Business leaders have a pivotal role to play in preventing Protestant alienation in Northern Ireland, the Church of Ireland Primate Archbishop Robin Eames claimed today.
"We must all get a new confidence in ourselves," he said at a meeting of Belfast Rotary Club today. "Confidence is the key. Confidence can remove fear and can overcome inequality and injustice.
"We cannot allow the addressing of the alienation of one section of the community to be replaced by the alienation of another," he added.
A new confidence among business leaders in their search for more industry and a stable economy would help overcome the inequality and injustice felt within all sections of the population, he said.
Dr Eames said the world saw two faces of Northern Ireland. One was a hard working business community desperate to bring economic prosperity to people. But it was constantly overridden by the other face.
This, he said was "a face of community division, sectarian hatred, violence and unrest".
The Archbishop of Armagh urged business leaders not to feel disheartened by the negative images of a divided society.
Instead, he said they should look at Belfast's developments over the past years and use this to make a fresh start and spur them on to build a new society.
"Economic progress has a vital part to play. But so too does our attitude to each other," he told the meeting.
PA