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Little peace dividend for west Belfast

09/08/07

A leading academic has again highlighted the disgracefully high levels of poverty in working-class areas of Belfast.

Speaking at west Belfast’s annual Féile an Phobail, Eilish Rooney from the University of Ulster said that in many areas of west Belfast the vast majority of children are living in poverty.

She added that while there are areas where the disparity differential between the broad catholic and protestant populations is closing, the increasing similarity is manifesting itself in greater poverty, not prosperity.

Eilish said: “In the area we are in, 80 per cent of the children live in poverty in eight of the constituency’s 17 electoral areas.
“The data shows that workless protestant households are closing the gap with their catholic counterparts.
“This means that there is a levelling – but it is a levelling downwards.”

Eilish also highlighted the lack of focus on the disadvantage faced by women and children in socially deprived areas.
“It was shocking to find out that there has been no study into women’s poverty in the North.
“Whilst all the focus of the equality debate has been on catholic and protestant male unemployment differentials, no study has examined the over-time impact on women and children of these differentials.”

Research by the European Union has consistently placed parts of west Belfast among the most socially and economic deprived areas in western Europe.

éirígí spokesperson Brian Leeson said the statistics themselves were an indication of the failure of British rule.

“The poverty that is endemic in working-class areas in west Belfast is not unique.  It can be seen replicated in every city in Europe and is a result of the free-market economics that have been imposed on these communities over many years.
“However, the policies of the British government in overseeing decades of discrimination against nationalist communities have exacerbated this poverty.

“The details of growing deprivation in working-class unionist areas only goes to show that British rule in Ireland has failed everybody, apart from a small class of already wealthy people whose economic interests coincide with those of the British government.”