Wednesday, April 05, 2006

[UK] £33m poverty aid 'exclusively' for Protestants

from The Telegraph

By Tom Peterkin, Ireland Correspondent

A row erupted yesterday over the Government's announcement that £33 million is to be injected into deprived Protestant areas of Northern Ireland.

Nationalist politicians objected to the cash injection being earmarked for exclusively loyalist enclaves.

Much of the anti-deprivation action plan is to be devoted to improving educational achievement in Protestant working class areas.

Thirteen of the 15 electoral wards in Ulster with the lowest levels of education are predominantly Protestant.

The package was announced by David Hanson, the Northern Ireland social development minister. But Alban Maginness, an assembly member for the moderate nationalist SDLP, said funding ought to be provided by need and not by religion.

"The facts of deprivation in Protestant areas are irrefutable and no one seriously questions the need for funding to counter it," Mr Maginness said.

"But it is important that funding is openly allocated on the basis of need and need only, rather than denomination."

Allocating the money to loyalists allowed the Democratic Unionist Party to "parade this £33 million package around as a sectarian political trophy which it has won".

Mr Maginness added that the DUP was even being allowed to point to the package as proof of past discrimination against Protestants, which he said was "dangerous nonsense and pernicious falsehood".

While he agreed there was evidence of low educational attainment among Protestants he added that 20 per cent more Roman Catholics left school with no qualifications whatsoever.

Nigel Dodds, the Democratic Unionist Party MP for north Belfast, attacked the nationalists' reaction and welcomed the funding even if it was "belated".

Mr Dodds said: "For years, nationalists have sought to portray themselves as the only community with socio-economic problems. They are always more than happy whenever special attention is given to nationalist and republican areas to the exclusion of unionists."

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