if we could call this out more effectively, but it is a call-and-response dynamic that goes on in the media.
Q183 Chair: Do you want to say a word or two about your experience, understanding and engagement with nationalist paramilitary activity?
Professor Breen-Smyth: The irony is that, having been born and raised in the nationalist community, I have less purchase with the nationalist paramilitaries, particularly those dissident republicans who are not inclined to engage with people who, like me, report to the UK Parliament, so I have less to say about that.
However, there is work ongoing with the paramilitary groups on the nationalist side, the dissident republicans in particular. I do not see the same possibilities for transition, for example, because they have a very clear political focus, and that political focus will not be satisfied until there is a change in the constitution of Northern Ireland. If and when that happens, I am not confident that there will be an end to republican paramilitarism even then. Our history teaches us that it is a story of increasing splits.
In terms of the dissident republican paramilitaries, there is good work going on at community level. There are various youth organisations that are focusing on young people who may be drawn into dissident republican activity. My briefings tell me that the strength of these organisations has been considerably weakened recently. To some extent, we are in thrall to politics and how we proceed politically, in my view, because they very much are embedded in the current political situation.
Q184 Chair: It is a bit of a get-out-of-jail-free cop-out card, is it not? “We are not going to engage because you report into Westminster, and we do not like Westminster. We are suspicious of the police because we are suspicious of the police”. Is there a danger that there could be a growing feeling of an asymmetrical approach to this? No criminal wants to engage because they might get caught out and they might find themselves detained at His Majesty’s pleasure.
Professor Breen-Smyth: If you engage with me, you do not run that risk. People have engaged and I have not arrested them, nor do I have the power to do so. The issue is one of recognition of the right of the Westminster Parliament to have anything to do with Northern Ireland. That would be the dissident republican position. “It is none of their damn business” would be the position they take.
Chair: As Chair of this Committee, I beg to differ.
Professor Breen-Smyth: I understand; I totally agree. Obviously I would not be doing what I do if I believed that, but there are people who do believe that and who refuse to engage with anything to do with British authority at all in Ireland. That is where we are.
Chair: This is a realistic Committee, don’t worry.
Q185 Mr Walker: To follow up on your point about engagement in rural areas, it is quite interesting. We had the PSNI in front of us. I asked them whether there were any areas that had been under paramilitary control where that had withdrawn, and the question was not really answered. Is there an opportunity, in spaces that have been previously under paramilitary control, to remove the criminal element of that entirely through engagement?
Professor Breen-Smyth: There are elements within the paramilitary organisations that have devoted themselves to removing the criminal element.
One of the great complaints I get from the elements with which I am engaged is that, if the PSNI was more effective at dealing with the drug problem in local communities, they would not come under pressure from the community to deal with drug dealing. There is a kind of dance that goes on between the very substantial drug problem in some of the rural areas I visit and the complaints that come not just from them but from ordinary members of the community. They say they have rung the PSNI and reported that there is a drug dealer sitting on the corner selling drugs out of their car, and nothing has happened. I get this almost everywhere I go in Northern Ireland.
There is a symbiotic relationship between the drug problem on the one hand and the continued existence of paramilitaries on the other. The paramilitaries who are interested in transition are telling me that, when people ring the PSNI and they do not get the result they want, they come to the paramilitaries and say, “You guys need to do something about this”. I am very clear with them: “You must not do that. You must not break the law”.
Hopefully my frail efforts to improve the communication between the PSNI and those communities have paid some dividends, but we have a continuing problem. Think about Ballymena at the weekend. In all sorts of places, there are communities polluted by drugs, where I am driven through an estate and drug dealers’ houses are pointed out to me. This is by paramilitaries who are asking, “What can we do? What on earth can we do about this?” For me, the drug issue sits almost more centrally to the issue of paramilitarism than some of the other things you talked about earlier.
Q186 Mr Walker: On the question of nomenclature that we have been addressing, and the distinction between paramilitaries and organised criminal gangs, is there a risk that, if we focus too heavily on the paramilitary groups and their role in the drugs trade, we could ignore other groups that have no political allegiance or label in the same way but are also engaged in the drugs trade?
I am also thinking of the Chair’s point about people smuggling. It has been suggested to me that there are Roma gangs involved in that in Northern Ireland, which may not necessarily be politically visible in the same way. Would you agree that it is important that we look at targeting the criminal elements of paramilitary organisations but also organised crime more widely in Northern Ireland?
Professor Breen-Smyth: The focus of the Committee, as I understand it, is paramilitarism. I am arguing that you need to separate out, within paramilitarism, those people who are simply involved in organised crime, who may be using politics, to mix a metaphor, as a flag of convenience—quite often, flags are central to what they do. The “flag of convenience” paramilitaries need to be separated out from those who are genuinely in transition and who have no appetite to go back to war.
Bob Stewart: Professor Mary, thank you very much for coming today. Forgive me if I have to duck out relatively shortly.
Professor Breen-Smyth: You are forgiven.
Q187 Bob Stewart: You have already indicated in the evidence you have given that you feel there has been a lessening of the influence or power of the paramilitaries. How much power do these groups have? How frightening are they in the community? How much does the community have to bow to them on both sides?
Professor Breen-Smyth: There is not one answer to that. You need to look at a map of Northern Ireland, and look at where the groups are and what they are up to.
Bob Stewart: It is mixed.
Professor Breen-Smyth: It is very mixed, absolutely.
Bob Stewart: Sometimes it is really powerful.
Professor Breen-Smyth: Yes. If you look at dissident republican influence in Derry, for example, pre the murder of Lyra McKee and after the murder of Lyra McKee, you can see a huge difference.
Bob Stewart: There has been a lessening.
Professor Breen-Smyth: The population came out on the streets to protest that murder. That gave a message about where the loyalties of the community lay. It is events, dear boy.
Q188 Bob Stewart: In my experience, it is always the mothers who come out, particularly in Londonderry.
Professor Breen-Smyth: There are some wonderful men.
Bob Stewart: There are a few, are there?
Professor Breen-Smyth: I am from there so I have to say that. Otherwise my brothers would kill me.
Q189 Bob Stewart: Mothers normally put a stop to it, do they not? They are really the influence.
Professor Breen-Smyth: To be honest, I do not want to characterise women as all peace-making because we have some quite vociferous women as well. It is a little more complicated than that.
Certainly, I would advocate that you look carefully at a detailed map of Northern Ireland rather than trying to read off simple messages about particular paramilitaries. There is a geographical differentiation, and we need appropriate interventions in each of these areas that fit the conditions locally.
You took evidence from the Department of Justice on its very excellent interventions in relation to paramilitarism, and the social and economic issues that it is addressing at community level. Unfortunately, those are not comprehensive measures. They are not in all areas affected by paramilitarism.
While they are designed to uplift communities and move young people particularly away from the danger of recruitment, they are not in themselves sufficient. In my view, the thing that is missing is the engagement. I have a long history of engaging with the organisations, and in the past we had to because we had to save lives. We talk to these people not because of who they are but because of who we are. We talk because we privilege talking over any other form of intervention, namely military and paramilitary intervention.
I want to plead very strongly to the Committee that the issue of engagement really needs revisiting. I am not asking you to talk to the drug dealers and the people traffickers, but there are people who genuinely want to move forward, and we deserve to give them a chance to do so.
Q190 Bob Stewart: You are saying that within these groups there are spokesmen with whom people could communicate rather than the people who are trafficking and drug dealing.
Professor Breen-Smyth: Yes, absolutely.
Q191 Bob Stewart: That is on both sides.
Professor Breen-Smyth: As I have already explained, my engagement has primarily been with the loyalist groupings.
Bob Stewart: You would assume that the nationalists would have a similar sort of—
Professor Breen-Smyth: There is engagement going on; I just do not have direct experience of it in the same way. There are people who are engaging on the republican side, yes. Again, it is not wholescale, but there are pieces of people who are interested in moving forward in a positive direction.
Q192 Bob Stewart: You have already answered the question I was going to ask so I will go on to the final question I really want to ask you, which is about migrants and small groupings of people, travellers for example. You have also mentioned that migrants can be brought into criminal gangs relatively easily. Can you make a comment on smaller groupings in Northern Ireland that might be involved, particularly migrants? You have already indicated half of the answer by saying that they are sometimes used for criminal gangs. They will not be used much on the political side, will they?
Professor Breen-Smyth: Some of my colleagues in the DUP probably know more about this than I do, but there was a Greek or Turkish person in the UDA at one stage called Shoukri. There have been very small examples of that in the past.
Bob Stewart: We have talked to some of them in the past.
Professor Breen-Smyth: Again, I have to repeat what I said earlier. I am focused really on the broader picture of the continued existence of paramilitarism. The presence of the Justice and Security (Northern Ireland) Act rests on the continued existence of paramilitarism. The powers I oversee are no longer needed if paramilitarism goes away.
Q193 Chair: Professor, could I just ask you a question? I was interested by something you just said there in relation to the Greek or Cypriot man. Why would you presuppose that the DUP would have an intricate knowledge of who is working with or for the UDA?
Professor Breen-Smyth: They read the newspapers and they are from Northern Ireland. The Shoukris were all over the newspapers, were they not?
Chair: Therefore, so might Mr Farry or Ms Hanna.
Professor Breen-Smyth: I am sorry; I apologise. Stephen, do you remember this?
Stephen Farry: I do.
Chair: You were not suggesting a—
Professor Breen-Smyth: No, absolutely not. No, no.
Chair: Just before some of the more vociferous media in Northern Ireland ran with that, I wanted to—
Professor Breen-Smyth: Claire, I could say that you represent republican areas as well.
Chair: Professor, it is much easier if we ask questions and you answer them rather than the other way round.
Professor Breen-Smyth: I beg your pardon.
Chair: That might be better.
Claire Hanna: South Belfast is one big shared area.
Q194 Bob Stewart: My impression from you is that the power and influence of these groups seems to be waning a little. Is that correct?
Professor Breen-Smyth: It is like the parson’s eggs: that is true in part. There are areas in Northern Ireland that are in thrall to paramilitarism and the organised crime they are involved in. Those areas are heavily affected by paramilitarism, intimidation and all the other things that go alongside that.
There are other areas where there are paramilitaries, but they are not involved in that. They still have power; they still have influence because people know who they are, but they are not wielding that influence in the same way as these people who are involved in organised crime.
Q195 Bob Stewart: I personally think we ought to try to take away the kudos of being called a paramilitary by using “organised crime groups”. It is much more descriptive. I suspect you agree with that.
Professor Breen-Smyth: Where it is appropriate, where somebody is involved in organised crime, we absolutely should name it as it is. Where they are not, however, what are you going to call the other people who used to be in paramilitarism or maybe still are but are not interested in being involved in crime?
Q196 Mr Walker: You have repeatedly referred to the need for engagement, and we would all agree that, where that is appropriate, we want to see engagement. Who is best placed to carry out that engagement? Obviously you are involved in engagement yourself, but is it the NIO? Is it politicians in the Assembly? Who do you want to see engaging with these paramilitaries, who are not the ones involved in organised crime, in order to make that movement? Who is going to make the most difference in that space?
Professor Breen-Smyth: There needs to be broad engagement across a number of agencies. I do not want to tell anyone their job, but, if I was representing a constituency in which there were people who wanted to move in a positive direction, I might wish to engage. If I worked in the Department of Justice, I might wish to know whether there was the possibility of engagement. It may not be possible or advisable directly at first, but a gentle path towards engagement on the part of a number of agencies is worth thinking about.
Q197 Chair: Do religious leaders do enough?
Professor Breen-Smyth: None of us does enough, including me.
Chair: That is a given because we are all human. Given that they have a role and status in society, are they doing enough? We will not spend time defining “enough”. Could they be doing more? That might be a better way of phrasing it.
Professor Breen-Smyth: I am going to give you the old answer. Yes, we could all do more. The thing to take into account, however, is that Northern Ireland is an increasingly secular society. The people who are involved in paramilitary groups are not necessarily terribly impressed by religious leaders. The people they might be impressed with are politicians and others who hold official positions of power. They are very keen to engage with those people.
You can take that definition as broadly as you like, but it is about people who have a formal recognition for the role they play. You are bringing them into a system of law and order, peace and democratic processing, which at the moment they are outwith.
Q198 Chair: Lots of people might not like clergy and lots of people might not like politicians, and there are perfectly legitimate reasons to sustain both of those dislikes. There has been a big debate this week, as the World Cup has commenced, about footballers—I am going to extrapolate—and the wider music and sports community commenting on political issues. Very often they can be hugely influential, particularly among the younger age group, who are more susceptible at that age to influence.
Are those sorts of people doing enough to lead community engagement and to encourage youngsters along a path of being a “law-abiding citizen” rather than joining an organised criminal gang, being a drug runner or whatever it may be? Where is the Northern Irish Marcus Rashford, for example?
Professor Breen-Smyth: They exist in every profession, including the churches, by the way. A lot of it is down to the personality and the interests of the individual. There are wonderful priests involved in all sorts of quiet work with armed groups at the moment. There are actors involved in similar work. There are special people within any profession who step up and take responsibility for trying to move things in a forward direction. I am sorry to make such a general answer.
Q199 Chair: Should they be encouraged to do more rather than merely be self-starters in this arena? Should they be positively recruited?
Professor Breen-Smyth: Sportspeople offer some possibility in terms of influence on young people. On the nationalist side, the GAA is a ubiquitous organisation across the whole area. It is very active in all sorts of social activity. They engage quite well with this work. They are not prone to the cult of personality in the same way as perhaps league football, but they do quite good work.
When it comes to other sports, yes, there are prominent rugby players who are very involved in peace-making, for example, in Northern Ireland. It happens to some extent, but we could all do more.
Q200 Sir Robert Goodwill: Good morning, Professor Breen-Smyth. I would like to ask a little bit about some of the events that can be latched on to by paramilitary groups or even initiated by them. In your report, you state that “loyalist discontent and protests about the protocol…and the unrest associated with bonfires continue to require policing”. Do you have concerns about the influence of paramilitary groups on these particular activities?
If somebody tried to build a bonfire that big in North Yorkshire, the council and the Environment Agency would have something to say about it. How can these events be improved so as not to give the oxygen of publicity to some of these groups?
Professor Breen-Smyth: It is very, very difficult. The police face a great deal of challenge in relation to how to police this without escalating it. I wish I did have an easy answer to this. There are smarter people than I engaged in this. A great deal of good work goes on within loyalist communities by people who are trying to pacify and keep things within the bounds of the law.
I have direct experience of people being terrified by the building of a bonfire in their own community. Some of these people, by the way, have associations with paramilitaries and they are still terrified, but they dare not speak out because there is a group of people who are moving this forward. Within the whole phenomenon of bonfires, there are people who are silenced; there are people who are scared. We deploy public resources in dousing down houses to prevent them catching fire. We have to clear sites and so on. It is a problem.
We would not want to stop people expressing their culture, but on the one hand there is a public safety dimension to this that is very difficult to escape from. I do not have an easy answer to it, I am afraid.
Q201 Sir Robert Goodwill: Would the same apply to those orchestrated protests about the protocol at Larne or ports, which seemed to be very organised?
Professor Breen-Smyth: Yes, I think exactly that. When you have a police force that is committed to de-escalating tensions, that creates a dilemma in how it polices these things. It is a concern.
These are political problems; they are not going to be resolved at street level. These are things that are sitting in this House and in various other parts of the political apparatus. They are played out, in many ways, in the streets, but I would hope the political solution arrives very soon.
Q202 Sir Robert Goodwill: You have talked about the lack of support among communities for paramilitary groups. Within the paramilitary groups themselves, do you share the concerns outlined in recent media reports that support for loyalist ceasefires is possibly waning?
Professor Breen-Smyth: Again, I would refer you to my very complicated map of Northern Ireland. That may be true in parts. It is definitely not true in some of the parts I am talking to.
Q203 Sir Robert Goodwill: One of your earlier answers talked about how some paramilitary groups are involved in criminality, and others are very much against criminality and see themselves as champions for their community. Would the same paramilitary groups have different roles in different locations? If we are looking at de-listing them, are there groups that have no drugs or other criminality? Does that vary around the Province as well?
Professor Breen-Smyth: We cannot look at an organisation as a whole. We have to break it down into its component parts, then look at each component part and what it is involved in. Any organisation will have locations and brigades, or whatever you want to call them, that are deeply involved in criminality, and other brigades elsewhere that are not. Unfortunately or fortunately—it depends how you see it—that is the picture that faces us.
It is complicated. This analysis is shared by people whose business it is to know about these things; it is not something new that is coming from me. We have to treat it accordingly; we have to respond accordingly. We cannot label everybody in a particular organisation or who says they are in a particular organisation in the same way. We have to take account of where they are and what is going on in their locality.
Sir Robert Goodwill: Thank you. That is very helpful.
Q204 Chair: Professor, in a number of answers you have pointed to something that I think is very clear. “Do not deal with this as an amalgam”. It is bespoke; it is different; it is granular. It is rather nice to be setting a professor an essay question. If you want to, please feel welcome to submit your thoughts on the issues, the breakdowns and the geographies, et cetera.
That might be very helpful to this Committee. We can probably think of some solutions to issues or recommendations, but the Committee would welcome your thoughts on that as well. I am not necessarily going to say that we are going to endorse them all, but it would be very useful to have that to hand.
Professor Breen-Smyth: I would take some briefings before I would do that from my colleagues in C3 and the secret intelligence services, if that is okay.
Chair: Yes, indeed.
Q205 Claire Hanna: Thank you very much. It has been really interesting. Picking up on Robert’s questions, where does frustration about the protocol, understandable frustration in some cases, end and wanting to end ceasefires begin? Is there a danger that some spokespeople reach for that almost rhetorically—“People are so cross they want to end the ceasefires”?
Do you have a sense that this is a connection that people are making? Is their response that they want to return to violence? If you apply any logic in terms of who the targets would be versus who the targets of those organisations had traditionally been—when they had been Catholic civilians—what would be the logic of that? Is there a danger that a small number of gatekeepers are using this to say, “Look at this angry dog here. I am trying to hold it back”?
Professor Breen-Smyth: Yes, there is that danger. Certainly, the conversations I am having within the loyalist communities are not angry conversations; they are despairing conversations. They are conversations about feeling lost, feeling a lack of power, a lack of open discussion about where the loyalist community is and a lack of opportunity to express a view. It is all of that.
It is a hopelessness and a lostness. I am not picking up a huge amount of anger. Having said that, people very clearly want to remain British. They want the protocol; they want all of those things. The atmosphere is not one of anger where I am.
Q206 Claire Hanna: That would chime with some of the evidence we heard last summer when we were exploring loyalist responses to the protocol. We have heard a sense that the protocol was being taken as a symbol for a lot of other areas about which people are anxious and fearful—demographic change and just the sense of change within Northern Ireland. You would appear to be saying something similar.
Professor Breen-Smyth: Yes.
Claire Hanna: The protocol is being elevated by political voices and they are being told, “This is the last stand”. It is being given an outsize significance and being held up as something people should be more fearful of than they are organically.
Professor Breen-Smyth: People genuinely have concerns about the protocol. We cannot take that away. I recently had a conversation with a member of an armed group, in which he said he was talking to a member of his family about what this organisation was going to do about the protocol, and they said, “You cannot shoot the protocol so who are you going to shoot? Who are you going to shoot? What can you do about this? How is going back to war going to help this?”
The conclusion is that we are not going to shoot anybody because there is no point. That is where people are at. If you are in an organisation whose primary mode of operation is shooting people, if you do not shoot people, you are helpless and hopeless. That is my concern. That is where there is room for movement, for political discussion and for political direction.
Claire Hanna: Clearly, that is what the process was about. It was about structures alternative to shooting people, which, as we know, was never a plausible way to address issues.
Q207 Chair: What should concern us more, anger or despair?
Professor Breen-Smyth: Goodness. Despair leads to desperation, and desperation calls for desperate measures. Let me answer it in terms of the dangers presented. Despair presents dangers. Anger also presents dangers. In the long run, despair presents longer-term dangers. Anger is maybe a momentary or a shorter-lived thing.
Chair: To me, despair suggests opt-out, which is never good.
Q208 Ian Paisley: Professor, going back to your previous comments, is there a read-across to those who were saying we would be going back to war if Brexit happened? Who were they going to kill over Brexit? We had all sorts of stuff going on then. There were people alleging that there was going to be violence and a border campaign if cameras went up on the border. Who were people going to kill? Is that, equally, a fair read-across?
Professor Breen-Smyth: The history of republican organisations, if that is what you are talking about, is that they attack the police. That is what goes on. I imagine—and I do not have—
Q209 Ian Paisley: Were people going to shoot a trade agreement? Were people going to shoot a Brexit Act?
Professor Breen-Smyth: Those are really good questions. We are in a situation where there are all sorts of frustrations.
Q210 Ian Paisley: It is getting to the point where I think you are saying there have been levels of exaggeration. There have been levels of exaggeration on both sides. People were running around Europe taking photographs of security posts and all the rest. There was all of that exaggeration. It was talked up. “We have ‘the boys’ on our side”. It turns out that they had nothing on their side.
Professor Breen-Smyth: You mean dissident republicans.
Ian Paisley: They have nothing on their side.
Professor Breen-Smyth: That is right. That is correct, yes. They have no friends.
Chair: It is my great pleasure to welcome a new colleague to the Committee, Sir Robert Buckland. Thank you very much for joining us, Robert. The floor is now yours.
Q211 Sir Robert Buckland: Good morning, Professor. Can I ask about the police and national security response to paramilitarism? We know that overall responsibility for national security rests with the UK Government, but the Northern Ireland Executive have a role with regard to the response to paramilitarism and the effects of that more generally.
The PSNI in its evidence has suggested that there should be more opportunities for informal joint working between the various agencies. What is your view about how that might work and its effectiveness?
Professor Breen-Smyth: If I can backtrack a little bit from your question, one of my great frustrations is how we define “national security”. Currently, the definition rests on the idea that it is only threats to democracy and to the state that count as national security threats, which means that a lot of the things we have been talking about here today do not constitute national security threats. That means our secret intelligence services are not pointed at them. They are pointed only at those things that are considered to be a threat to the state or to democracy.
That means the kind of joint working you see in relation to dissident republicans, who are deemed to be a national security threat, does not happen with quite a lot of the loyalist groups. I also have to say that there is a status associated with being considered a threat to national security. You are in big boy’s pants by the time you get to that stage, which is resented on the part of some of the loyalist groupings. We can live with that.
In terms of operational capacity, any added value that can be given to operations against all of the paramilitary groups in Northern Ireland is to be advocated. I would advocate more joint working. I do have another job. I oversee national security arrangements for Northern Ireland. I am replacing Sir Brian Barker. That is something that I will be looking at. However, that job has a different status, and I am not here to discuss it.
If you look at which of the groups on that list of 14 are considered to be national security risks, which is a worthwhile exercise, you will see that the resources that flow from that analysis are very different for different groups. Some have joint working, and some are only in the remit of the PSNI. Given the £90 million hole in their budget, which they referred to here, you can see that there is a very patchy picture on policing paramilitaries.
Q212 Sir Robert Buckland: At the risk of parenthesis, I would be interested to know what you think an adequate definition should be. Should it cover a threat to infrastructure or the economy more widely? That is quite a well-recognised definition.
Professor Breen-Smyth: Say you live in a housing estate in Northern Ireland that is polluted by paramilitarism, you have drug dealing going on and your children are scared to go out of the front door. If you are a taxpayer to the Government, you are entitled to expect the Government to secure you and your family’s safety. Where do we stop? I am an academic. I could wax on about this all day.
Chair: We can send out for sandwiches.
Professor Breen-Smyth: Do not invite me. It is a very dangerous thing to do.
We really do need to look at this much more broadly. I am not sure I would go with a definition of scale, namely that it has to affect x number of people before we consider it. That would certainly be a much more helpful way to look at it than the very narrow way, frankly, in which we look at it at the moment.
It is something I beat a drum about all the time, including to the security services. I have to say that there are people in both the secret intelligence services and the security services who agree with me. They see it as a problem also.
Q213 Sir Robert Buckland: There should be a uniform definition. We see it used in UK statute quite a lot. Indeed, in recent statute that gives the UK Government the power to intervene in acquisitions, we are already seeing a broadening in the national security dimension.
Professor Breen-Smyth: Yes, absolutely.
Sir Robert Buckland: I would be interested to see how we follow that up. Can I go into the policing issue? You have said that there is a lack of understanding outside the legal community and the policing community as to the division of responsibility for policing of various paramilitary groups. You have already alluded to that.
Going further into that, first of all, could we have a further analysis of what effect that lack of clarity is having? Secondly, what steps could be taken by PSNI to provide that greater clarity, perhaps through guidance or something even more definitive?
Professor Breen-Smyth: To be honest, it sits at a different level to the PSNI. These definitions are arrived at by Parliament and by Government. It is the responsibility of Government to engage in that discussion. The PSNI lives with the consequences, as indeed do the secret intelligence services. The recalibration and rethinking of it is a matter for Parliament.
The views of the people who enact these definitions are very important, but, if you were to seek those views, you would not find them departing very much from what I have said.
Q214 Stephen Farry: Welcome, Professor. I am just going to ask a couple questions around Fresh Start. Just segueing into that, to pick up from Sir Robert’s questions on national security, could I ask you to reflect to a certain extent on the disparity between the success the security services had with dissident republicans, particularly with Operation Arbacia, if I have pronounced that correctly, and the perhaps more piecemeal successes the PSNI has had through the Paramilitary Crime Task Force?
Would changing the definition of national security open up the door to resourcing or are there other ways in which the resourcing can be better equalised to ensure that the response to some of the abuses by loyalism can be addressed in a similarly intensive manner?
Professor Breen-Smyth: The difference lies in the joint working. The definition and the operationalisation of that sits at the heart of this issue. Beyond that, I am not quite sure what the answer is, to be honest with you, Stephen. The policing of an organisation that is attempting to kill you and your fellow officers is likely to take a higher priority for the PSNI than the policing of loyalist paramilitaries as well. That is perfectly understandable.
Mr Paisley has referred to people standing outside police stations and taking notes of police officers’ numbers. That happens. There is that dimension as well.
Q215 Stephen Farry: Maybe I can frame it in a different way. Most of us who come from Northern Ireland will be very familiar with the litany of cases where people are suffering from intimidation. They are driven from their houses and homes. There is a difficulty in terms of securing convictions in a lot of situations because it requires someone to be brave enough to come forward and give evidence in court, with all the attendant risks that come with that.
Without detailing any methods, the security services can bring a lot more tools to the table in terms of intelligence-gathering devices, which have been useful in securing prosecutions. In terms of the techniques that are available, is there a disparity that needs to be addressed?
Professor Breen-Smyth: I think so. Any resources that can be deployed and directed at these organised crime groups, particularly those that masquerade as political forces, is to the benefit of Northern Ireland as a whole. None of us wants to see the continuation of paramilitarism beyond a small number of people whose writ frankly should not run. Joint working would benefit the efforts against loyalist paramilitaries.
Q216 Stephen Farry: It is a very comprehensive document, but could you give your broad assessment of the Fresh Start Agreement as it pertains to paramilitaries, making particular reference to the communities in transition element of that? How has that been working? Should it be extended, for example?
Professor Breen-Smyth: All of the measures that have been put in place already need to be extended, including Fresh Start and some of the other aspects, with funding. The other thing is that the geographic spread needs to be improved, and I have already alluded to that.
One of the difficulties—it is a difficulty that faces the PSNI all the time, for example, in policing—is in relation to the pre-emption of harm. It is difficult to quantify what has not happened. In prevention, which a lot of Fresh Start and other aspects of the efforts against paramilitarism have been designed to foster, it is very difficult to quantify that. That is a difficulty that will face the programme.
The other thing to say—and I hate to return to this and put pressure on our political representatives—
Stephen Farry: That is what you are there for.
Professor Breen-Smyth: Ultimately, some of this is socioeconomic, but some of it is also political. There is really a need to advance the political purchase in these communities as well. People need to feel much more part of a body politic and a democratic process than they do currently.
Q217 Carla Lockhart: Thank you, Professor, for your comments this morning. Just leading on from that point, when a political leader says there was no alternative to the actions of the IRA, what does that do to the mindset of dissident republicans?
Professor Breen-Smyth: As I understand it, the comment was referring to the past. It is not a surprise to me, because that was and continues to be the belief of many people in republican circles. I would hope that there is, within those circles, a clear understanding of what the Good Friday agreement means. People signed up to use exclusively peaceful means after that agreement was put in place, and I would hope that they continue to do so.
It is unfortunate that that clarity was not brought to the comment and it was not followed by clarity about what is appropriate nowadays, even if that is what people believe. I abhor violence in all its forms, personally, but we have to recognise the reality that some people in the country that we live in do not feel like that. They do express views.
Q218 Carla Lockhart: All of these types of comments—"no alternative”, “justified”—are surely driving support. They are getting into the mindset of—
Professor Breen-Smyth: Yes, that is the politics we live with. I do not know what else you want me to say. Is there a question here? I do not know what else to say.
Q219 Carla Lockhart: You have answered it. You feel that, yes, those comments would get into the mindset of dissident republicans.
Professor Breen-Smyth: I am not sure. There is no love lost between Sinn Féin and dissident republicans. This cannot be news to anybody. They are actively antagonistic to Sinn Féin.
Q220 Carla Lockhart: Chair, can I welcome your clarification to the ill-judged comments regarding the DUP and the UDA?
Professor Breen-Smyth: I am very sorry. I did not mean to imply that at all. I happened to be looking in your direction more than I am looking in Stephen’s. I will readjust my focus.
Carla Lockhart: It was particularly lazy.
Chair: That is clarified.
Q221 Carla Lockhart: I appreciate that. In your report, you have urged further consideration of the Independent Reporting Commission’s recommendations for a group transition process led by the Government and the Northern Ireland Executive. Can you provide examples of clear and visible signposts to an accessible path to transition as part of any such process?
Professor Breen-Smyth: Can I provide them? Again, this is not really part of what I am supposed to be doing. Certainly, direct engagement with some of the subgroups I am talking about would open up a process of discussion about what that might be.
There needs to be a series of tests that people must undergo to ensure they are committed to exclusively peaceful means. There are precedents for this in the earlier part of our history. You see groups that have transitioned before and the way in which that transition was organised. We could learn from that and amend that to apply it to the present day.
The other side of it is the incentives for people to do this. There are various continuing impediments for people who have forsworn paramilitarism, such as the inability to adopt children, to obtain taxi licences and so on. There are incentives that could be looked at in the long term and rewards for civilian-isation—let us call it that—that could be built into the process, which were not in place in fact in previous eras.
People are impatient a little bit with people who at that time could have transitioned and did not. We have to accept that different groupings in Northern Ireland move at different paces and have different political aspirations and positions. We have to allow a different phasing of transition for the different groupings in the community.
Whether we like it or not, these people are our neighbours. They are not going to disappear in a puff of smoke. I would much rather that they had the ability to transition and become useful citizens than that they continued in their current position.
Q222 Carla Lockhart: Again, I would just clarify: a complete whitewashing of the past does nothing.
Professor Breen-Smyth: I am somebody who has written about the past a great deal so I totally agree.
Carla Lockhart: It is an important point.
Q223 Sir Robert Buckland: Moving on to stop and search, in an England and Wales context, a lot of members of the Committee are very familiar with issues about stop and search generically and whether it generates greater alienation in certain parts of the community. For example, particularly in London, there is a racial stereotyping issue. There has been quite a move in policy. There was a restriction in the last decade and there has now been an expansion in the use of stop and search here in England and Wales.
From a Northern Ireland dimension, the Committee would be interested in what risks you think are posed by a wider use of stop and search, as well as the flipside and the potential benefits of its use. Particularly from a Northern Ireland community viewpoint, we would be very interested to hear your observations.
Professor Breen-Smyth: We have a wide range of stop and search powers. I oversee only those under the Justice and Security (Northern Ireland) Act, which comprise what we could loosely refer to as the old powers that were removed from the police in England and Wales, the suspicion-less stop and search, which was ended in a case in the European Court of Human Rights—I believe that the case was Gillan.
The Justice and Security (Northern Ireland) Act was designed to be temporary. It is meant to be a piece of bridging legislation, which is why I am in this job. I recommend to Parliament whether the powers are still required, hence my interest in paramilitarism.
In terms of stop and search powers, my concern has to be about balancing, on the one hand, the need for policing of certain issues and the need for rendering the communities safe for people, and, on the other hand, the human rights of the people concerned, but also the effect on police-community relations, which you have alluded to. There is a difficulty.
In my report, I review a survey carried out by the police of young people, and it makes very unhappy reading about the attitude of young people and their experience that they are reporting to the police of being stopped and searched, but also, in general, of their interactions with police officers. We allow at our peril a deterioration in policy-community relations with young people in particular, especially young, male, working‑class people, in these areas that we are talking about. Stop and search has a role to play in that.
We have people within the PSNI who are determined, as my predecessors and I are, that that broad power of stop and search is used only as a power of last resort. That is something that I am saying to the PSNI. If you read my report, I have collated all the previous guidance about how this power of stop and search should be used. It should not be used against known people in paramilitary organisations. That is not a sufficient cause, according to my predecessors. It must not be used to disrupt paramilitary activity, according to my predecessors. When you look through all the guidance, you end up almost with a reasonable suspicion, in which case other powers are available, and those other powers are available throughout the UK.
My direction of travel is to get Northern Ireland into a position where we can use the same powers as England and Wales and we do not need special powers. Some of that is your remit in terms of paramilitarism, but some of it is also the legal use of the powers that exist under the JSA.
There are upcoming cases. We very rarely get the courts dealing with challenges to JSA stop and search powers, but there is a case coming up, which I will be watching with great interest. That will be in the courts in January. Jurisprudence tends to alter the way in which the police may use these powers. Indeed, it has altered them in the past. There was a case where a child was stopped and searched, and that limits the power, so we are in an evolving situation.
I have to say that the police are co-operative with almost all of my requirements, insofar as I have a commitment from them that they will limit the powers. One of the concerns is that the power has a very poor outcome rate. Less than 1% of stop and searches lead to any kind of outcome in terms of a finding of illegal activity or equipment, arrest, or certainly charge and prosecution, so it does beg a question about why we are doing it, if it does not bear any fruit.
Those are the kinds of discussions that I have on an ongoing basis with the PSNI. Indeed, I am meeting the chief constable tomorrow to take this discussion further.
Q224 Sir Robert Buckland: That is really helpful, drawing an analogy between the old sus laws, which go back 40 years in England and Wales, and where we need to go. You are right to say that there are triggers here in England and Wales before you can use powers under section 60, for example.
You recommended, among your recommendations, that a stop and search card be developed for young people. What would the benefit of that be?
Professor Breen-Smyth: There are several cards in circulation in the PSNI at the moment. The latest one is the size of a credit card and it folds out. In the pieces that fold out is information about your rights, but it is aimed at adults—and not people of my age, because the print is very small. We need to develop something that is aimed more at young people.
There is a difficulty for the PSNI in engaging with young people in an advisory capacity, because, frankly, the young people you want to engage with are less likely to want to engage with the police than you would want. You would want them to step forward. You can go into middle-class schools, for example, and engage with young people, but they are not the young people who are getting stopped and searched.
I am suggesting to the PSNI ways in which it can work around that and work with young people to develop child-friendly material, using age-appropriate language, that can be directed at young people, so that they have a sense that they too have rights and there is some kind of obligation on the part of the police to inform them of those rights.
Q225 Ian Paisley: In terms of reaching those hard-to-reach folk in various communities, we have a situation now in Northern Ireland where, unfortunately, people think it is appropriate to chant support for the IRA in people’s faces. When you look at some of the people who are doing that, they should not be in a hard-to-reach group. They include the Republic of Ireland’s women’s football team, who have a social responsibility. We had an incident this week where my former party leader met a young businesswoman, who apparently is a school counsellor. She is counselling young people, and yet she goes up to the face of a victim of the IRA and says, “Up the Ra”. How do we reach people like that, or is it just that this is not solvable and the sectarian bigotry that is there is just not touchable?
Professor Breen-Smyth: As you know, and as anybody from Northern Ireland knows, sectarianism is an endemic problem in Northern Ireland, right across all of the communities. Some of it is based on the structure of the society and the segregation. There are people who do not understand what it feels like to be a victim. They do not understand what it feels like to walk in other people’s shoes, because they have lived in little pockets. They are so keen to express their own identity that they cannot allow for the identity of another person who is different to themselves. If you have the answer to that, Ian, I would be glad to have it, but it is very difficult.
Ian Paisley: It takes political leadership.
Q226 Mr Walker: In talking about the trust of young people, one of the concerns that young people often have with the police, and with justice more generally in this context, is that there are certain people who seem to get away with minor crimes, because they are perhaps an asset to the police or the security services. Is that more a matter of historical memory or is that still an ongoing problem in terms of building that trust?
Professor Breen-Smyth: People report this to me on an ongoing basis. Whatever the reality, the perception is very strongly that, as they call them, CHISs are given carte blanche. We have recent legislation that clarifies that in law, and there is regulation of that, but it is the case that, with proper due diligence, CHISs are allowed to break the law, and so there is, unfortunately, a reality to that.
Q227 Chair: Can you just remind us—CHISs?
Professor Breen-Smyth: Covert human intelligence sources.
Q228 Mary Kelly Foy: Regarding the criminal justice system, we know that there are increased delays, so there is a perception from communities that the system is ineffective. Indeed, the delays mean that there is more opportunity for intimidation and threats face to face. What are the potential benefits and risks of the use of non-jury trials in Northern Ireland, specifically in connection with paramilitaries?
Professor Breen-Smyth: Unfortunately, whether or not we use non-jury trials, the problem of delay is endemic and has been for some decades in the criminal justice system in Northern Ireland. It is particularly acute in the crown court. The use of non-jury trials is up for review at the moment and there is a public consultation going on. The powers are renewed every two years, and that will or will not happen, as the case may be, this coming year. The Secretary of State is in consultation about that at the moment. I have also received the report of a working party that I have tasked to do various things, which I can talk about.
The non-jury trial phenomenon in Northern Ireland does not assist with the issue of delay. It is designed largely to address the problem of jury intimidation. If paramilitarism reduces, you can see that the need for a non-jury trial is also reduced and, indeed, maybe obliterated, and we can adopt the practices that are in place in the rest of England and Wales, which are based on the Criminal Justice Act. That requires evidence of intimidation before you can institute a non-jury trial.
Delay is a big issue. It is partly to do with the resourcing of the criminal justice system itself, not assisted by various strikes on the part of legal professionals currently. There is a whole plethora of difficulties there that are sitting much more broadly within the criminal justice system, and it definitely exacerbates people’s anxieties about access to justice. I work closely with Jonathan Hall, who is the independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, and he is mightily horrified when he sees how long it takes us to process cases compared to England and Wales. It really is a big problem.
Q229 Sir Robert Buckland: Having a great interest in and professional experience of jury trials, you are absolutely to right to say that the criterion in England and Wales is a very high bar before we get to that stage. Of course, you have protected juries and different tiers of protection, where jurors’ names are concealed from the court. That is often a very effective system, where there is evidence. Would you agree with me, first, that it is highly desirable that Northern Ireland returns to a state where the non-jury trial is consigned to history?
Secondly, apart from the issue of resourcing and backlogs, which Covid certainly did not help, although there was a pre-Covid issue, are you satisfied that everything is being done within the criminal procedure rules and the administration of justice, in terms of the preparation of criminal trials, that facilitates as speedy a listing as possible for those cases?
Professor Breen-Smyth: Let me deal with the first question. The direction of travel that I am keen to go in is the elimination of the need for non-jury trials in Northern Ireland. I am joined in that by most people I talk to. However, the Public Prosecution Service has a duty to ensure the safety of the process and of those people who might be called for jury duty.
They are very much bound also by the letter of the law. As it stands, the law is the Justice and Security (Northern Ireland) Act and, until that law is removed, we will continue to have non-jury trials in Northern Ireland, because ultimately there will come a day when we must take a risk. While there is legislation available to the prosecution service to minimise that risk, or to avoid it altogether, it will use it. Again, going back to the point I keep making, this is a political issue as much as it is anything else. There will be a moment when Parliament must decide whether to renew the powers and, if it decides not to renew them, we will have to deal with that in the criminal justice system.
In relation to the processing of cases within the criminal justice system, I am not familiar enough with the machinery within the system that allows that. I know that I should be, because I used to work in criminal justice inspection, and I would refer you to inspections on the issue of delay that have been conducted.
Q230 Chair: Thank you very much indeed, Professor. Thank you for joining us. You have given us a lot of information and food thought. As I say, that invitation stands if you would like to give us further thoughts.
Professor Breen-Smyth: I shall go and do my homework.
Chair: I am grateful. Thank you very much indeed for your time this morning.