The latest series of Holywell Conversations podcasts began with reflections on the Good Friday Agreement, amidst fears that Northern Ireland’s devolution was over, and that series has now completed at a time when government has actually resumed. Over the series’ 18 episodes two themes have been examined – the challenges holding back reconciliation within our society, and the specific problems that continue to face the North West region.

Derry has been campaigning for a full sized university campus for the last 60 years. The city still holds a grievance over the Lockwood report from 1965, which chose Coleraine for the location of the new university, rather than Derry’s existing Magee College, then a Presbyterian theological college.

The widely opposed Legacy Bill is now enacted as the Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Act, 2023. But it remains widely hated and the Irish government has launched inter-state proceedings against the UK administration.

Women in Northern Ireland are twice as likely to be murdered as a result of domestic violence than in the other UK nations. In some years, almost half of Northern Ireland murders are connected to domestic violence. In the 2022/23 year, of 17 homicides there were 8 that resulted from domestic violence against women.

There is immense frustration across Northern Ireland’s community sector that the Civic Forum collapsed in 2002 and was not replaced. Demands are increasing for citizens’ assemblies, or similar, to provide an alternative voice to that of politicians, especially in the absence of the Assembly and Executive.

Paul Gosling and guests discuss both the impact of Brexit on Farming in Northern Ireland, and how farmers can manage the demands on them to meet environmental targets. Interviewees are William Taylor of Farmers for Action and John Gilliland, a former president of the Ulster Farmers Union and an environmental advisor to the agriculture sector.

When waiting lists are discussed and shouted about in Northern Ireland, we are usually talking about our disintegrating healthcare system. But there is a second waiting list crisis – that of households seeking social housing.

Derry is a frustrated city. Too often promises of improvement either come to nothing, or happen too slowly. Anyone who doubts this can consider the regeneration of two major development sites – Ebrington and Fort George. One is now partially occupied, the other largely vacant. This is two decades after the fanfare of their transfer from the Ministry of Defence for the benefit of the city.

Last week was Good Relations Week, the annual Community Relations Council event that aims to build relationships between people of different backgrounds in Northern Ireland, including across the traditional Catholic and Protestant divisions and also people of differing ethnicities.

Why, a quarter of a century after the Good Friday Agreement, do we still have peace walls? The truth, of course, is that the peace deal ended the conflict, but failed to end division and embed reconciliation.

Derry and Donegal are not only marginalised by their geographic position on the periphery of the island of Ireland, but they are also very badly served by the transport infrastructure. They are not alone in this: there are also complaints from Sligo, Fermanagh and elsewhere in the West expressing similar concerns. 

Only the most devoted conspiracy theorist could deny climate change given the devastating events of recent weeks. Spring was marked by deadly fires in Canada, terrible floods in Northern Italy and even an unfamiliar heatwave in Northern Ireland.

Recent weeks have seen a rise in concern about the continuing presence of paramilitaries in our society. Just how we make faster progress in removing them is the question considered in the latest Holywell Conversations podcast.

A few days ago the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee of the House of Commons was told that for some communities here, the expected peace dividend from the Good Friday Agreement never arrived.

Just five miles from Derry’s city centre, on the suburban edge of the Waterside, is the site of one of the worst environmental crimes in UK history. It has been described as Europe’s largest illegal waste dump, which may be an exaggeration, but it is certainly one of the very biggest.

Human rights are under threat in the UK, warns the Northern Ireland Human Rights Chief Commissioner Alyson Kilpatrick. 

While the immediate question is whether the British government will change the law in order to remove large numbers of asylum seekers to Rwanda, this is in the context of proposals for the UK to leave the European Convention on Human Rights. This would have significant, negative, implications for Northern Ireland, given that this is one of the foundations of the Good Friday Agreement.

There was anger across Northern Ireland when the government’s funding allocations from the replacement for the European Social Fund were announced. Firstly, the announcement was made late morning on the very last day possible. And secondly, the level of funding from the replacement programme, the Shared Prosperity Fund, was much less than that lost from ESF. Many people felt this was not the promise the UK government made after Brexit.

Conversations with key players in the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement negotiations open a new series of podcasts from the peace and reconciliation charity, the Holywell Trust. Suitably, the new series is called the Holywell Trust Conversations, reflecting a more in-depth discussion of topics that are continuing to affect Northern Ireland, and especially the North West – where Holywell is located.