UR TV CAST

The imperative of promoting good community relations is to create real choice and not to socially engineer communities.”This means there will be no attempts at enforced integration because experience has shown that these can easily lead to violence and disorder. The authorities recognise that many Protestants and Catholics prefer to live apart.The new proactive approach is viewed as a long-term effort, since segregation has been a feature of life in Northern Ireland for centuries. A new unit will work out the practicalities of promoting integration, which are recognised as being of the utmost delicacy.Segregation is favoured by paramilitary groups, particularly loyalists, who routinely intimidate Catholic and mixed families into leaving Protestant areas.In one typical incident two months ago, loyalists mounted petrol-bomb and paint-bomb attacks on the homes of seven Catholics, whom they felt were “encroaching” on Protestant territory in north Belfast.Paddy McIntyre, the Housing Executive’s chief executive, said: “We have no illusions about the scale of the task ahead of us.”We recognise that there are no quick fixes. They say they will encourage integrated housing only where it is “practicable, desirable and safe”.The issue is surrounded with so many sensitivities and dangers that the Housing Executive insists: “Safety is paramount. Taking on what is seen one of Northern Ireland’s most intractable problems is in itself a radical departure, since for decades the authorities have for the most part concluded that the issue is almost beyond improvement.Although most Protestants and Catholics have always tended to live apart, especially in Belfast, segregation dramatically increased during the decades of the Troubles.Some middle-class districts are integrated, but the statistics demonstrate that virtually all of Northern Ireland’s working classes live in rigidly divided areas. Among other measures, pilot schemes are to be launched in and around Belfast, with two new housing estates which will be carefully controlled to produce a mixed population.The authorities acknowledge that the conditions for large-scale integration do not yet exist because of community tensions and a lack of trust.

It’s hard for them to find somewhere where they feel safe.”Today the Housing Executive, which controls all of Northern Ireland’s public housing, is to announce a push to improve community relations and encourage integration. This has been an increasing problem for mixed marriages, since many such couples have had problems with intimidation and open violence. Four hundred such families are currently on the housing waiting list, unable to find a safe place to live.A housing source said: “Very often these people have been put out of districts where they weren’t welcome. This means that those who wish to live in mixed areas have until now had difficulty in finding homes. Polarisation is greater than it ever was – it’s a really tragic commentary on the state of society.”In a significant policy shift, new schemes will tackle an issue which is regarded as highly problematic and indeed dangerous; lives have been lost when people strayed into the “wrong” areas. Across the whole of Northern Ireland, 92.5 per cent of all public housing is segregated. A Belfast academic said: “The city was always pretty bad, but this is the worst ever, and may be the worst in Western Europe.

Ninety-eight per cent of working-class Belfast is now strictly segregated by religion, figures from the Northern Ireland Housing Executive show. It is still in the hands of the police to identify the victims and look at the cause of the fire and the cause of deaths. With a fire as severe as the one here, it will take some considerable time to get through the house and the investigation has not yet revealed a great deal.”. The woman had been shouting for help at the back of the house There are people nearby and nobody heard anything The woman rang a neighbour to say her house was on fire All the houses were covered in smoke. She did try her best, poor lady.”A fire service spokesman said the cause of the blaze had not yet been determined but they were not ruling out any suspicious circumstances.David Webb, the chief fire officer, told a press conference at the scene: “We had a severe fire in the property behind me in which, unfortunately, five people lost their lives. The bodies of the five victims were discovered at the back of the house.Amarjit Singh, a neighbour, said: “It all happened so quickly. Fire crews arrived to see flames leaping from the front and back of the semi-detached property and smoke covering the road.