Constitutional Question merely a "divisive diversion"

12.00.00am GMT Sun 26th Feb 2006

Young Alliance, the Alliance Party's youth wing, called for the abandonment of the Sectarian Political System, saying that politics based on the constitutional question was nothing but a divisive diversion.

North Down Councillor Ian James Parsley stated: "Yesterday's riots in Dublin and ongoing criminal activity in the North illustrate quite clearly that the constitutional question has nothing to do with our collective problems in Northern Ireland and across the island. What we have to deal with is the sectarian poison which haunts so many aspects of political and social life here.

"Most people recognize that focusing on what divides us is no way to end segregation and the sectarianism which inevitably accompanies it. Most people want to end sectarianism altogether. That is why more and more people feel they cannot relate to 'politics' in Northern Ireland, because 'politics' based on division clearly achieves nothing.

"It would not matter whether Northern Ireland was governed from London, Dublin or Timbuktu, that sectarian poison would continue to hold us back - it would continue to eat up resources which should be spent on front-line health, education and leisure services; it would continue to split society on the sports field and in the classroom; and it would continue to feed instability, criminality and rioting. There is no magic 'constitutional change' which suddenly fixes all that, and it is the height of irresponsibility to suggest there is.

"It is time those seeking authority in a future Northern Ireland Executive woke up to that fact before the next generation turns off the political process altogether, leaving a dangerous vacuum to be filled only by extremism and fundamentalism."

Colleague Pete Milner, Young Alliance representative in East Antrim, added: "We should be much stronger on recognizing that absolute sovereignty is no longer a 21st century reality. Different strands of Irishness, Britishness, Europeanness and other identities have shaped Northern Ireland, and will continue to do so. There is nothing weak about recognizing that reality."