95%
of those on the public housing waiting list in north Belfast next year
will be Catholic, according to figures released by Northern Ireland’s
Housing Executive.
The Executive estimates that of the 1,362 house units needed in 2012,
the overwhelming majority of the applicants – 1,291 - will be from the
Catholic community.
The revelation has led to a row between the two
nationalist parties, Sinn Féin and the SDLP, with SF assembly member
Carál Ní Chuilín blaming SDLP Social Development minister
Alex Attwood for part of the problem.
Describing the Housing Executive’s figures as “alarming and totally
disgraceful,” Ms Ní Chuilin said, “the fact that up to 95 per cent of
people waiting for homes will be nationalist by 2012 is abject failure
in anyone’s language," she added.
She criticised Mr Attwood for not
extending, beyond 2012, a special measure to ensure that more new social
housing developments were built in nationalist areas.
Next year, the Housing Executive will end the arrangement in which
money in its housing was ring-fenced to address the backlog in the
provision of social housing in Catholic areas.
Ms Ni Chuilin said that the SDLP had “abolished vital equality
protections on their watch, resulting in this deepening crisis.”
She
said she and colleague MLA Gerry Kelly would be “challenging the Housing
Executive strongly on behalf of this community.”
“The SDLP is quick to wrap themselves in the politics of civil rights
and speak the language of equality, but when it comes to delivery its
record in the Social Development Ministry is pitiful,” she claimed.
But a north Belfast SDLP councillor, Nichola Mallon hit back at the
Sinn Féin woman saying
that the changes were raised at the Social
Development Committee of the Northern Assembly (of which Carál Ní
Chuilín is a member) and a decision was made to end the ring-fencing in
order to make more homes available in North Belfast.
“Rather than remove protections, the SDLP has actually enhanced the
provision for those in housing need in North Belfast,” she claimed.
“Yet again, we have a Sinn Féin representative ignoring the facts and
electioneering on the backs of ordinary people in housing need.”
Meanwhile, a Belfast housing rights group, the Participation and the Practice of Rights Project, also called for the shortage of public housing for Catholics to be addressed.
Spokesperson Kate Ward said there was a clear legal obligation on the
NIHE to promote equality of opportunity and “tackle the differential.”
“The PPR Project calls on the NIHE to provide evidence as to how the
religious inequality in housing in North Belfast will be being lessened
through their new policy of assessing housing need.”