Life Beyond The Troubles 2018

Politics

People in Belfast reflect on how life has improved in the 20 years since the Good Friday Agreement.

In Belfast, RTÉ reporter Paddy O'Gorman walks from the Protestant Shankill Road to the Catholic Falls Road. He asks people living on both sides of the peace wall what impact the Good Friday Agreement has made to their lives since it was signed in 1998. He deliberately speaks to people over the age of thirty.

Charlie Butler owns a chip shop in the Shankill. He is very optimistic about community relations since the Good Friday Agreement. When his children were growing up they had never met a Catholic person until they left school.

Mainly because in those days you couldn’t leave your own area.

Since the Good Friday Agreement the children can mix, there is integration and there are mixed schools. Children are not afraid to leave their own road. People can go into a pub without the fear of a gunman spraying them with bullets or a bomb being thrown. His one regret is that Northern Ireland still has tribal politics. He was hoping this would be different for his children.

A 60 year old man who was injured in a sectarian attack himself, sees things have improved in the past 20 years. However he is still unwilling to go to the Falls Road on the other side of the peace wall. Having recently returned from Spain, he observed how Easyjet customers hold British passports while those on Ryanair have Irish passports. Paddy O’Gorman is amazed how

Northerners have an uncanny ability to detect each other’s religion.

A woman from the Shankill is much happier to walk around and no longer lives in fear, but still does not have friends on the Falls Road.

Oh no, I don’t have friends there, there was too much that happened during the Troubles, people remember too much.

Paddy O’Gorman crosses into the Falls and on the Springfield Road he meets Anne-Marie, a 60 year old woman. She recalls the bad times of 1969-1970 when Bombay Street was burned. She would never go back to this way of living, as life is much better with Protestants and Catholics integrating.

A man in his 60s is glad to see the end of violence so he can visit family on the Shankill Road. Another man who was interned at the age of 17 and served time in Long Kesh is glad there is peace, however he still finds it uncomfortable to go up the Shankill Road,

It’s only so many yards away, but its two different lifestyles.

A woman is glad the teenagers now have no memory of violence. While she retains an inner fear about going to the Shankill, her children do not.

They’ve grown up completely different to what we did and the more that you can get them integrated the better.

In agreement is a man who is totally optimistic about the future. While people who remember the Troubles have baggage, young people born since the Good Friday Agreement have no experience of the darker days. They feel completely free to mingle and socialise with anyone, regardless of where they are from.

Another woman adds that since the Good Friday Agreement,