SDLP Leader and South Belfast MP said the so-called ‘Peace Walls’ are a concrete and steel indictment of the failure of Sinn Fein and the DUP to live up to the most basic concepts of the Good Friday Agreement.

Welcoming a £2 million initiative by the International Fund for Ireland to help bring about the conditions that would allow for the removal of peace walls, Dr Alasdair McDonnell said: "It is good that concerned people from the Fund are taking up this challenge and investing money in it. But the fact is that we already employ people to do this job and we already have a budget for it. This is a fundamental task of the reconciliation work outlined in the Good Friday Agreement and it is very clearly the responsibility of the joint Office of the First Ministers.

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"There were just nine so-called 'Peace Walls' when the first ceasefire was called. Now there are between 50 and 90 depending on how they are counted. They stretch 21 kilometres on a par with the urban section of the Berlin Wall."

He said Peace Walls were a "shame and a disgrace".

He concluded: "These two parties need to explain why they have turned away from their duty of reconciliation, why they have left people on the interfaces in the lurch, why they have done nothing to create the sort of society in which people would feel at ease with their neighbours without the help of 40ft fences. They need to explain why they are so closely tied to single-community politics."

(CD/GK)