THE basis for community development is to give people power to bring about change, the Northern Ireland Economy Minister, Baroness Denton, said yesterday.
Community involvement was the best way to develop cities, towns and villages which had suffered from lack of investment, she told the annual summer school of the Social Studies Conference in Inchigeela, Co Cork.
"In Northern Ireland, communities have realised that economic change is both possible and achievable. No longer are communities waiting for change." They were making changes happen by developing their own skills and experience and working in partnership with other groups and statutory agencies.
Mr Harry Smith, DUP member of Belfast City Council, said a Northern Ireland free of constitutional and religious issues would produce elected bodies swamped with community group representatives. There was a growing realisation that a bottom up, inclusive approach was the best way forward, but there had to be a real partnership with the community local authority, statutory agencies and the private sector.
The director of the Combat Poverty Agency, Mr Hugh Frazer, said: "If we do not use the currently uniquely favourable economic and demographic circumstances to dramatically reduce poverty and inequality, then alienation will inevitably increase and our societies, North and South, will become still more divided."
Crime and violence would increase and rampant individualism would replace mutual solidarity.