KEY POINTS:
The guns are largely silent in Belfast now, the IRA having departed the scene and their loyalist counterparts having come, at long last, to the conclusion that the Troubles are over. The partnership between Ian Paisley and Sinn Fein's Martin McGuinness is a huge breakthrough which has generated huge hope for the future.
Almost four decades of conflict has left scars, many of them unhealed, on Northern Ireland. A new report on the cost of the conflict details the staggering expenditure to keep that community functioning.
Millions upon millions of pounds are being spent on what has been called a system of benign apartheid, under which many Protestants and Catholics live largely separate lives. There is duplication in education, health and housing. More than 90 per cent of children are educated separately, a system which is lamentable in cost and social terms. Modern houses,which do not conform to local tribal imperatives, are demolished because no one will take the chance of living in them.
Throughout the conflict keeping Northern Ireland afloat was a costly business, both in terms of lives and financially.
Economically, successive British administrations felt there was no alternative to pouring money in; and a cost of about £5 billion ($13.6 billion) a year was small enough for Whitehall to absorb without major financial pain.
The time has arrived for a fundamental consideration of whether any policies are inadvertently subsidising and so prolonging the divisions. This won't be easy: Belfast's first major riot took place nearly two centuries ago, and the recent troubles were just the latest bout in recurring disturbances.
Yet it is time for that society to take a deeper look at itself, contemplate whether it can expect more outbreaks of disorder in the future, or whether the cycle can this time be broken.
Opinion polls regularly indicate that many people recognise the malignancy of segregation and wish they could live more closely with those of the other religion. The unfortunate practicalities of life in many parts of Belfast, however, can make this extremely difficult.
Addressing these problems must be a priority. Ian Paisley and Martin McGuinness have already confounded the cynics by showing they can work together; now the time has come for them to show their supporters that a new era of live and let live is possible, in life as in politics.
- Independent
