By Miriam Bell from NICVA
Published on 27 Jan 2005
NICVA's response to one of the most important consultations to be held in Northern Ireland.
After consultation with its member groups in June, NICVA has produced a response to the government consultation A Shared Future.
NICVA welcomes the consultation as one of the most fundamentally important consultations to be held in Northern Ireland since it addresses issues which affect every walk of life – communities, business, employment, public spending, education, health, housing and others.
NICVA supports the central vision articulated by the document and emphasises the role that the voluntary and community sector should play in a shared society.
However, the response highlights a number of weaknesses in the document - the absence of suggestions of the kind of actions that government might take to improve community relations, and also its failure to provide every home in Northern Ireland with a copy of the document as it did in the case of the Burns consultation and the Agreement document.
In its response NICVA discusses a range of areas that the government must address, including an agreed strategy among all government departments about good relations, distribution of services, support for communities living in interface areas, and many of the aims of the Harbison report.
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