FORTY-five per cent of young people in Northern Ireland do not "feel favourable towards people from minority ethnic communities", a new report on community relations has revealed.
The disturbing finding is contained in the the Good Relations Indicator report published yesterday which presents a range of statistics relating to community relations, hate crimes, Protestant/Catholic relations and attitudes towards mixing in schools, neighbourhoods and the workplace.
Just 55 per cent of young people reported that they "feel favourable towards people from minority ethnic communities", compared with 77 per cent of adults.
The figures represent an improvement of six percentage points and 10 percentage points compared with the previous year and come against a background of falling racially-motivated hate crime.
During 2016/17, 660 racially-motivated hate crimes were reported - down from 853 the year before.
There has also been a fall from 1,001 to 694 in sectarian hate crime over the same period.
However, the report suggests that young people remain "disillusioned" with community relations.
Published just days after Catholic families where forced to move from their homes at Cantrell Close in south Belfast, it shows that, while there has been some improvement in the proportion of young people who think that relationships between Protestants and Catholics are better now than they were five years ago, it still stands at just 52 per cent.
This is seven per cent less than adults who were asked the same question.
The report reveals that 24 per cent of people said they had been annoyed by republican murals, kerb paintings or flags in the last year and 29 per cent by loyalist murals, kerb paintings or flags.
This is a small increase from 18 per cent and 23 per cent last year.
Alliance assembly member Stewart Dickson said, following the incident in south Belfast, the report "means nothing if actions on the ground prove it is outdated before it is even published".
"What has happened across Belfast in particular in recent days, from families forced from a shared housing development, to racist graffiti appearing across east Belfast shows we need better initiatives in place to tackle these emerging issues - including the on-going issue of marking out territory," she said.
"While there is some cause for optimism in this report - including the reduction in hate crimes and the numbers of people who feel they can be open about their identity in the workplace - this is all being overshadowed by the ever present spectre of paramilitary influences in our society, who want to force people to live segregated lives."
Mr Dickson said the report reveals "young people in particular are disillusioned with life in Northern Ireland" and said "there is still a massive amount of work to be done across Northern Ireland to genuinely tackle segregation in our society".
"Recent events make it even clearer we need to get back to Stormont to deal with the range of mounting issues."
