Tucked away in Annex B of the so-called St Andrews Agreement is the following: 'The government will work with business, trade unions and ex-prisoners' groups to produce guidance for employers which will reduce barriers to employment and enhance re-integration of former prisoners'.
Read it again and you'll see it's as meaningless as the original reference to ex-prisoners in the Good Friday Agreement which said: 'The governments continue to recognise the importance of measures to facilitate the reintegration of prisoners into the community' and blah, blah.
Nine years on and they're still talking in the future tense about working to reduce barriers to employment. Furthermore, unlike the other items in Annex B, the remarks about ex-prisoners are exceptionally vague.
For example, one item promises to 'establish a Victims' Commissioner this autumn'. Another announces a forum on a Bill of Rights to be convened in December 2006. Legislation on additional powers for the Human Rights Commission is promised 'in the next parliamentary session'. And so on. About ex-prisoners, just waffle.
The problem is this. It's estimated that since the early 1970s, between 24,000 and 30,000 prisoners and internees spent time in custody in the north. After the Good Friday Agreement 447 prisoners were released.
They all face difficulties finding jobs, in some cases insurmountable difficulties. Although many republicans and a few former loyalist prisoners have degree qualifications and some have also professional qualifications, their criminal record disbars them from the professions.
However, it is not simply access to professional jobs that is the problem. Ex-prisoners find it difficult to land any job. A recent Fair Employment Tribunal (FET) decision has added to that difficulty.
Two former prisoners took a discrimination case against the Simon Community for refusing to employ them on the grounds of their political opinion. The Simon Community contended that they were entitled to refuse to employ the men because the 1998 Fair Employment and Treatment Order specifically excludes any political opinion which consists of or includes approval or acceptance of the use of violence for political ends connected with the affairs of Northern Ireland.
Although the FET accepted that neither man held such views at the time they applied for the jobs, it was decided that the Simon Community acted lawfully when they used that clause in the Order to turn the men down because the clause is unconditional and it doesn't matter whether an employer tried to find out if an prospective employee still held views supporting violence.
It's quite likely that this decision will be appealed but it illustrates quite clearly the nature of the barriers to ex-prisoners obtaining employment.
People convicted of offences over 30 years ago, people released on licence because the state is satisfied they no longer pose a threat to society, people released under the terms of the Good Friday Agreement, all fall foul of the same handicaps.
Bear in mind that the vast majority of them would never have seen the inside of a cell were it not for the circumstances of the conflict here. Bear in mind the fact that the ex-prisoners are not the only people condemned to live in the poverty consequent upon permanent unemployment. Many of them have families whose futures are also affected by the ex-prisoners' inability to find work.
Sinn Féign is the party which bears most responsibility for these people but they have been singularly ineffective in promoting their case almost a decade after the Good Friday Agreement.
It is true that any public push by SF would automatically result in opposition from the DUP, who would be quite happy to see former loyalist paramilitaries they marched beside and conspired with go to the wall as long as republicans got nothing.
It really is up to the British administration here to act to put flesh on the promises in the Good Friday Agreement and at St Andrews.
Talking about working with business, trade unions and so on is just so much hot air.
None of it will work unless the 1998 Order is amended to take account of the new circumstances of the last two years in particular when decommissioning has taken place, the IRA has stood down and SF has voted to support policing and justice.
