A Shared Future – Is there 'A Way Forward'?

Minister for Social Development Margaret Ritchie has begun a series of Public Forums to ask for your help. The Forums which take the Minster from Enniskillen to Derry will ask four important questions:-

These are the questions Social Development Minister Margaret Ritchie has been asking for the past few weeks at her Public Forums throughout the country.

Ballymena, Derry, Newry, Enniskillen, Omagh and Bangor are the venues the Minister has travelled to listening to suggestions from the floor. As with anything, not all best laid plans work out as one might hope.

In true X Factor style, the crowds had gathered outside the venue to meet the Social Development Minister Margaret Ritchie MLA as she arrived at her Public Forum in Belfast’s Radission Hotel on Tuesday night. Unfortunately they hadn’t so much come to cheer as jeer.

As anticipated by the organizers, around 60 protestors arrived at the venue with placards to make their point about housing in their particular areas. Rather than use contingencies to enter the hotel through back doors, the Minister was happy to walk past the protestors to get sight of the banners and take one of their leaflets as she entered the venue from her nearby offices at the Lighthouse Building.

Belfast was always going to be a contentious venue for the now regular meetings that Minister Ritchie has been attending throughout the country. The ‘Margaret Ritchie Public Forums’ are about creating a Shared Future and the Minister is in listening mode to see how the people of the North of Ireland see the ‘Way Forward.’

The Minister and her officials are well aware that these meetings could potentially be hijacked by individuals who have personal queries. Although the queries may be off the topic of the forums, undeterred, the Minister ensures that there are senior representatives from all areas of the Department’s business to deal with enquiries after each meeting and Belfast was no exception.

The Titanium Room at the Radission, already packed with press, camera crews officials and individuals who had come along to discuss the topic of Shared Future, was filled to the gills as the protestors poured their way in and took their place sitting, standing and pushing their heads through doorways to hear what was being said.

It was 2 hours of relentless questions and opinions. Anyone who wanted a ‘say’ had a ‘say’ regardless of topic. The sticker ‘No Fear’ springs to mind here. For indeed, no fear there was. Whatever question was posed, had an answer. Okay it might not have been what people wanted to hear, but it was an answer and an honest to God answer.

One thing about all these events. The Department is very confident about what it is doing. Simon Cowell like, some X Factor fans might call it. It believes in what needs to be done. It knows that what it is doing, it is doing right. The only thing it isn’t able to do, is what the lack of funds prevents it from doing.

For people who came to the venue to talk about housing the answer is clear. ‘You are not on your own, there are many like you as has been discovered from other venues.’ Is there an answer? There sure is. Join the Crusade. If you have any influence with your particular public representative, doesn’t matter what party or what Minister. The message is clear. Tell them to support the Social Development Minister to secure, not extra funding but ‘the funding needed to do the job, in housing, that has to be done.’

As to a ‘Shared Future’? I think Margaret Ritchie might have found her answer last night. In the room she had representatives from, Shankill, Carrick Hill, Falls, Belvoir and the Village. What better way to bring people together than asking all her colleagues in the Executive to arrange their own Public Forums. – Now that would be ‘A Way Forward’.

Keep an eye in your local press for details of a Public Forum near you or find dates on this site.