The news that the Northside Regeneration Project has lost the support of the Department of Social Development (DSD) will be a welcome relief for the North Belfast inner city Carrick Hill community. If the proposed regeneration plan had gone ahead the small nationalist district would have been overwhelmed by numerous multi-storey apartment blocks, supposedly meant for Ulster University student accommodation.
The scheme, had it been approved by the DSD would have seen the demolition of the few remaining attractive little terrace houses still standing on Kent Street and Stephen Street. If anything, a preservation order should be made for those houses which are a fine example of Carrick Hill social history. Hopefully as well, the sites in and around Carrick Hill that were originally earmarked for social housing by the Housing Executive but were acquired later by property developers for the Northside Regeneration Project will once again become available for social housing.
Approximately 100 houses were meant to be built at those sites. Considering the huge number of people on the north Belfast waiting list, that number of houses, although a drop in the ocean, would be most welcome.
The regeneration of inner north Belfast is of course badly needed as well, the whole area is in an awful state. The new Ulster University campus itself will make a tremendous difference to north Belfast in many ways also. By all accounts there are enough sites nearer to the university that could be developed for student accommodation.
By withdrawing their support for the Northside project the DSD has created an opportunity for the regeneration of inner city north Belfast to be looked at again. This time it should be handled properly and sensitively.
First off, a thorough, all embracing consultation process should be established. The views of all those who have a stake in the area must be taken into consideration. That would include the local business community, the few remaining traders, the Churches, the university, and last but not least, the Carrick Hill community and the St Patrick’s and St Joseph’s Housing Committee.
The political parties have an important part to play as well. But instead of always promoting their own self-serving agendas they should listen carefully to what the people are saying and act accordingly.
SEAN MASKEY
Belfast BT15
Little opposition in Irish society towards abortion
Laws against abortion interfere with a woman’s right to decide whether she has to have children, or not. No-one should be criminalised for making a personal decision. The bulk of the opposition against choice is coming from the Catholic Church. Society at large is not against abortion and it would seem from the thousands going out of Ireland, north and south for abortion, that there is little opposition in society generally to abortion.
The Catholic Church remains the bedrock of the anti-choice movement and the oppression that goes with it. A Church with very little credibility, which is constantly embroiled in a myriad child abuse scandals. Abortion laws are not laws that society makes, they are the laws of ultra-orthodox Churches and fanatics, who want to dictate and moralise people into accepting their values, without a thought for substantive individual rights.
No woman should be forced to bear a child. Laws refusing abortion in Northern Ireland could be regarded as a form or rape by statue, in demanding that a woman, once pregnant must accept her situation. Some people have even insisted that a raped women, who has been forced to have sex, must have their off-spring. Northern Ireland’s abortion laws will force more and more women to go to England to have an abortion and make them suffer more as a result.
Northern Ireland should not be bullied by southern Irish Catholic groups, run by fanatics operating in Northern Ireland into not making any substantive changes to its dated abortion laws. The European Court on Human Rights has also found that women have the right to privacy on such matters which denotes their sovereign right to have an abortion. Democracy implies the right to choose – is Northern Ireland not a democracy?
MAURICE FITZGERALD
Shanbally, Co Cork
Ballot paper in north still not anonymous
It is sad to see that Northern Ireland elections still fail to come up to international standards. Many countries disallow any sort of campaigning on polling day itself, and most insist that the polling station and its environs – normally determined as the premises plus a circle of at least 50 metres from the entrance – should be entirely neutral, devoid of any campaigning posters. What should never be allowed is the gauntlet of activists at the entrance, hounding the hapless voters as if the latter were still undecided.
The worst aberration from international norms is in the polling station itself, where some party activists – supposedly there to detect any instances of intimidation – use the premises to further their own campaigns, by noting the identities of the voters on a marked register. In Serbia under Slobodan Miloševic, for example, party observers were allowed to view the voting process in general – they were usually seated to one side – but they were not permitted to know the identity of any particular voter. Alas, here, the party can know everything.
Finally, and despite major coverage in former years by The Irish News, the ballot paper is still not anonymous. It should be.
PETER EMERSON
Director, the de Borda Institute, Belfast BT14
Cartoon anything but funny
While I normally have a quiet giggle viewing Ian Knox’s cartoons daily in The Irish News, I found the cartoon on April 20 anything but funny.
It, no doubt, refers to the good people of Ardoyne in relation to the brutal, unjustified murder of Michael McGibbon on April 16.
I live adjacent to Ardoyne and am there on a daily basis visiting friends, socialising and shopping. There is nothing but contempt in Ardoyne for the murderers of Michael McGibbon and the deepest sympathy for his wife and family. I have heard this anger and contempt expressed many times over the past few weeks.
This anger and sympathy for the McGibbon family could also be seen at the vigil at the Holy Cross Church.
That said, on the other hand, the people of Ardoyne could be forgiven for not disclosing information to the PSNI, not that it is common knowledge who carried out the murder, considering the recent arrest of Sean Kelly. His arrest was nothing more than political interference in what should be normal policing.
Maybe Ian Knox should address this issue in his next satirical cartoon.
PAUL McGARRIGLE
Belfast BT14
Creating a smokescreen
Nuala McAllister’s claim (May 2) that my questioning of her blatant electioneering over the Twaddell protest “stifles progress in Northern Ireland” is not only ridiculous but totally ignores the three questions put to her.
Rather than answer three simple questions about her non involvement in the communal efforts to resolve matters, she attempts to create a smokescreen, calling on people to “join with Alliance to truly move north Belfast forward”.
If we followed her call we would be joining nothing, because that is exactly what her and the Alliance party have done to try and resolve these contentious parades and resultant protests in north Belfast.
T BYRNE
Belfast BT14
