MEETING OF JOINT COMMITTEE ON THE IMPLEMENTATION OF THE GOOD
FRIDAY AGREEMENT
Leinster House, Dublin 2
Thursday 24th September 2015
OPENING STATEMENT
Maura Twohig, Co-Founder & Chairperson of The Tara Centre, 11 Holmvew
Terrace, Omagh.
Brief given by the Committee: to participate in a discussion on the topic of
“Legacy Issues in Northern Ireland affecting Victims and Relatives”.
Introduction/Context
I appreciate the opportunity to be part of this important discussion at such a
critical time in the implementation of the Good Friday Agreement – a time of
crisis (otherwise understood as a timely opportunity) in the implementation of
the Stormont House Agreement of November/December 2014.
This is my 21st year living in Northern Ireland and actively involved, day and
daily in promoting the implementation of the Good Friday Agreement and
associated peace, stability and prosperity promoting Agreements.
As someone born and raised in the lovely town of Youghal, Co. Cork, this is not
where I expected to be at this stage of my life. Living in Northern Ireland is,
however, an extraordinary experience for me at a personal level and one I
would not like to be without.
In my case this work began and continues to be done firstly by co-founding
and subsequently by co-directing a Centre for “… healing, peace and holistic
well-being” on a cross community, cross border basis in Northern Ireland. I
speak of the Tara Centre now in the 20th year of service to the community
which includes victims and relatives.
I would like at the outset to acknowledge the significant support received, (in
funding and developing the Tara Centre with its vision for peace and
reconciliation), from the Irish Government Department of Foreign Affairs and
from the Northern Ireland Office in establishing and growing the Tara
Company which belongs to the Voluntary/Community Sector,now known as
the Third Level Sector. In the presence of the members of this committee I
would also like to acknowledge that the funding which comes from the
Department of Foreign Affairs is, of course, voted by the Houses of the
Oireachtas. Let me express my grateful thanks to all of you for the part you
have played in the making of such decisions.
Unlike myself, who hails from Cork, the other Co-Founder, Co-Director of the
Tara Centre, Mary Daly, grew up in Northern Ireland, experiencing first hand
the full impact of Northern Ireland’s more recent “Troubles”. This fact of life
gifted us with the opportunity to bring an inherent North/South perspective to
bear on our contribution to the work of reconciliation from the get-go.
Focus of Submission
The focus I choose to take for my opening statement on the given topic of
“Legacy Issues in Northern Ireland affecting Victims and Relatives” comes from
the meaning of the name of the Centre from which we provide services in
Northern Ireland namely The Tara Centre.
The name Tara has many connotations and associations, spanning many
countries, cultures and continents, but the one I choose to use for today’s
purposes is that offered by a recognised authority on the subject Micheal
Slevin of Tara, Co. Meath:
“A place from which there is a broad perspective”.
That broad perspective is everywhere evident in the Good Friday Agreement
itself and in all subsequent key documents which have played such a vital role
in the implementation of that document (The St. Andrew’s Agreement, The
Hillsborough Agreement and the more recent Stormont Agreement). It also
clearly informs the vision for the Peace Process recently articulated by the
Republic’s Minister for Foreign Affairs, Charlie Flanagan, in his address at
Oxford on June 6th 2015 and to the annual conference on Reconciliation held
at Dublin Castle only last week – 15th September 2015.
In the remainder of my remarks I want to focus on our Centre in Omagh and
how our work there, in our view, feeds into and supports that broad
perspective I have been describing.
At the Tara Centre in Omagh we have consistently made available to the
public, on a non-discriminatory basis, a package of therapeutic interventions
which, in a low-key but most effective manner, address Northern Ireland’s
legacy issues in the lives of Victims and Families.
The verbal and written testimony of many thousands of users of these services
during the past nineteen years empowers me to state that this approach is
effective. Let me name the constituent elements of our therapeutic package
and then share a key insight which emerges from the entire hands-on
experience.
The constituent elements of the Tara Centre healing “package” are as follows:
Counselling/psychotherapy and art therapy; a broad spectrum of
complementary therapies; educational and training programmes; training and
group practice of meditation, mindfulness and yoga, support groups such as
those affected by suicide and more.
What has emerged over time is experiential evidence of the widely proclaimed
theory that there is a profound trans-generational dimension to be reckoned
with in the lasting healing of all deep trauma, at the personal, the family, the
community and the broader societal levels.
My personal awareness of this comes from being a member of the first
generation post Easter Rising society who grew up in the deep south of County
Cork. My parents’ generation lived through the complex reality of the 1916
Rising, the subsequent Civil War, the controversial Treaty out of which the
Border was created – all in the broader context of the First World War.
In common with many other parents of their generation my parents sought to
protect their children from the effects of the violence and associated trauma
which they had lived through. This was a generation which sought to forget
the trauma of the past and did so for the very best of reasons. They had not
come upon Swiss psychotherapist C. G. Jung’s warning that “What one
generation seeks to forget, another generation is forced to remember”. Life’s
circumstances made sure that I learned that lesson unforgettably.
When, in my fifties, having lived in various parts of the south and travelled and
studied widely abroad, having trained and practised as an educationalist and
an in-depth psychotherapist – a training which required rigorous personal
counselling at university level in the USA and as a practitioner at a Presbyterian
run counselling centre in downtown Chicago. In these contexts all the here-tofore disowned ghosts of my ancestors assailed me when I walked the streets of
Portadown and Belfast for a year before pitching my tent in Omagh.
It became crystal clear to me that I had to face and deal with this transgenerational dimension of my personal story with absolute integrity before I
could play any role in Northern Ireland’s quest for a deep and lasting peace.
This was two to three years before the Good Friday Agreement. I did, and I
continue to do this healing work at a personal level, at the level of the subconscious as well as the conscious in the certain knowledge that the roots of
trauma arising from widespread violence in society go very deep even for
those who were not even born when the violence was at its worst. I had come
to know that prejudice and hatred and violence of all kinds can and do emerge
from those deep levels of the unconscious if not recognised and dealt with
relentlessly.
When one year later I accepted the invitation to make a contribution to the
Peace Process as a professional psychotherapist and educator in Omagh, I
believed I was moving out of the hot spots of Portadown and Belfast where I
had spent hat first year. How wrong can one be?
Two years after Mary Daly and I had opened the Tara Centre, and barely five
month after the signing of the Good Friday Agreement the Omagh bomb
happened. I was invited by the family of one of my former counselling clients
to accompany them in identifying the body of that young man in the army
camp turned morgue in Omagh.
Since then I and others of the team of therapists who have come together at
Tara have continued to accompany members of that same family and many
another family – victims all – as they struggle with their personal and family
trauma. Legacy issues arise daily in this practice and the trans-generational
dimension looms ever larger, especially as the security of the post Good Friday
Agreement relatively peaceful society creates the psychological conditions in
which deeply buried pain can dare to raise its aching head in search of healing.
Others invited to participate in the legacy issues for families and victims here
today will bring their particular emphasis to bear on the discussion. I am
confident that all will testify in one way or another to the importance of
continuing this vital work not only in the hot spot localities, be they designated
as urban or border, but throughout the length and breadth of rural Northern
Ireland also.
This is work that will need to go on both at macro and micro level for many
generations to come.
In Summary therefore, it is clear to me that the single biggest obstacle to
progress is dealing with the past. This is true in political terms as is being
graphically reinforced to us in Northern Ireland in these weeks. But, as I have
been reporting, it is also true in personal terms. Too many communities,
families and individuals continue to struggle in their daily lives with the
legacies of pain and trauma from what happened to them as a result of the
conflict. There is no doubt, as I have said, that this is transferring across into
the new generations also, a particularly troubling reality.
In closing, all of this makes the case for the continued centrality of places of
personal, family and community healing such as Tara. A wise understanding of
the overall situation would recognise that just as the focus needs to be kept on
political progress, there should be no letting up on the addressing of the
continuing needs at community, family and personal levels.
If the once in a lifetime opportunity for transformational change offered by the
Good Friday Agreement is to be taken to the full, part of that process will be to
ensure that a place like Tara has the resources, capacity and wherewithal it
needs to continue its vital work at ground level in the lives of people.
Thank you again for this invaluable opportunity to speak to you today.
“The dream of peace is realised through the awakening, healing and
integration of all the dimensions of the human heart.
The Tara Centre is at the frontier of this exciting transformation.”
John O’ Donohue, Poet, Philosopher of Anam Cara fame.