AS WE face yet another election, this time for a European parliament that members could be elected to for a week, a month, forever and a day depending on Brexit, the continuing failure of our much more local politics is back in the headlines.
Church leaders this week called on politicians to build a Stormont based on ‘peace and reconciliation’. Those two words were core to our peace process but seem to have been forgotten over the years that have passed since. We neither have peace nor reconciliation.
A report released this week into sectarianism along with a conference to discuss the problem looked at various factors that have kept communities apart, the greatest one that we continue to educate our children separately. The failure of integrated education to become the norm is not a hard nut to crack. As parents we send our children to the school where we think they will best thrive academically and mature socially.
We are by nature aspirational. My children all benefited from a Catholic grammar school education, as did I. For a working-class child that type of education was a way to escape economic hardship.
Had that same education been available to my children at an integrated school that is where they would have been sent. It just wasn’t.
The issue could be easily resolved and many schools are already looking at ways to bring children together in educational settings.
Showing our children a better way should not have taken this long. We have a new generation born into peace who care about other things. They are interested in the environment, in travel, in having a good job and a financially secure future. They want to be equal regardless of colour, gender or sexuality.
These are not Catholic or Protestant issues.
The report by the Ulster University also calls for the establishment of a government department tasked with implementing anti-sectarian policies. While we have no government and no ministers the chances of setting up a specific department to deal with sectarianism is zero.
This is cart-before-the-horse politics. We need ministers dealing with the day-to-day before we even consider new duties for a non-existent Stormont. But it is an idea worthy of further exploration.
It also calls for business community support for the funding of cross-community programmes. This is where I disagree. Throwing yet more money at a problem will not help unless that money goes to the right people and places. Hundreds of millions have been spent in the last 20 years on these issues and somewhere along the way building peace became an industry.
It created a generation of people whose main skills lay in filling out funding applications.
The paramilitary funding vultures, paid to behave, have cashed in and squandered so many opportunities.
While I have reported on numerous groups who do sterling work in their community, for every good project there are 20 dud ones run by men of violence who see the peace process as a career opportunity. People who any normal society would have sidelined become people of power and influence in highly paid jobs that achieve nothing other than the further segregation of their own community.
For the threat of mayhem has to be just in eyesight for them to remain relevant. They must retain the ability to turn street disorder on and off in order to maintain their grip.
Young people from families who do not share their ideology or who stand up to their bullying are excluded from the heavily funded programmes that bring endless benefits to those in the know.
And so, if we are serious about tackling sectarianism it needs to start with tackling the current system of patronage. Taking that money that could do so much good away from those who continue to do harm should be the first item on the agenda.
It is shameful that this has taken so long. It is shameful that this is still being discussed.
So many opportunities have been squandered.
Although talks to restore devolution will not happen while there is still an election on the horizon, there is a chance for meaningful negotiations once that process is out of the way.
We give our politicians a hard time but most people who put themselves forward for election do so with the best intentions.
Stormont wasn’t working on many levels. The continuing segregation and sectarianism of our society is part of that failure.
It need not be so. We have a chance to start again, a chance to show the next generation that we have their best interests at heart.
Let’s hope it isn’t squandered.
