Chapter seven
Targeting social need
Padraic Quirk and Eithne McLaughlin
From: Policy Aspects of Employment Equality in Northern Ireland, Belfast
Publisher: Standing Advisory Commission on Human Rights
The introduction of targeting social need
In February 1991, the then Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, Peter Brooke, announced that Targeting Social Need (TSN) was to become the Government's third public expenditure priority:
I must stress that we recognise that there are problems of disadvantage and need within both sides of the community. We have to examine carefully the impact of existing major policies and programmes. I intend to pursue the scope for targeting these policies and programmes even more sharply on areas and people in greatest need. To achieve this I have now decided that Targeting Social Need will be the third public expenditure priority in addition to the existing priorities of law and order and strengthening the economy ... We are seeking to address deep rooted problems. Solutions must, therefore, involve a long-term commitment in order to ensure that real and lasting changes are achieved. This will not be a quick nor an easy process. But it does make sense that, if we genuinely wish to address the issue of social need that we have identified and achieve a reduction in community differentials, we must target our resources in the way I have outlined. (Peter Brooke, CCRU Equality Review Conference, February 1991).
Embedded within Brooke's definition of TSN were a number of elements - community differentials and the politics of need; targeting on areas and people in greatest need; TSN as a public expenditure priority; TSN as a policy paradox, and the impact of TSN on policies and programmes - which have since formed the framework within which TSN operates.
Community Differentials and the Politics of Need
TSN stemmed from a realisation within the NICS that 'on all major and social and economic indicators, Catholics are worse off than Protestants' (DED, 1992 memo, see above). As a result, CCRU had suggested that the initiative should be called the 'Community Differentials' programme. However, as Osborne (19xx) identifies, there were two opposing schools of thought within NICS over the conceptualisation and presentation of TSN. First, there was a strong belief, represented by CCRU, that the continuing differentials between the two communities sustained Catholic perceptions of discrimination, alienated Catholics from the institutions of government and thus, in part, contributed to support for paramilitary organisations. There was also an awareness that the continuing differentials were embarrassing internationally, particularly in the US. The opposing view was that socio-economic need existed in both communities and any attempt to promote TSN in terms of directly reducing community differentials would both fail to address equivalent needs in some Protestant areas and increase what was to become known as 'protestant alienation'. It is obvious that Brooke's speech, and ministerial statements thereafter, have accepted the legitimacy of the latter argument (Osborne, 19xx), whilst struggling to retain the reduction of community differentials as a key outcome. To a considerable extent, then, government discussion and implementation of TSN since 1991 has attempted to occupy a middle, and thereby, ambivalent, road between these two approaches. At times this ambivalence has resulted in a failure to act as later sections in this chapter will show.
Targeting on Areas and People in Greatest Need
The attempt to both reduce religious differentials, while simultaneously
assuaging fears that (growing) levels of disadvantage in Protestant communities
were being ignored, has been facilitated by the high degree of residential
segregation in Northern Ireland. For example, 90% of residents in 38 out
of the 55 electoral wards in Belfast are of the same religion (xxxx). As
a result, the adoption of an area based programme was regarded as the solution
to producing a greater differential impact on the Catholic population (as
the level of disadvantage in Catholic areas is greater and there are more
disadvantaged Catholic areas), but at the same time not excluding deprived
Protestants. However, to achieve this balancing act, objective indicators
of need at a relatively small spatial level were required and these were
not available in 1991 when the TSN policy was announced. For the first three
years after its announcement, therefore, TSN was not capable of being implemented
in this way. |
