Threat to Public Achievement is a threat to local democracy - Parsley

8.10.00pm BST (GMT +0100) Sun 28th May 2006

Young Alliance Chair Ian James Parsley stated

The Alliance Party's youth wing has set that the threat to Public Achievement, an organisation established to assist responsible citizenship and political participation among young people, is a threat to local democracy.

Young Alliance Chair Ian James Parsley stated: "The work of 'Public Achievement' in Northern Ireland was complimented as far away as the European Liberal Youth Seminar in Vienna this week - and yet now that work is threatened by yet more funding tie-ups.

"Public Achievement is an absolutely vital model if we wish to develop a genuinely functioning democracy in Northern Ireland. It invites young people to participate in democracy, and to engage in political issues responsibly rather than looking on helplessly from the sidelines. In these days of a political sectarian carve-up among Northern Ireland's parties, this has often been the only way young people have been able to raise the issues that really affect them.

"The very objective of 'Public Achievement' is to drive people away from a reliance on 'state funding', and instead enable them to participate in the decisions that affect them - be it fear of crime, youth suicide, road deaths or any of the other issues raised at 'Public Achievement' events and in publications.

"So the threat to the funding process that has enabled this work is troubling indeed. I will endeavour to look at new ways such work can be resourced to ensure this vital building block for a truly democratic future is not kicked away from under us."

ENDS