Pregnant women in parts of Belfast were still refusing antenatal care in areas of the city dominated by the other religion in 2001, according to a study into the costs of polarisation on Northern Ireland society.
The draft report for the Office of First Minister and Deputy First Minister, which are among files released on Thursday by Northern Ireland’s Public Record Office, warned that three decades of sectarian strife had created “two distinct and separate communities”.
Entitled Public Expenditure Impact of Polarised Society, the draft report warned that many services had to be duplicated because of the sectarian divisions, leading to significantly extra costs and inefficiencies in the delivery of public services.
“Northern Ireland is a deeply divided society. The most obvious expression of this division is the violence and civil unrest which has blighted the province since 1969,” the report stated.
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“Each community has its own separate education system, bus routes, community centres and doctor surgeries. The polarisation within these communities is often surprisingly extreme.
“A recent study in Belfast found that some mothers were prepared to forgo antenatal [sic] care for their children in order to avoid attending a clinic located within an area populated by a different religious group,” the draft said.
The Troubles created a need for higher public expenditure in Northern Ireland, requiring “a much larger police force than would otherwise have been the case”, along with the costs of paying for rioting and bomb damage.
“Insurance companies rarely cover civil unrest and acts of terrorism, (so) the Northern Ireland Office pays compensation for both personal injuries and property damages as a result of civil unrest,” the report said.
A University of Ulster report in 2000 found that 78 per cent of Catholics and 76.6 per cent of Protestants would then not work in an area dominated by another religion, the report found.
