Northern Ireland must be enabled to move forward

John McCallister, Ulster Unionist MLA for South Down, has pressed the First and deputy First Minister to bring forward their strategy for Cohesion, Sharing and Integration, insisting that a framework within which Northern Ireland can move forward is essential.

"Their inability to push the cohesion, sharing and integration strategy and their carve-up of politics and policies to date show that both Sinn Fein and the DUP are more interested in freezing division than building trust and co-operation between the two traditions in Northern Ireland," Mr McCallister said.

"Merely closing a leisure centre will not remove the segregation that people face; it simply removes a particular community's facilities. Likewise, the Executive cannot be prepared to force people into integrated education. That would not be the right thing to do. That is why the Assembly needs OFMDFM to publish its strategy on how society moves forward to deliver a shared future. To date, however, it appears to have come to few decisions that do not entrench division further, rather than lessen it," he said.

Making reference to the Deloitte report - 'Research into the financial cost of the Northern Ireland divide' - Mr McCallister said: "While the Assembly must always seek to protect the public purse by removing waste and inefficiency, we cannot merely reduce the cost of division to pounds and pence. We must always take into consideration the human cost of the past 30-plus years of terrorism and violence."