Sandra McLellan (Cork East, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the opportunity to speak about one of the most significant political events to happen on the island of Ireland in my lifetime. I am, of course, referring to the Good Friday Agreement which was signed 15 years ago this month, on 22 May 1998. By any standards, the Agreement marked a crucial turning point, not only in terms of the relationship between Ireland and Britain but also that between all the people on the island of Ireland. It is internationally recognised as a success and often cited by experts in the field as a model for conflict resolution and power sharing in war-torn societies. At a more ordinary and, perhaps, mundane level, the most significant outcome of the Agreement may be the cessation of violence by the combatants on all sides - loyalists, republicans, the police and the British army. For ordinary people in the North, the ending of widespread violence has dramatically altered everyday life. The North was not, in any sense of the word, a normal society; rather, it was a society and a place that lived in the grip of terror and as a result, its economic and institutional growth was severely stunted.

There has been much academic debate about the nature and extent of discrimination in the Northern statelet. There is, however, general consensus - the facts speak for themselves - about the operation of discrimination in the allocation of housing, employment in the civil service, the operation of the Police Service and many other facets of the functioning of state and government institutions. The Nationalist community, particularly working class Catholics, was the primary target or victim of this state-sanctioned discrimination. Michael Farrell's seminal work The Orange State captures perfectly the historical roots of class dominance and ethnic supremacy which underpinned discrimination and exclusion in the Northern state prior to the Good Friday Agreement. It is in this context and against this backdrop that the cautious success of the Agreement must be measured. It is often said the past is another country and today when we look back at the North of Ireland of the 1930s, 1970s or 1980s, this phrase is very apt. From the safety and stillness of the present, it appears, to paraphrase Marx, that all that was solid in terms of a society in conflict just melted into the air. To all intents and purposes, gone are the heavily fortified army barracks and police stations. Gone, too, are the oppressive and intimidating check points and road blocks. The state architecture of repression and coercion has all but been dismantled.

While the physical manifestations of war have all but been obliterated from the landscape, institutional change has, however, in many respects taken longer to achieve and can only be described as a work in progress. This is particularly true when it comes to issues to do with equality, justice, discrimination, citizenship and rights. As an historical document, the Good Friday Agreement marks the beginning of a new era, primarily because at its core are the related but separate notions of equality and human rights.

Equality and human rights were central to negotiating the agreement and key elements in selling and indeed advancing the peace process in the North of Ireland. The agreement was enacted in large part in the Northern Ireland Act 1998 to provide a legal framework and obligations on the state to help it make the transition from conflict to sustained peace, while simultaneously helping to bed-down that same peace.

The core principles of the agreement, enacted in section 75 of the Northern Ireland Act 1998, were the duties to promote equality and good relations between people. More specifically, the Act required public bodies to carry out their functions by having particular regard to the desirability of promoting good relations between people of different religious beliefs, political opinions or racial groups. In other words, public bodies are required by law to provide equality of opportunity.

On this the 15th anniversary of the Agreement, there can be little doubt but that equality legislation, the Equality Commission and section 75 of the Northern Ireland Act, have in the intervening years done a lot to end the discrimination that was in many respects the driving force behind the origins of conflict.

There are, however, still worrying and quite significant imbalances in unemployment and deprivation and areas of persistent poverty and neglect that need to be tackled. This may well require more determined and positive action and the targeting of investment and resources.

Furthermore, the establishment of the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission has proved to be a major building block in the North’s human rights infrastructure. While it is far from perfect, it has nonetheless earned international respect for its efforts, often against great odds, to protect the rights of the most vulnerable in all communities in the North.

It is now recognised that the commission has become one of the key drivers of the entire human rights dimension of the agreement. However, it must be stated that a key responsibility of the commission under the agreement was to advise the UK Government on a bill of rights, which was envisaged as becoming, together with the European Convention on Human Rights, a basic constitutional document for the North. To date, the people of the North of Ireland are still waiting for the much promised bill of rights.

Moreover, the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission, following the example set by the Dublin Government, has had its budget cut by 25% which could in the long term seriously hamper its capacity to do its job and in the process seriously undermine a key aspect of the Good Friday Agreement. This is particularly worrying when one considers recent figures which show a startling increase in deprivation and child poverty in large urban areas across the North.

This, coupled with the ongoing threat of dissents and protracted street violence in Protestant working class areas, makes it all the more important that the Agreement is bedded down. It should appear to those who are marginalised and deprived - who in many respects have received no peace dividend thus far - that the Agreement and the political settlement based on it, can offer them real hope and institutions that can and will function in a new society in the interest of fairness, equality and justice.

This is a time when both the British and Irish Governments should be actively defending the Agreement and not blocking or introducing measures that work against both the aspirations and spirit of the Good Friday Agreement.

The UK Government’s plan for welfare reform is a prime example of policy measures that will have a disproportionate effect on the most vulnerable in the North. This is because of the North’s peculiar history of deeply embedded discrimination, its lack of proper economic development, and the inter-generational nature of deprivation and poverty in the province.

Sinn Féin welcomes the fact that the Agreement has essentially brought peace to the island of Ireland. However, we call on both the Irish and British Governments to fulfil their obligations under the Agreement and we urge them not to introduce measures that push people who are already struggling, further into poverty.

While section 75 of the Northern Ireland Act is a crucial building block in ensuring justice and fairness, a society that aspires to any notion of equality must have at its very core real and meaningful policies that deliver economic justice to all of its people.

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