Government was lobbied in 1998 to do more for ex-prisoners, records show The government was lobbied to do more to assist former paramilitaries to get jobs and integrate back into society months after being released from prison in 1998.
Declassified files show the then Northern Ireland Office minister, Adam Ingram, resisting the pressure by stating society was “not yet at the stage where all of the shutters could go up”, expressing concerns that ex-prisoners could end up teaching the children of their victims.
The issue of how to integrate them back into society was the subject of a meeting in December 1998 between Mr Ingram and Projex 2000, a private sector group which included representatives of ex-prisoners.
Mr Cleland says the government had committed to providing assistance for politically motivated prisoners in the Good Friday Agreement, but there had been “no tangible signs of this apart from the prisoner releases”.
A minute of the meeting shows that the minister advised the group to start lobbying the local parties in the Assembly as he said much of the responsibility for what they were concerned about would fall to Stormont.
