45% of young people in Northern Ireland impacted by paramilitaries, MLAs told

Some 45% of young people in Northern Ireland are impacted by paramilitaries, the Stormont justice committee has heard.

Officials who work in the Executive Programme on Paramilitarism and Organised Crime within the Department of Justice outlined the impact on the region.

This included an estimate that paramilitaries cost Northern Ireland between half-a-billion and three-quarters-of-a-billion pounds a year.

Programme director Adele Brown said they had found that 45% of young people were impacted by paramilitaries.

“For adults, it is between 20%-40%. It’s also a very localised issue, in some cases that can rise, almost double to 80%,” she told MLAs.

“This is something which has been going on for a long time. It’s a very complex issue, so we need an innovative, creative, evidence-based and data-driven approach to be able to address that.

“The programme invests currently in over 100 interventions. They range from early years, from birth, right the way through to old age, and all the key intervention points, making sure that people are less vulnerable to exploitation by criminal paramilitary groups.”

Ms Brown also said that nine out of 10 young people on their programme were experiencing complex trauma on entry.

“Ninety-seven per cent have seen a family member hit, kicked or punched at home, 12.5% attacked by paramilitaries, 33% threatened by paramilitaries and 62% have seen a paramilitary attack,” she said.

“These are staggering figures and a real indictment.

“What I would say is, and this is one of the really encouraging stories and actually one of the areas where Northern Ireland is leading the way, is in the responses which have been developed to be able to address this.

“We saw intent to engage in violence on the part of young people at the start of a programme sitting at 42%, by the end of the programme that had dropped to 3%.

“Now that’s just one statistic, we could talk about reduction and trauma, we could talk about all sorts of different indicators which show that this work is really effective.”

Independent MLA Alex Easton referred to the statistics as “quite staggering and really worrying”.

Ms Brown also paid tribute to the work done by their delivery partners across many sectors “working in really difficult circumstances doing some really challenging work”, delivering “in many cases incredible outcomes”.

“In some sectors, it’s actually world-leading practice and has been viewed internationally as a model of how to do things which is really encouraging to hear,” she added.

“The big thing that we need from everybody, and that includes elected politicians, is leadership. This is really important for the programme, and to be able to talk about these complex issues in a constructive way.”