With the uniting of Europe and with an influx of American business, Ireland is much better off economically. For the first time ever in South Ireland they are importing refugees to serve in jobs in motels and mopping the pubs. However, the economy is better in the South than in the North, although there is progress there, too. Headway has been made since the Good Friday agreements, but the peace process still has a way to go. Some 900 years of hurts and 30 years of almost outright war have caused deep wounds that may take years to heal.
Drugs are new to Ireland and it is indeed unfortunate they have reached here.
So, as we went into Belfast we again saw armed police walking across vacant lots carrying machine guns. At that time the Protestants were forced out of Belfast and now live across the river, remembering their past and fearing losing their whole way of life. But we also sat in the Lower Ormeau Concerned Community in Belfast where Catholics have recently been beaten and killed because they objected to the Orangemen parades through their area. The parades flaunted the history of violence in a part of Belfast that was first Protestant and is now Catholic. And we listened to Trevor Morrow, the moderator of the Presbyterian Church of Ireland, who recalled my speaking to their General Assembly in 1996 in that very location which they call Church House.