Attendees at a West End town hall meeting last night raised concerns about Bermuda applying for full membership of the Caribbean Community.

Several said the additional $2 million on deeper involvement could be better spent on education, healthcare or infrastructure on the island.

Others asked about the tangible benefits of joining Caricom and said they felt as if the public did not have much say in the decision.

One woman, whose question was echoed by other attendees, asked: “Is this the time to do this?”

Alexa Lightbourne, the Minister of Home Affairs, insisted that full Caricom membership could help to solve some of the island’s challenges.

She added: “It is very easy for us in Bermuda to believe that the answers are within us — and they are, because we know our people best — but leveraging the tools and the successes of other countries, people and islands doesn’t harm us or hold us back.”

The town hall meeting was held at St James Church in Sandys and was the second in a series of public meetings to discuss whether Bermuda should apply for full Caricom membership.

It attracted about 60 people and its audience included several MPs and government ministers.

Ms Lightbourne shared the stage with Kim Wilkerson, the Attorney-General and Minister of Justice, and Christopher Famous, a Progressive Labour Party MP and ambassador for Caricom.

The panel discussed reconciling Bermudian and Caribbean identities, how migration impacted Bermuda in the past and the benefits of full membership.

However, Ellen-Kate Horton, a former education permanent secretary, told the panel she disagreed with joining Caricom as a full member.

She explained: “I looked at the price that has to be paid. Meanwhile, I go outside of my door and I see homeless people and people who do not have health insurance.

“We’re going to spend an extra $2.8 million dollars a year so that you can have a seat at the table?”

Another woman told the panel spending $2 million on an annual membership did not make sense when “our infrastructure is crumbling”.

She believed joining Caricom should be something to be considered eventually and supported holding public meetings for consultation and to provide information.

However, she said she was confident the majority of residents had not read the Green Paper and were not interested in doing so.

The woman added: “You want to be at the table over there, but it’s $2 million a year and I still can’t get the Government to clean my street regularly.

“We need to be preparing ourselves and taking care of home before we start looking somewhere over the rainbow.”

Ms Wilkerson stood behind joining Caricom, saying: “Now is the time.”

She added: “There seems to be this narrative idea that we can’t do two things at once.

“Sometimes you make an investment to help you get the expansions that you need in the future.

“Young entrepreneurs are not saying we need to wait until the roads are fixed in Somerset to expand our markets. We can do them together.”

A young man, a college student, noted that there were more pressing issues to focus on, adding: “We are crumbling as a country.”

He pointed out that public school testing results were “well below” the global average.

The student said: “When we have education crumbling as it is, why are we thinking about spending an extra $2 million elsewhere when we have such crumbling public works like the roads?

“If we’re not educating our youth, how can we entrust them for the future of Bermuda?”

Another man, a farmer, questioned how full Caricom membership would work alongside Bermuda’s strict agricultural importation measures, particularly while trying to establish food security.

Ms Lightbourne said that the Government would hold imports to US Department of Agriculture standards while working on growing local production thanks to knowledge gathered from member states.

One man said that rather than a discussion, it felt like a decision had already been made.

He asked: “Isn’t this really just a step for this Government to take us to independence? Isn’t that the whole agenda? It seems like it.”

The man added that he did not see the benefit in joining Caricom as a full member from an economic perspective.

He said: “You’re saying the Government will go down and make it easier to have businesses? You can do that now.

“It may be a little more complicated to open a business, but you can already do it.”

However, Mr Famous shot down the idea of any move towards independence at this time.

He said: “The majority of Bermudians clearly stated they wanted nothing to do with independence.

“I suspect if we had that same referendum tomorrow, you’d get the same results.

“Let’s not conflate the two things — joining Caricom as a full member has zero to do with independence.”

A third town hall meeting will take place at Penno’s Wharf in St George’s on May 19 at 7pm.