Aengus Ó Snodaigh (Dublin South Central, Sinn Fein)

I have a number of quotations from the Minister. In March 2005 he said that the type of discrimination that took place in previous decades had all but disappeared. Last month he was quoted speaking about "endemic unemployment in loyalist areas which is not as clear cut in nationalist areas, where perhaps the ability to advance individuals because of their education has not been the same in loyalist areas". Does the Minister stand over those comments now? Will he agree that anybody who made such comments, despite the reality of the situation, well-documented by British statistics, is blind to inequality, blind to discrimination and blind to religion?

It is naive to suggest that the existence of anti-discrimination legislation translates into the disappearance of discrimination. Is the Minister aware of the most recent statistics published by the British authorities? I will give him a copy. It gives a full list, area by area, with an indicator by indicator on every one of them. Those communities regarded as Catholic and Nationalist are less well off than their counterparts in loyalist or Protestant areas. I can quote a number of them, but it is sufficient to say that Catholics were twice as likely to be unemployed in 2004 as those who lived in Protestant areas.

The differential has increased since 1990. Northern Ireland Housing Executive figures for the period 2002 to 2005 show under-allocation to Catholics of 16% and over-allocation to Protestants of 21%. Other similar figures have also been published. On every indicator relating to objective need Catholics are shown to be worse off. Does the Minister not agree that objective need should be the only criterion governing the allocation of funding to communities and informing equality building measures as stipulated in the Good Friday Agreement?

See this speech in context