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Northern Ireland: discrimination remains in employment

The Good Friday Agreement of April 1998 was justified by the republican movement on the grounds that it offered the possibility of progressively reforming the sectarian state of Northern Ireland.

Political pressure from the US and Ireland on Britain, a new power-sharing administration in the six counties and EU funds could lead to a reduction and eventual elimination of more than seventy years of discrimination against the anti-unionist Catholic minority.

What has been the record in the first two years after the agreement?

The pattern of employment in Northern Ireland has been notoriously sectarian. Catholics were twice as likely to be unemployed or stuck in low wage jobs. New private investment tended to be concentrated in protestant areas. The British government has, during the years of direct rule, set up a series of job-creation or employment monitoring schemes that were supposed to reverse the pattern of discrimination.

Two such initiatives in the 1990s were the Policy Appraisal and Fair Treatment (PAFT) whose function was to “equality proof” policy making in all areas of life in Northern Ireland, and Targeting Social Need (TSN) which was meant to skew public resources towards marginalised areas.

PAFT was stillborn and no attention was paid to it whatsoever by government departments. Under Labour it was given legislative backing but at the same time its purpose was diluted as “equality” was now just one consideration among others in arriving at policy. Positive action to compensate for past discrimination against catholics was thus rendered unlikely. TSN meanwhile was given no targets to achieve or timetable to work to.

The Industrial Development Board (IDB) supposedly exists to promote equality of opportunity between catholics and protestants in job creation. It has few powers but monitors companies and promotes best practice. Yet even here it has said, “the recruitment of employees is a matter for individual client companies”. It specifically does not monitor the religion or gender of staff!

In general, New Labour’s victory in 1997 paved the way for a more market-led approach to policy. The “Strategy 2010” document setting out plans for economic development for Northern Ireland specifically focuses on private sector development and does not even acknowledge the facts of long-tern unemployment in the catholic community. When the government’s Comprehensive Spending Review was announced in 1998 it led to cutbacks in the TSN and PAFT programmes.

The outcome of the negotiations over the powers and objectives of the Northern Ireland Assembly in the field of equality revealed the same pattern. Even if it had the political will the resources of the assembly to tackle inequality are limited by the fact that it cannot raise taxes – although it can close schools and hospitals!

Originally, there was talk of a Bill of Rights for Northern Ireland and an Equality Commission but nothing came of it. Even in terms of objectives the most that the Unionists and British would concede to was an aspiration to “equality of opportunity” and not “equality of outcome”.

Worse was to follow. Once the assembly was set up the whole objective of equality was downgraded as the proposal to set up a ministry to deal with it was abandoned and the issue became the responsibility of the First Minister – Unionist leader David Trimble. It did not help that his chief economic adviser spent the last ten years “proving” that systematic anti-Catholic discrimination did not exist.

The result of all this is that social inequality increased during the first eighteen months of the Good Friday Agreement.

The predominantly catholic area of West Belfast has one-tenth of the unemployed in the region, yet it only has 3 per cent of IDB sponsored jobs. In West Belfast, which is 80 per cent catholic, less than 50 per cent of government backed industrial jobs have gone to catholics. In Belfast as a whole only 25 per cent of jobs go to catholics.

There are now fewer industrial jobs in West Belfast than before the 1994 IRA ceasefire and the majority of such jobs are in Loyalist areas. In the first year after the Good Friday Agreement while unemployment in Northern Ireland fell by around 5 per cent, in West Belfast it only declined by 1 per cent.

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