Glencree Centre for Peace and Reconciliation
Glencree, Enniskerry, Co. Wicklow

Summer School 2009: Saturday 29 – Sunday 30 August 2009

“What the South Needs to Hear – What the North Needs to Say”

This annual Summer School at Ireland’s leading Peacebuilding Organisation offers an opportunity to listen, discuss and reflect on the issues facing peacebuilders in the new Northern context, with informed speakers, a friendly atmosphere, comfortable surroundings and the beauty of the Wicklow hills.

Great progress has been made in building the peace in Northern Ireland in the 11 years since the Agreement. But there is still work to be done to consolidate the new context and to build a fair and just society. And the question remains of how best Southern society can assist the process. A range of practitioners, politicians and activists from the North will join us to lead discussions on four particularly pressing  topics: political co-operation; the contribution and transformation of paramilitaries’ and prisoners’ groups; the outstanding issues of victims of the Troubles and of transitional justice processes; and the changing roles of women in Northern society.

Speakers will include: senior representatives from the four main political parties, including Jim Wells, MLA, (DUP) and John McCallister, MLA (UUP); Dame Nuala O’Loan (former NI Police Ombudsman, and currently Roving Irish Ambassador), Avila Kilmurray (Community Foundation NI), and leaders of a range of Victim’s groups and Women’s groups, as well as republican and loyalist ex-paramilitary leaders engaged in the conflict transformation process.

“This is an important chance for those of us in the South to listen carefully and respectfully to the needs expressed by those working to build peace in the North, and to figure out how best we can support and sustain their efforts.” David Bloomfield, CEO, Glencree.

“If Glencree didn’t exist, we would have to invent it.” Dermot Ahern TD, Minister for Foreign Affairs, in 2007.