€43m set aside to tackle disadvantage among unionists
Improving the poor academic achievement of Protestant youngsters will be at the core of a multimillion-pound British government scheme to tackle disadvantage within the unionist community in the North, due to be announced today.
Social Development Minister David Hanson is publishing an action plan in response to the report of a taskforce which looked into problems in Protestant working-class communities.
A sum expected to be around £30m (€43m) will be earmarked to be spent over the coming two years, together with, and linked to, longer-term initiatives.
The minister will unveil more than 60 measures aimed at tackling disadvantage, especially in what the British government is calling "Protestant unionist loyalist" communities.
There has been a growing perception within the unionist-loyalist communities that they have lost out to nationalists since the signing of the Good Friday Agreement.
An Taoiseach Bertie Ahern and British Prime Minister Tony Blair are due in the North on Thursday to launch a fresh bid to get the Stormont Assembly up and running again.
Ahead of that, Mr Hanson is announcing what could be described as confidence- building measures for the unionist community.
The taskforce was given a three-fold job in the spring of 2004:
:: To test the perception that some Protestant working-class communities could be expected to benefit less from mainstream British government programmes;
:: To gain an understanding as to why this might be;
:: To make recommendations as to how to identify obstacles in terms of accessing and benefiting from the delivery of public services.
It is understood to have discovered a multitude of problems, including communities of barely literate parents with children under-achieving academically and loyalist paramilitary organisations exerting undue influence on whole communities.
In areas like the Shankill Road in west Belfast, the traditional jobs have gone and are not going to return. Unemployment is high.
A poverty of aspiration was uncovered, with youngsters seeking no more than the leather jacket and 4x4 of the paramilitaries they see as role models.
The taskforce identified a series of fundamental problems which need to be addressed if the needs of disadvantaged Protestant communities are to be tackled effectively.
Top of the list is educational disadvantage, with a lack of social cohesion and civic leadership also key factors.
Studies show that of the 15 electoral wards in the North with the worst educational attainment, 13 are predominantly Protestant.
That is reflected in achievement in the soon-to-be-abolished 11-Plus, where just 8% of pupils in the Shankill achieved a grade A compared with 23% in Catholic west Belfast and 40% as an average across the North.
