For decades we all have been familiar with the repeated media comments about the level of deprivation within Northern Ireland. We have also have been well aware that the majority of the electoral wards affected – something like 16 out of 20 – are nationalists/Catholic areas. I wonder, if like me, other people have become despondent with apparent absence of action to address these fundamental concerns affecting our underprivileged population.
The suicide rates in these areas are substantially higher than elsewhere and we still have our health services determined to close vital services in deprived areas. The morbidity rates in these wards with the onset of poor health and indeed mortality much more prevalent and occurring much sooner. Our health bodies do nothing to address these issues treating all areas the same when allocating funds. Even though with the many studies that have taken place over numerous years proving that deprivation leaves these communities at a serious disadvantage.
Well, I can hear you say, that is the way it has always been. However, I would draw attention to the Social Investment Fund. This was the mechanism from which the Stormont Executive would attempt to address some of the underfunding issues. However, as I have highlighted above using the deprivation indices as indicated would award the bulk of this funding to Catholic/nationalist areas. There was no way the DUP was going to entertain this. Result – monies allocated to groups with dubious links, and who, according to recent testimony, are determined to keep on defending, and also into areas with little or no deprivation.
I am sure the elites living in north Down and Cultra will be concerned that they will be entitled to a share of the spoils of the Social Investment Fund. (That is not to say that there is not some pockets and individuals who are suffering disadvantage in these areas, but the pervasiveness is much more real and widespread in Catholic/nationalists areas)
Surely, someone from a Catholic/nationalist background would ask what did Sinn Féin do to protect their constituents who were being deprived again. It is clear now Sinn Féin were more interested in protecting their pet projects. To do this they abdicated their responsibility to ensure fairness which is reminiscent of the old unionist regime.
A state of denial exists within Sinn Féin. This all to the detriment of the vast majority of people they are supposed to represent, and to projects that do not have their imprimatur or they do not want to sanction. I think shame should be on their faces, but I now believe that this is beyond them.
TED GALLAGHER
Belfast BT12
Republic’s old enemy has become a new and extremely valuable friend
A new horizon for Northern Ireland may be coming fast in the shape of crucial North/South Ministerial talks.
No longer can the Republic carry over old grievances about the Irish question. There is now only one question – economic survival for the Republic in a changed United Kingdom. The old enemy has become a new and extremely valuable friend. It looks like the proud war is most certainly at an end, as the Irish delegation rush to clamour for a audience with Stormont ministers or anything else of a British hue.
Suddenly, the North/South Ministerial Council has become the most important thing on the planet for the Republic’s Department of Foreign Affairs. The Ministerial Council used to be a fairly dull affair, but now it has sprang to life, as the dawn of the realisation that Britain is leaving soon and there will be no second vote in attempting to reverse the result. A lot of hard core republicans will have to hold their tongues in cursing the British for what they say is occupation of their country.
Things are now very uncertain and there is a lot of money at stake. Republicans have no longer the luxury of dogma such as ‘Brits out’. It could be ‘Brits in’ from now on. Bye, bye, to the old romantic republican ideal of a 32-county Republic and hello to crucial trade links, money capital, investment and materialism with Northern Ireland. One could easily say, dare it be said: that it is lucky for Dublin that Northern Ireland is still a United Kingdom territory, otherwise the Republic could be completely cut off from its most crucial trading partner and left on the outer regions of the EU without its neighbour just up the road. By a strange twist of fate, Brexit may some day solve Northern Ireland’s sectarian problems because good British/Irish relations will be vital for prosperity on the island of Ireland.
The days of cursing the British are over. The British, since Brexit have come to be the most important thing since sliced pan to the Irish government and the Irish people. It is almost like the Republic is lobbying to go back into the Commonwealth in aggressively fostering talks and certainly looking at the British with a deference never seen previously.
It is not surprising given the grave potential economic issues and fallout arising from Brexit, which nobody doubts. Things are really changing and a whole new era and history of previously acrimonious British/Irish relations could be completely reversed.
Conversely, there is no doubt that relations could go either way, getting sourer as well as sweeter. However, the latter will be much preferred and will probably win out, as there will be no choice but to get on with one another.
Who would have thought that the ways of chance and circumstance could heal old wounds and bury the hatchet for all time?
‘God works in a mysterious way’.
MAURICE FITZGERALD
Shanbally, Co Cork
Whistleblowers the real heroes
Whistleblowers have been on the media over the Cash for Ash scandal which will cost the public purse millions over the next 20 years. Is it government for the people or against the people? Look at the long list of attacks on the public purse allowed by all the politicians: £30 million Twaddell protests; £15m lost in revenue as a result of the Flag protests, £7m policing Orange parades every year. It goes on and on these attacks on the public purse and then we have the harsh reality for the poor and vulnerable people – heat or eat.
Whistleblowers are the real heroes and heroines of the people. They are people of principle and with the courage of their convictions. They stand up for the rights of others. These are the people you really need in the system.
LIAM ARCHIBALD
Draperstown, Co Derry
Canonising Castro
Recent letters to The Irish News have been practically canonising Fidel Castro, citing ‘100 per cent literacy’ and ‘a world-class health system’.
The question is how could Castro’s government afford this Shangri-La? Answer, the IMF and World Bank. And how can the IMF and World Bank afford to pay Castro’s government? Answer, the redistribution of the western world’s wealth.
Ireland has historically viewed the grass as greener elsewhere, yet closer inspection of that grass reveals that it’s fertilised with the same manure as here.
DESMOND DEVLIN
Ardboe, Co Tyrone
So much for Gibney boast
While Jim Gibney (November 23) hopes ‘the people of the north’ will be allowed to vote in the Republic’s next presidential election in 2018, Mike Nesbitt has informed republicans that “unionism can never support a united Ireland”.
So much for the proud Gibney boast about republicans who “entered the system and dismantled unionist power bit-by-bit”.
They did enter the Stormont system and are now part of the furniture and the trappings, albeit struggling to survive on a basic industrial wage. And all for a lost cause. As they say in Ulster Irish, What else is thir? Sin-é.
MALACHY SCOTT
Belfast BT15
