Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

The worrying rise of sectarian violence, confrontation and attacks in the North in recent years, most recently during the flag protests, is an indictment of the failure of the structures established under the Belfast Agreement, the failure of the power-sharing Northern Ireland Executive and the failure of the political architects of the Agreement in the North, Britain and the South.

There is a conventional narrative about the peace process in the North which is that visionary politicians from Ireland, North and South, and from Britain dragged a reluctant population into some sort of peace agreement. I have never accepted that narrative and always thought that it was the other way around. Ordinary people in the North had had enough of communal violence. Catholic people, irrespective of whether they supported the republican movement and its struggle, realised that the armed struggle had hit a cul de sacand could go no further. Ordinary Protestants were sickened by sectarian and communal violence and wanted an alternative to it. Only months before the cessation of hostilities, people will remember the massive walk-out from Harland and Wolff by Catholic and Protestant workers after the shooting of Maurice O'Kane. Protestants and Catholics who were disgusted by sectarian violence appealed to political parties in the North, Britain and here to come up with a solution. The solution they came up with was the Belfast Agreement.

Now, more than a decade later, we have to ask if that agreement brought an end to sectarianism. Is it capable of bringing an end to sectarianism or has it, in fact, institutionalised sectarianism in the North? I think the jury has come in on that; it has institutionalised it.

The structure of the Northern Ireland Assembly is almost exactly the same as that which was established in the Lebanon with such disastrous consequences at the end of the First World War. It encouraged sectarian conflict in the Lebanon which festered with disastrous consequences and continues to do so because everything is based on communal and sectarian quotas.

In the North, everybody has to designate themselves as either Nationalist or Unionist, while the other category is completely marginalised in any important decisions. Therefore everything is a communal balancing act between two communities. Indicative of this is the fact that the number of peace walls - in actuality, they are separation walls - has doubled since the peace agreement was signed. Sectarian violence continues to fester and spills over in particular because of the failure of the Northern Ireland political institutions to deliver the promised peace dividend. People expected that the agreement would improve the lives of ordinary people in the North but it has failed to do so. Unemployment, poverty and the housing crisis all persist. In Protestant areas the levels of deprivation have significantly increased. Whereas in past decades, Protestant workers could have expected jobs in the big manufacturing industries, these have now gone, so levels of deprivation and poverty have risen. There is a perception, encouraged by sectarian politicians, among alienated deprived Protestant communities that Catholics are benefiting from the arrangements. That is not true, of course, because the levels of unemployment and deprivation are still higher in Catholic areas than in Protestant ones, but they are rising more rapidly in Protestant areas. Third level education is an example of this. There are twice as many Catholics as Protestants in third level education in the North. This is indicative of the rise in deprivation in Protestant areas.

This situation is being fuelled further by neo-liberal attacks such as the cuts that were mentioned, the raising of the pension age and talk of introducing a spare bedroom tax. Disgracefully, there is also talk of abolishing the Northern Ireland Housing Executive, thus essentially privatising social housing. I understand that none of the major parties in the North has protested against that. It is worth stating that the whole conflict in the North started with battles over housing. We are now abandoning the Northern Ireland Housing Executive in favour of a more sectarian way of allocating housing, which will fuel sectarianism. We need to break from communal politics, which have failed.

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