Madam, - I would like to join Mona Baker of the Temple Street Children's Hospital (November 22nd) in strongly supporting the great work of the National Consultative Committee on Racism and Interculturalism (NCCRI), dismissed so glibly by Sarah Carey as "not worth defending."
Three years ago the Centre for Cross- Border Studies was asked by the Office of the First Minister and Deputy First Minister in Belfast to carry out research into how public bodies in Northern Ireland could learn from the Republic of Ireland and Scotland about how best to deliver services like social and health services, housing and education to the new ethnic minority groups whose numbers were starting to grow in Northern Ireland in the same way they had done in the South and in Scotland over the past decade.
This work was led for us by Philip Watt and Fiona McGaughey of the NCCRI, and was quite simply the most thorough, professional and practical piece of research the centre has commissioned in its 10 years of existence.
The final report in October 2006 was welcomed with glowing tributes by a wide range of bodies in the North, including government departments like the Department of Health, Social Services and Public Safety and the Department of Education, public agencies like the NI Housing Executive and the Police Service of Northern Ireland, charitable bodies like the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust and advocacy bodies like the NI Council for Ethnic Minorities. It was also highly praised by the Scottish Executive.
All of us - and particularly people from ethnic minorities in Ireland - will be poorer for the untimely demise of the NCCRI. - Yours, etc,
ANDY POLLAK,
Centre for Cross-Border Studies,
39 Abbey Street,
Armagh.