A financial package of £1 billion (€1.48 billion) would be created in Northern Ireland if the sectarian segregation of society was tackled, Alliance leader David Ford stated at the launching of his party's Assembly election manifesto in Belfast yesterday.
Alliance, which is running 18 candidates in 17 of the 18 constituencies - it is supporting Independent Dr Kieran Deeny in West Tyrone - won six seats in the 2003 Assembly poll despite seeing its overall vote cut by half from the 1998 election, when it also took six seats.
The SDLP and Sinn Féin particularly are targeting some of these seats, while the DUP and the Ulster Unionist Party also believe that they have a chance of taking seats from Alliance.
Despite this threat, Mr Ford was in bullish form at the Alliance manifesto launch, arguing against "tribal" politics and parties and contending that Alliance could emerge with eight seats, and possibly more, after polling day on March 7th.
Mr Ford, whose South Antrim seat is targeted by Sinn Féin's Mitchel McLaughlin, said he believed he could hold the seat. He also contended that Kieran McCarthy, whose Strangford seat is seen as the second most vulnerable of the party seats, would withstand the challenge from Joe Boyle of the SDLP.
He predicted that Alliance would hold its six seats, adding that there was a real chance of an additional seat for Anna Lo in South Belfast and saying that Seán Neeson in East Antrim could take a second candidate, Stewart Dickson, with him to the Assembly.
Mr Ford said that £1 billion was wasted every year through segregation. This figure, he added, had been costed by the party and also formed part of the Northern Ireland Office's findings on the economy. Money was being squandered through separate Catholic and Protestant or state schools, through separate leisure and health centres for nationalist and unionist areas, and through other forms of segregation.
"Just think what we could do with that £1 billion if it was spent on providing quality services to all the community," he added.
On the prospect of powersharing by March 26th, the Alliance manifesto pointed out that since the DUP and Sinn Féin were not talking to each other at present it was "a big leap to see them effectively running a regional government in partnership".
Rather than working together, Sinn Féin and the DUP might end up operating "government by memorandum, with civil servants acting as messengers between various ministers who are not prepared to talk to one another".
"Our manifesto is about delivering a brighter future for everyone. Only Alliance will create a shared future and improve local services by ending segregation and ending waste," Mr Ford said. "The four tribal parties totally failed to deliver a shared future in the last executive, when they had the opportunity."
Mr Ford said that Alliance had a target that 10 per cent of children would be in integrated schools by 2010 and that there would be "a place in an integrated school" for every parent who wished to have their child educated in this sector.
