Reconciliation Programing and Discourse in Northern Ireland since the Good Friday Agreement of 1998

The history of Northern Ireland is dominated by the conflict between two factions; one consists of loyalists who favor rule from the UK, and are largely Protestant, while the others favor a unified republic of Ireland, and are largely Catholic. The Catholic republican minority has been marginalized in Northern Irish society until recently, and this political/religious difference (expressed officially as ‘community background’) still leads to episodic tensions and violence in the region. Since the peace accords of 1998, known as the Good Friday Agreement, several efforts focused on the Northern Ireland Civil Service (NICS) have reduced the disparity between Catholics and Protestants in the government workforce and, through a deliberative and analytic process, have grown to respond to other inequities in the offerings of all of the region’s government organizations. This chapter details the center of the conflict, the ‘nervous’ topic of discussing political/religious difference, and the political and administrative mechanisms that have brought a modicum of hope and progress to the governance of Northern Ireland.