John Halligan (Waterford, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I would have liked much more time to speak on the issue but I do not have it. The two recent reports on the status of Northern Ireland paramilitaries and criminality have thrown into focus public concerns that paramilitarism remains in existence. As the previous speakers have indicated, there can be no tolerance by this Parliament for violence of any kind. I am not altogether comfortable with any suggestion that a violent campaign was necessary to force a peace process into place in the first instance to improve life for the citizens of the North.

Between 1968 and 1994 more than 3,500 people died and another 35,000 were injured in Northern Ireland as a direct result of what is called the Troubles. Society in the North is still embittered and segregated and the quality of life for many has not changed at all. A united Ireland, which so many believed they were fighting for, is further away than ever. The civil rights movement of the 1960s had undoubted benefits for the Catholic Nationalist minority; a significant case in point being fair employment legislation from the 1980s, as a result of which more Catholics and Protestants worked together than ever before.

Some sports have proven to be highly effective unifiers. However, such integration is limited. One only has to look at working class communities, which I have visited on a number of occasions and which were most affected by the Troubles, to see the proof. Resource competition is segregated, as is housing. The vast majority of Protestant and Catholic children continue to be educated separately. Fears prevail that simply cannot be overcome.

The effects of the conflict on the economy of Northern Ireland have been well documented. Low wages and low labour productivity rates are directly connected to the Troubles and their legacy. Manufacturing employment went into serious decline when violence levels increased, hence increasing the province’s dependence on Great Britain for subsidies to maintain its standard of living. Such was the relevance of the subsidies that at one point in the 1980s, it was estimated that without them the living standards of Northern Ireland would approach that of Mexico and Argentina. As the private sector shrank, as foreign investors were put off by violence, the public sector increased sizeably and there was a significant duplication of services.

A report by the consultants, Deloitte, estimated that in terms of lost opportunity, the violence in Northern Ireland resulted in the loss of approximately 27,600 jobs from 1983 to 2000 and the loss of potential investment amounting to approximately £225 million and a further £1.461 million in tourism revenue. The social and economic problems that have grown out of the missed opportunities are still having a detrimental effect on generations in terms of poverty and joblessness. Those households are predominantly concentrated in working class areas where poverty levels continue to rise. Areas of Belfast have some of the highest rates of child poverty in the United Kingdom. A report estimated that by 2020, 39% of children in the North would be living in relative poverty. A significant number of households have experienced intergenerational poverty or joblessness and are far removed from job-readiness and the labour market.

Historically, Northern Ireland has been neglected in terms of investment and infrastructure. It is interesting that another direct legacy of the Troubles is the fact that almost half of the working age population in receipt of incapacity benefit have been diagnosed with mental and behavioural disorders. A significant proportion of those people reside in areas close to what is known as the peace lines and grew up surrounded by violence.

History will decide the full legacy of the Troubles but there can be no denying that a huge conflict still exists in Northern Ireland and the peace process did not bring about socioeconomic security and peace of mind to a considerable proportion of the population. The working class is as divided as it ever has been.

The objective of socialists and people like me was to reunite working classes, irrespective of their creed, colour or political persuasion. Unfortunately, because of what has happened, we are far from that if one considers the current position in Northern Ireland. I always have agreed with the philosophy and ideal that working people across the Thirty-two Counties in Ireland need unification, not a particular group of people because they wish to be part of a republic or part of a Thirty-two-County solution. The same problems exist for working people throughout the Thirty-two Counties.

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