Displaying episodes 1 - 30 of 95 in total
The end of a series
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...
Derry's University Grievance
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 C...
The Legacy Act is Here
The Legacy Act is Here The widely opposed Legacy Bill is now enacted as the Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Act, 2023. But it remains widely hate...
The Domestic Violence Crisis
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 Irel...
Learning to listen - the Thirty Project
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 citizen...
Farming in transition
Agriculture is worth around £1.7bn to the Northern Ireland economy, 4% of total economic activity, according to figures published by the Department for the Economy. Th...
The other waiting list crisis
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 waitin...
A Tale of One City - and Two Regeneration Sites
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 ...
Good Relations Week
Last week was Good Relations Week, the annual Community Relations Council event that aims to build relationships between people of different backgrounds in Northern Ir...
Why do we still have 'peace walls'?
Why do we still have ‘peace walls’? 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 ...
Connecting the North West
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 transpor...
Flaming July
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...
Showing paramilitaries the exit door
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 quest...
Where is the Peace Dividend?
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...
Trashing the environment
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 descri...
Human Rights
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 Brit...
Funding the North West - Levelling Up and Shared Prosperity Fund
Anger in the voluntary sector There was anger across Northern Ireland when the government’s funding allocations from the replacement for the European Social Fund were ...
Belfast Good Friday Agreement - An Explainer
Belfast/Good Friday Agreement analysis opens new Holywell Trust Conversations series Conversations with key players in the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement negotiations o...
Series 3 - Episode 18 - Peter Hain
Boris Johnson, Theresa May and David Cameron must accept part of the responsibility for the continuing “gridlock” of politics in Northern Ireland, through their failur...
Series 3 - Episode 17 - Jeffrey Donaldson
Political legacy of distrust cannot be wished away, says Donaldson The distrust between Northern Ireland’s political parties remains a legacy of the conflict and ...
Series 3 - Episode 16 - Michelle O'Neill
Legacy is being discussed at length at present, following the British government’s proposals to abandon prosecutions and investigations into Troubles’ events. But ther...
Series 3 - Episode 15 - Colum Eastwood
Truth and honesty must be at the heart of how we deal with the legacy of the past and in how politicians in Northern Ireland govern today, says Colum Eastwood, leader ...
Series 3 - Episode 14 - Naomi Long
If we are to make progress in Northern Ireland’s society, we need to reflect carefully on our core values and ensure that these are reflected in the way government wor...
Series 3 - Episode 13 - Steve Aiken
The third series of Holywell Trust’s Forward Together podcasts has heard from experts in a range of areas – including the economy, skills, education, young people’s ex...
Series 3 - Episode 12 - Ann Watt
Northern Ireland’s economy has a number of weaknesses. At the heart of these is the shortage of skills – higher levels of skills moves an economy up the value chain, l...
Series 3 - Episode 11 - John Restakis
Social care provision is in crisis across much of the world. How can the quality of care be maintained or improved? How can it be made available to those who need it? ...
Series 3 - Episode 10 - Paddy Gray
For all the focus on integrated education, if communities continue to live separately then little progress will be made towards integrating our society. So developing ...
Series 3 - Episode 9 - Neil McInroy
Concentration of the retail and consumer services sectors in the hands of a limited number of multinational corporations sucks wealth out of local communities and into...
Series 3 - Episode 8 - Prof. Fred Freundlich
The Mondragon federation of co-operatives has been the foundation of the economy in Spain's Basque country for decades. It was founded back in 1956 by a priest - José ...
Series 3 - Episode 7 - Koulla Yaisouma
While it is frequently claimed that Northern Ireland has an excellent schools system, it is clear that it is also a divided system. That division is not just based on ...