Background to the Research

• The aim of the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement is to bring together disparate political groups in a power-sharing executive that endorses NI's place in the UK and, at the same time, uphold the rights of minorities.
• However, the Agreement has a multitude of political and cultural meanings. The aim of this article is to identify some of these meanings and to discuss how they inhibit Northern Irish society's ability to move towards a peace settlement that is meaningful and sustainable.
  

Research Approach

• The author uses primary and secondary data sources and draws on his own research in order to explore the central tenets of the Agreement, to identify areas of disagreement and to explore the impact of ethno-sectarianism on the NI labour market.
  

Main Findings

• The foundation of the Agreement is a series of political arrangements that endorse cross-community power-sharing. The 108 seat NIA has dual leadership based on a First Minister and a Deputy First Minister, each of these can only be appointed when they receive at least 50% support from registered unionists and nationalists.
• Voting within the NIA is not based on a simple majority but by parallel procedures of cross-community consent - there must be an overall majority and a majority of both unionists and nationalists present at the time of voting. Each member of the NIA must designate themselves as 'unionist', 'nationalist' or 'other' and it is possible to change designation.
• The NIA, and its Executive, has a high level of competence for education, health, the economy, social services, environment and finance and the NIO retains responsibility for constitutional and security issues.
• The main goals of the Agreement are; the creation of a devolved government in which power is shared by all political parties; decommissioning of paramilitary weapons and demilitarisation of NI; reform of the RUC and the encouragement of greater Catholic recruitment; equality provision and the endorsement of British and Irish cultural rights; and the principle of consent - the constitutional status of NI cannot be changed without majority support within NI and the Republic of Ireland.

Disagreements

• Dissident groups such as the CIRA, the RIRA and the 32 County Sovereignty Committee refuse to endorse the Agreement and continue to carry out terrorist acts. Certain loyalist organisations and the DUP regard the involvement of the Irish State in the affairs of NI as a breach of British sovereignty and territorial consistency.
• Nationalists and republicans continue to argue that the Patton Report on reform of policing has been diluted and police reform itself has been limited due to unionist pressure.
• Decommissioning offers the greatest source of political conflict, for SF there is no clause in the Agreement linking the decommissioning of IRA weapons to SF's participation in the Executive. David Trimble's leadership of the UUP has been challenged several times on the grounds that unionists should not share power with SF unless decommissioning is completed. Anti-Agreement unionists (the DUP and UK Unionists) are gaining electoral support at the expense of the UUP.

Other Realities and Mapping Fear

• In relation to the reconstruction of NI's labour markets and sites of consumption, little attention has been given to the impact of ethno-sectarian practice. Yet the high levels of religious/political segregation - which are most prevalent in urbanised and working-class areas - means that mobility in relation to jobs and consumer spending is restricted.
• The 'chill factor' - the fear of entering an area dominated by the 'religious other' - has had, and continues to have, a major impact on patterns of employment and consumer spending. For example, within the WBPA out of 52 people employed by a well-known UK supermarket chain, only one comes from a predominantly Protestant district. Conversely, within the predominately Protestant East Belfast Partnership area only one in 50 employees comes from a Catholic district.
• Wider analysis of 38,000 employees in the BUA since 2000 shows that ethno-sectarian segregation remains a constant feature of labour market formation. Of the 38,000 employees, 78% within SOC categories 5-10 work in places within which at least 85% of the workforce comes from areas that are at least 90% Catholic or Protestant. Only 32% of SOC 1-4 employees work in places with the same religious profile.
• In a survey of 1,200 homes in interface areas, only 27% of the sample shopped, worked and undertook leisure in areas dominated by the 'other religion', and only 21% believed relationships with the other community had improved since the cease-fires.

Conclusions

• For some, especially unionists, the Agreement is interpreted as having a bias towards Irish unification.
• The localised nature of territorial control, avoidance and resistance still predominates over the politics of shared interests, integration, assimilation and consensus.
• Despite the capacity of the Agreement to promote fairness, equality and cross-community agreement, the political leadership capable of representing all traditions and cultures is absent. This will remain the case unless the Agreement is seen as having different meanings to various people and not as a cross-community settlement, as is currently the case.