I AGREE with Pat Sloan (January 14) that monies need to be targeted into areas of high deprivation on merit and not on a sectarian basis and his call for the nationalist/republican parties to aim for a corresponding level of funding to be directed towards tackling the problem at present 80 per cent of deprived wards lie within nationalist areas and 20 per cent within unionist areas and Sinn Fein has argued that the Common Funding Policy be directed to tackle this deprivation on a similar split. However, recently in the assembly the SDLP supported the DUP in voting for the Common Funding Policy be split equally between nationalist and unionist areas, therefore denying many nationalist areas the funding they need to tackle the problem and giving unionist areas 50 per cent of the money to tackle 20 per cent of the problem.
