Opinion

Progressive public solutions needed

Pivotal is a think tank that has become synonymous with stating the obvious, regurgitating and peppering their reports with old stats and the use of flashy info-graphics. It doesn’t provide progressive public solutions, which is again highlighted in its recent publication – Reconciliation and Deprivation: twin challenges for Northern Ireland. An example of stating the obvious is young people are leaving NI to both study and work because of political instability and continuing paramilitarism, but the report fails to mention the failure of the political class to lay out a future-facing public policy agenda. Pivotal also fails to point out the fact that we have an apartheid educational structure that fails in building social cohesion and costs an additional £226m per annum to maintain. Why does Pivotal not advocate for a single and secular education system rather than the picket-fence position of shared this and shared that? The report talks about educational attainment but fails to highlight the role of the educational establishment which has designed the current education system around exam factories and their failure to understand the role of education in an interdependent world. The report has mentioned GCSE attainment but nothing about skills.

The outputs of the reconciliation and peace-building ecosystem/industry have not and cannot be measured because the system and funding lines were designed to buy reconciliation. An interviewee asks “Are we settling for separation, rather than reconciliation? The answer is yes, in working-class areas, no, in middle-class areas. Those who have made a good living in this reconciliation industry now need to look at reconciliation through the prism of class and they need to stop banging on about peace and more about distributive prosperity.

The idea that deprivation has and continues to have a significant detrimental impact on reconciliation is overstated. In addition, the idea that marginalised communities suffer from lower levels of educational and economic prosperity because of their legacy of the conflict is also debatable. What needs to be added to the mix of failings is political instability, no vision means no plan and no hope, a reactive and input-focused civil service, and the sectarian structure of Stormont – the enigma known as the “mandatory coalition” for which there are no consequences to political ineptitude and incompetence. For example, the last executive including the parties embraced the £100 post-Covid giveaway to each person, costing in total £150m. Remember, the very same politicians had us all clapping for care workers earning £9.50


per hour.

What is patently obvious is that embracing a complex future should be at the heart of government in addition to laying out public policies that deal with challenges around the future of work, skills realignment, and a complete and proper review of education and how to better target public expenditure at those communities who are not just suffering from the vagaries of our history but the challenges of today such as funding of public services, the cost of living crisis and educational system that embeds educational inequality.

Pivotal is a think tank devoid of insurgent critical-thinking entrepreneurs, which has resulted in another report barely worth the paper it was written on.

SUNEIL SHARMA


Belfast BT8

Holding back the years

Following the recent elections there has been a fallacy seized upon by the DUP that the percentage of people voting for nationalist/republican parties is about 40 per cent and similar to that in 1998, and does not represent a movement towards a united Ireland. What that argument conveniently ignores is that in a border poll nationalism/republicanism does not have to win a majority of the electorate to win a border poll, it only has to win a majority of those that turn out to vote. What the argument also fails to recognise is that what commentators consider to be the combined nationalist and republican vote in the recent election was greater than the combined unionist vote. Unionism is blaming voter apathy as the main reason for this and suggesting that on a more important constitutional matter like a border poll this would not be replicated, but this ignores two things.

Firstly, that the DUP went to the electorate to appeal for support for its position of not entering an assembly until what it sees as a fundamental constitutional question is addressed, yet its percentage of first preference votes actually dropped from that in 2019 before Brexit and the protocol. Secondly, Protestantism and unionism are inextricably linked and as the 2021 census showed, Protestantism is in decline. If you take the fact that about three-fifths of school-age children here are from a Catholic background then that trend is set to increase, meaning that the gap between nationalism/ republicanism and unionism is also likely to increase in favour of nationalism/republicanism in any future elections. The King Canute-like stance taken by unionism after the recent elections, to suggest addressing voter apathy within it is a solution to this problem, is naive. More worrying for unionism is the view by Jeffrey Donaldson that the results tend to show a move from nationalism towards republicanism, albeit that Sinn Féin’s position on Irish unity is now more aspirational than a fundamental objective.

Yet Jeffrey may be right in that there does appear to be a greater leaning towards Irish unity within nationalist communities that has resulted in the SDLP being squeezed and which that party has belatedly recognised, and why its spokespersons now continually rehearse the view that its goal is the creation of a new Ireland. This from a traditional reformist party that always recognised that the achievement of a united Ireland would mean its demise. This leaning towards a traditional republican standpoint by the electorate owes much, as many political commentators have pointed out, to the stance that the DUP has adopted so I would like to express my personal gratitude to Jeffrey for that.

SEÁN O FIACH


Belfast BT11

Dwindling vocations

Bishop Donal McKeown (May 29) belatedly acknowledges the ‘statistical realities’ regarding a severe shortage of priests and the dwindling number of vocations.

Rev Brendan Hoban PP, Co Mayo, identified these trends in a well researched and erudite book published in 2013, Who Will Break the Bread for Us? Disappearing Priests.

The scaffolding of worship is facing collapse, thus no priests, no Mass and no Church may be the inevitable outcome. These facts can’t be obscured by distractions, waffle and pastoral letters.

As a matter of urgency he should read this important book and act.

I am not optimistic as the Irish bishops notoriously move at a glacial pace and generally resist change and modern ideas.

BRIAN WILSON


Craigavon, Co Armagh