The Executive Office has launched a call for views on ‘a new good relations framework’, as an update to the existing (2013) NI Executive good relations strategy, Together: Building a United Community. TEO say that the update is needed “to set a renewed strategic direction that meets the needs of society today”.

‘Good relations’ is a reference to the secondary duty imposed by Section 75 of the 1998 Northern Ireland Act codifying the provisions of the Good Friday Agreement. Section 75 firstly requires duty bearers to give ‘due regard’ to promoting equality of opportunity between people of different religious belief, political opinion, racial group, age, marital status or sexual orientation; and by gender, disability and dependents. The legally mandated framework around this duty includes mechanisms like evidence-based equality impact assessments of new policy and practice.

The DUP, which had publicly opposed the Good Friday Agreement, have over time consistently preferred to emphasise the secondary duty of section 75: to have “regard to the desirability of promoting good relations between persons of different religious belief, political opinion or racial group”. Other parties have frequently acquiesced. The secondary duty is softer, making the promotion of good relations ‘desirable’, not mandatory; while ‘good relations’ themselves are undefined and highly subjective in comparison with equality, which can be measured empirically, for instance through numbers of homeless households and unemployed people. The Equality Coalition’s 2025 report Screened Out Without Mitigation: Returning Equality in NI to the Margins noted that “the absence of a binding legal definition for ‘good relations’ continues to be problematic” and identified issues related to “the notion that it is possible to measure good relations ‘impacts’" (p. 9). 

In PPR’s experience, ‘good relations’ are all too often an excuse for and bar to meaningful progress against them.

Just as ‘good relations’ are more ambiguous and open to interpretation, they are also less imperative and less threatening to the status quo than ‘equality’. It is therefore unsurprising that amongst the concerns noted in the Equality Coalition report was “the frequent use and misuse of the ‘good relations’ limb of the policy to block equality and rights-based initiatives” (p. 10). The report identified: 

“the reality that good relations – however constructed – may well be directly in conflict with equality. Put bluntly, delivering equality might well cause ‘bad relations’ – it certainly has in other contexts. The legislation makes it clear that equality should trump good relations” (p. 34).

It should; but it rarely does. Inequalities persist, untouched by the equality framework, in what the Equality Coalition describes as “egregious examples of continuing discrimination and inequality that escape the safety net of S75” (p. 35). In PPR’s experience, ‘good relations’ are all too often an excuse for and bar to meaningful progress against them.

Religious inequality in housing provision: the Girdwood example 

For PPR, then a very young organisation, the debate over the regeneration of the Girdwood barracks and Crumlin Gaol two decades ago proved to be a litmus test for section 75 implementation. As reported in its 2008 report Unlocking the Potential: human rights, equality and the draft masterplan for Crumlin Road Gaol & Girdwood Barracks, the site was located at the heart of five of the most deprived (in terms of health, housing, education and employment) electoral wards in the north -- Crumlin, New Lodge, Water Works, Shankill and Ardoyne. Regeneration had the potential to address a host of equality issues – something it ultimately failed to do.

When PPR examined the 2007 draft masterplan for the site (put together by the Department for Social Development (DSD) and the Office of the First Minister and Deputy First Minister (OFMDFM), which both owned portions of the land) it found that

“less than one page of the ninety page Draft Masterplan refers to social and economic deprivation and inequality. The Masterplan also stated that there was no need for an Equality Impact Assessment (EQIA) at this stage as the plans were ‘conceptual’.” (PPR, Equality Can’t Wait, 2013, p. 47).

In PPR’s reading of the draft masterplan,

“with specific regard to housing, the “significant and demonstrable need for social and affordable housing in North Belfast” is referred to as a “major concern for Nationalists” rather than as documented fact. Alongside this it is stated that a “major concern of the Unionist community is that the site would cease to be regarded as ‘neutral’ if housing were to be included.” The issue of housing on the site was described in the Draft Masterplan as “extremely contentious” and it was stated that “it has not proved possible to reach agreement on this issue within the Advisory Panel”” (p. 47). 

In PPR’s analysis at the time,

“Failure to clearly articulate housing inequality as a chronic and longstanding issue with a clear statistical evidence base, and to meaningfully assess the legal obligations with regards to it, meant that tackling housing inequality through the Girdwood site was positioned as an issue subject to cross community support in the Draft Masterplan, [which stated] “The Panel recognises that the situation in North Belfast is an exceptional one and that cross community support will be vital to successful development of the site, particularly with regard to housing.”” (p. 47)

PPR concluded that the draft Masterplan had not fulfilled the statutory obligations under Section 75(1) to promote equality, and said as much publicly, as did other civil society organisations. In April 2008 DSD Minister Margaret Ritchie (SDLP) announced the intent to carry out an equality impact assessment of the Girdwood plans. PPR and others collected qualitative and quantitative data to inform the EQIA, including the results of a May 2008 Residents Jury on the masterplan:

“the Jury showed how the hard-won tools of equality impact assessment and objective need – which had been developed precisely to measure how the impact of such proposals and expenditure could change the pattern of their realities – had been ignored, or misapplied, at crucial stages in the devising of the redevelopment plan.”  (Inez McCormack, “A Northern Irish Experience of Shaping Rights,” in Breaking up Britain: four nations after a union, Perryman, M. (ed)., London: Lawrence & Wishart, 2009).

The data collection phase of the EQIA process closed at end September 2008, and a draft EQIA was issued one month later. PPR noted that while some inputs had been overlooked,

“the statistics on housing in North Belfast included in the Draft EQIA were comprehensive … The range of statistics (which included an assessment of those in social housing stress, projected housing supply, re-lets and redevelopment requirements) identified a clear inequality in housing impacting the Catholic community” (Equality Can’t Wait, 2013, p. 48)

Data tables in the EQIA text showed ‘projected social housing need’ for 1,123 homes in ‘perceived’ Catholic North Belfast, as against ‘nil’ in ‘perceived’ Protestant North Belfast. The adjusted projected social housing need figure for ‘perceived’ Catholic North Belfast was 1,291 homes against 71 in ‘perceived’ Protestant North Belfast. PPR wrote, “in essence, the Draft EQIA had recognised that based on the NIHE’s figures, 95% of the total future need for new social homes in North Belfast would be Catholic”; it quoted the draft EQIA finding that “Catholic housing need is characterised by lengthy waiting lists which can only be met through the provision of additional social housing. Protestant housing need is largely being met through the turnover in existing social housing” (p. 49). 

Yet having set out the statistics and analysis demonstrating inequality in access to housing, the DSD’s EQIA pivoted to the assertion that “in an attempt to challenge the sectarianism of the past, the preference is to provide shared space on the site”. It invoked ‘good relations’:

“The preferred option of the Department is shared housing… The data provided by the NIHE underlines that the level of housing stress in the Catholic community cannot be catered for within current and projected housing provision. New residential developments on the site will not have an adverse impact on the housing requirements of the Protestant community in this area. Housing stress within Protestant areas in North Belfast can be accommodated within existing plans. Provision of housing has created concerns within that community and the Department must take account of the objective of creating a sustainable, vibrant community on the site and the areas adjoining the site.” (p. 49)

PPR’s response was unequivocal:

“This position essentially involves a prioritisation by the DSD of the good relations duty over the equality duty, which directly conflicts with the wording of Section 75 and thus the legal obligations both public authorities are under. In real terms, it means that the religious inequality impacting Catholics on the social housing waiting list in North Belfast will continue “(p. 49)

In a failure of the equality impact assessment mechanism, the EQIA report included this: 

“a number of the respondents were disappointed that the EQIA had not presented a definitive ‘equality analysis’ of perceived local need in relation to one or more of housing, education, employment and training, leisure and health. Given the unique location of the site and the various perspectives held by those from adjacent communities it is perhaps overly optimistic to assume that such an analysis could hope to provide an objective, valid and definitive conclusion as to local needs that would be agreed on by all local communities. Instead at the present time the outcome of such an analysis may simply fuel further debate and disagreement and in particular where the needs, perceptions and priorities of each community remain so far apart”” (p. 50)

PPR’s response highlighted how the equality duty was being misused:

“the above quotation is notable as it illustrates a government body [the North Belfast Community Action Unit, the joint DSD / OFMDMF unit charged with the regeneration project] in charge of regeneration appearing to take the view that giving due regard to the promotion of equality as required by the law is a divisive action. It seems to suggest that the naming of inequalities should be avoided in places like North Belfast where in fact, the differentials are the most stark, and where communities have suffered longest” (p. 50).

In March 2011, DSD minister Alex Attwood (SDLP) announced plans for 200 homes, one of the “biggest new social and affordable housing developments in NI in recent years", at Girdwood. The DUP decried this as deeply destabilising and, after becoming DSD minister later that year, the party’s North Belfast MLA Nelson McCausland reversed the decision. In the face of criticism and charges of sectarianism from the SDLP and Sinn Féin, the DSD issued a statement saying McCausland was “supportive of any approach to develop Girdwood in a manner that will bring benefit to and have the support of the whole community".    

In May 2012 McCausland announced a cross-party political deal approving a new plan, for a ‘community hub’ with mainly sport and education facilities but including a small amount of housing in two blocks, one in each community.  PPR noted,

“disturbingly, it also emerged that the NIHE had produced leaflets and disseminated them among members of the Protestant community in Belfast and elsewhere attempting to encourage them to apply to live in the predominately Protestant area beside Girdwood where housing need is currently lower than in the adjacent Catholic areas; thereby effectively engineering housing need. On the one hand, PPR’s work in North Belfast has shown that the NIHE and the Minister for Social Development were operating a policy of advising Catholics on the waiting list that they had to become ‘more mobile’ and widen their area of choice – i.e. move out of North Belfast. On the other hand, they were building new social housing in an area with negligible need of additional social homes, and attempting to attract members of the Protestant community to live in North Belfast” (Equality Can’t Wait, 2013, p. 51).

Housing campaigners supported by PPR organised a petition calling on the Minister to build new social housing on the basis of objective need and equality; they wrote open letters to local elected representatives and briefing notes to Assembly members. PPR clarified that it was concerned, not just with the allocation of homes on the basis of objective need, but with

“the building and supply of homes on the basis of need, which is the key issue to tackling the housing inequality in North Belfast which impacts the Catholic community” (p. 53)

Girdwood provided an early lesson in the use of ‘good relations’ to block efforts to redress housing inequality, not least by erroneously claiming that such efforts require cross-community agreement when actually they are mandated by law on equality grounds.

In February 2013, a Catholic single mum with 13 years on the social waiting list in North Belfast brought a legal challenge before the High Court, which granted her request for judicial review of respect for equality duties during the Girdwood regeneration process. In June 2013 the case was withdrawn after lawyers for the DSD announced that 60 homes will be built at Girdwood. PPR welcomed any new build homes that would address the chronic housing inequality in North Belfast but underlined that the 60 homes were not enough to make a significant impact given the scale of need.

In this way Girdwood provided an early lesson in the use of ‘good relations’ to block efforts to redress housing inequality, not least by erroneously claiming that such efforts require cross-community agreement when actually they are mandated by law on equality grounds.

The picture today

Today the same failed logic is being applied to homeless families in West Belfast. In 2015 families on the waiting list, tired of being told there was no land on which to build homes, undertook a community mapping project which identified vacant sites across Belfast. By far the biggest of these, the Mackie's site in west Belfast, is part-owned by the Department for Communities (the current iteration of DSD), with responsibility for overall housing supply strategy.

Once again the area has high levels of housing need among Catholic population and more minimal need in the Protestant population. Once again the DUP has stated that it is totally opposed to social homes on the site; Sinn Féin have at times tacitly and at times explicitly provided their backing to that position

The site is located in the area of highest housing need in the city.  Rather than viewing the land as an asset to resolve the choke on supply, as would be recommended by both international human rights and domestic law, the state has consistently dragged its heels in making any use of the land whatsoever. In doing so it has consistently drawn on ‘good relations’ arguments, requiring that all parties come to a consensus view in the use of the land, rather than taking diverse views into account and arriving at a conclusion motivated by its statutory duties towards equality. Once again the area has high levels of housing need among Catholic population and more minimal need in the Protestant population. Once again the DUP has stated that it is totally opposed to social homes on the site; Sinn Féin have at times tacitly and at times explicitly provided their backing to that position.

Effectively a good relations approach awards a veto, including to groups whose decisions are at times motivated by hate and at times implemented through violence and fear.  In June 2026 PPR criticised the Executive Office decision to follow its previous Racial Equality Strategy, weak but at a minimum grounded in specific 75 duties around equality of opportunity, with a draft ‘race relations strategy’ (in which ‘elimination of racial inequality’ was relegated to one of the strategy’s four outcomes (alongside, amongst others, ‘community cohesion’). A week after our feedback, targeted racist violence by masked mobs brought Belfast to a standstill; and three months on, many of the people burnt out of their homes are still homeless. What further evidence does the state need that its commitment to its equality duties needs strengthened, not further watered down?

Today, rather than continued reliance on ‘good relations’ to block progress towards equality – and rather than ‘renewal’ of the same good relations strategy that has failed to check or even seriously challenge a rising tide of racist and Islamophobic imagery and language and has allowed paramilitary control to perpetuate and flex itself to the real detriment of communities -- PPR urges the Executive Office to stop and change direction. It must recommit itself to meaningfully fulfil the primary duty embedded in section 75 of the NI Act around equality.

In its ‘good relations’ consultation the Executive Office notes that “our society has changed significantly since 2013” and expresses concern about

“division, segregation, prejudice, hate crime, sectarianism, racism, contested spaces and tensions around cultural expression... inequality, deprivation and poverty … education, housing, safety, access to services and opportunities to take part fully in society.” 

In this TEO are not wrong. But these are equality issues, enforceable by law; they are not the remit of the secondary ‘good relations’ duty.  They are definitely not ‘community relations’ or ‘community cohesion’ issues to be negotiated between groups with unequal power. TEO’s aim “to further progress peace and reconciliation and deliver a truly shared society for all” requires progress towards meaningful, measurable equality -- anything else is a dereliction of duty. TEO’s ‘call for views’ aside, this state has the obligation under domestic and international law to act to protect and fulfil people’s rights and to redress inequalities. Views have nothing to do with it; the state’s legal duty is not negotiable.

As PPR’s founder Inez McCormack noted in a 2012 video on Girdwood: 

“this community relations stuff of 50/50 doesn’t tackle sectarianism – it feeds it and it brings the past into the future and that is not either the law or practice that we fought for.”