Good Friday Agreement has provided no economic dividend and has been to detriment of working class

NOBODY has been held to account for the failures brought about by the implementation of the Good Friday Agreement.

This has not helped the working class people of Ulster, or any other province of Ireland, nor has it made their lives better.

Provisional Sinn Fein and the SDLP made promises to working class people to deliver an economic peace dividend while said parties were defending the Good Friday Agreement.

The Belfast Telegraph has reported that the economic peace dividend didn’t materialise. This conclusion is supported in studies by the Community Relations Council, Queen’s University Belfast, Denis O’Hearn’s Social Problems, published by the Oxford University Press, and Colin Coulter’s research.

More people have been lost to suicide than the number of people lost during the Troubles in a shorter duration. That is a tragic indictment of society and an unambiguous indicator of societal decline.

University of Liverpool’s politics professor Jon Tonge concluded economic and social conditions were worse in 2009 than in 1969. The Office for National Statistics shows that people in the six counties have seen a wage decrease of £18 in the last decade, which ought to be of particular concern to the 13% of workers being paid the minimum wage.

Thousands of Irish children being killed for private profit would have been unthinkable 20 years ago. Yet, the number of children lost this year outstrips the Troubles death toll.

If EU advocates are arrogant enough to frustrate and overturn a mandate of 17,410,742 people, then revisiting a failed endeavour 2,119,549 voted for two decades ago should not be insurmountable.

It has been a detriment to the lives of working class people here and working class people born after May 1980 have never had a democratic say on the Good Friday Agreement.

EAMONN MACGRIANNA

Belfast